The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 7 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump is already telegraphing all the ways he’s going to make life absolutely miserable for Republicans in Congress. He continues to declare that he wants virtually his entire agenda to pass in one big bill, which will put the congressional GOP through wildly unworkable contortions. He’s signaling that the demands he makes of House Speaker Mike Johnson will be borderline impossible. He just doubled down on his threat of across-the-board tariffs, which many Republicans will not want to support. And to top it all off, he’s empowered Elon Musk to propose huge spending cuts. Few people are better at making sense of GOP congressional craziness than scholar Norman Ornstein. Today, we’re checking in with him about all this. Great to have you back on, Norm.

Norman Ornstein: It’s always good to be with you, Greg.

Sargent: There’s a lot to unpack here. Things are happening quickly. Let’s start with Trump’s idea that he wants to pass much of his agenda in one big bill. That would be via the reconciliation process, which is a budgetary maneuver that allows for passage by a simple majority in the Senate. In an interview on Monday, Trump signaled a bit of flexibility here, saying he might be open to doing this in two bills, but he also reiterated that his preference is for one big, beautiful bill. This would include who knows what on border security, energy deregulation, and renewing Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and corporations. Norm, can you walk us through what he’s asking for, and why it’s going to be so hard to pull off?

Ornstein: He’s asking for the impossible, Greg, because basically he wants to use this process of reconciliation. These are supposed to be things that are strictly related to taxing and spending, and are supposed to be ones under something in the Senate called the Byrd rule, after Robert Byrd, that does not add to the deficit over 10 years. That’s why these tax cuts in the past go for 10 years, then completely die out and expire. Trump wants to continue all of those tax cuts, which would mean another $5 trillion added to the debt. He wants to do, as you said, Greg, who knows what on the border. He wants to include his tariff proposals and theoretically, all of these spending cuts that will offset the tax cuts and lead us to a balanced budget.

The problem there, to start with, is the only places where you can find big amounts of spending that you could in theory cut are from the defense budget or these permanent programs sometimes called entitlements: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. And Medicare and Social Security are not allowed under reconciliation. They could gut Medicaid, but a lot of Republicans are going to find out that that means cutting nursing home care. And to put all of that together in one bill, that is a dubious legality that would have to be approved by the Senate parliamentarian. What we know about Trump, Greg, is that if anything goes wrong, he’s not going to accept any of the blame for it. He is going to blame the Republicans who he said disappointed him and sold his ideas short.

Sargent: Absolutely. And Norm, we’re already seeing Republicans fighting over this. Senate Republicans don’t want to do this in one bill, but House Republicans do want to do it in one. It looks to me like House Republicans, because their majority is so razor-thin, would really struggle to do it in two bills. Trump has sided with House Republicans so far, screwing over Senate Republicans, but he also left Republicans dangling in the wind on this for a long time. They wanted a signal on which he wanted. And now as soon as he actually sends a signal, he starts sending mixed signals again. How does this play out?

Ornstein: It’s not going to play out well, we know that. There are going to be a lot of bumps along the way. We know that, first, Donald Trump knows nothing about the legislative process and very little about the executive process. It’s whoever whispers in his ear last that has him issuing demands that practically speaking can’t be met. But what we also know is that with a razor-thin margin in the House and with a Senate that often will have different ideas, the House and Senate Republicans are going to be at odds with each other, and Donald Trump will only make that worse.

Then we have to throw in the Musk factor. While it’s Musk and Ramaswamy, this is a runaway train being driven by Elon Musk. We’re already seeing Musk say in his various........

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