District Club: Congress Breaks, Trump Contemplates Iran and Kamala Hits the Trail

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Ben Dominich (1:30)

Welcome back to another edition of The District Club. I'm Ben Dominich, opinion editor at The Daily Wire, joined by my colleague, Tim Rice, who is the DC Bureau Chief. And we also have two guests today. We don't have Mary Margaret, White House Correspondent, but we do have a White House Correspondent, Reagan Reiss, from The Daily Caller. And we have Democratic strategist and former Obama advisor, Ameshia Cross, with us as well. This was an interesting week in Washington for a number of reasons. There's certainly people who believe that the midterms do not start until the point when the members of the House of Representatives tuck tail and run back to their districts, afraid of what lies behind them there, especially considering the way that this Congress has behaved over the past couple of months. They seem to have no eagerness to stay here in the swamp, and they wanted to get back home because they are worried. They're worried for a number of different reasons, which we can get into.

But Reagan, I'll start with you. When it came to the decision by Congress to head out of town this early, before the November elections, isn't that really a sign of weakness and, frankly, an incapability of the Republican leadership to keep their conference under control?

Reagan Reese (2:43)

A thousand percent. It feels like they just, I can't even really comprehend them leaving because I feel like they just got back and now they're out again, and they were barely here, and I barely even noticed they were here. I think that this is just, it just adds to the negative vibes going into the midterms from Congress, from the GOP.

It doesn't seem like they're operating from a position of strength. They don't want to stay. They don't want to fight. They don't want to pass anything. And I think after just the whole situation with the Save America Act and how that was flubbed, the least you could do was maybe stay a little bit longer and try to get something passed, try to get some win on the board for your team going into the midterms. But they don't seem willing to do that at all.

Ben Dominich (3:29)

Ameshia, you saw a couple of things happen this week in terms of that dynamic that Reagan is talking about. You saw a vote on Iran War Powers where you had seven Republicans break with the president, including some Midwesterners, which is like a little bit of a surprise.

You saw the remarks from Maria Salazar on the immigration issue. Clearly there's a lot of different frustrations coming both the administration and the Republican leadership from a couple of different directions. At the same time, a lot of Republicans are excited about the fact that almost $100 million has been committed in the past couple of weeks from a major MAGA-adjacent PAC, spending in critical races across the country, not just Senate races, but houses as well. Should Republicans be coming out of this week feeling like we should be worried about this infighting or is it more like, actually now the campaign is really starting, we're coming to it a little bit late, post-Dallas, we can get our feet underneath us.

Ameshia Cross (4:26)

I think the Republicans should be worried and they should be worried because Americans are still fighting the affordability crisis. We see that changes in the pump, gas prices continue to go up, people's utility bills are rising like crazy.