Monday Morning Politics: Banking Backstop; Biden's Budget; 2024 and More

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Arun Venugopal: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Arun Venugopal from the WNYC Newsroom filling in for Brian Lehrer today. On today's show, we're going to talk about the chaotic few weeks Long Island railroad commuters have had after the railroad opened the new Grand Central Madison terminal and rolled out its new schedules. My guest Newsday's transit reporter says he's never seen commuters more outraged than in these past few weeks, which is saying something. Later in the show, New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik will be here to talk about mastering new skills in middle age, plus maybe we'll ask him how it feels to be famous, after all, his name was mentioned by Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars last night. Did you hear that last year for the first time since 1987, Vinyl Records outsold CDs. We'll talk about why that's happening and what it says about our music listening habits.

First, we look at national politics. Yesterday, Federal regulators announced that they would ensure that all of the depositors with money in Silicon Valley Bank would be made whole, not just the ones below the guaranteed amount, with no cost to the taxpayer. They made other moves, including closing a second bank in New York all to keep depositors in other banks from getting nervous and withdrawing their funds. President Biden spoke just an hour ago about the arrangement that was worked out with a treasury department, the FDIC and the Federal Reserve.

President Biden: Today, thanks to the quick action of my administration over the past few days, Americans can have confidence that the banking system is safe. Your deposits will be there when you need them. Small businesses across the country that had deposited accounts at these banks can breathe easier in knowing they'll be able to pay their workers and pay their bills, and their hardworking employees can breathe easier as well.

Arun Venugopal: An attempt, a little reassurance from President Biden. President also presented his budget plan last week, and with the Republican-controlled house unlikely to act on it, we ask what it says about politics in the year 2024. Former President Trump is on the campaign trail in Iowa today as the Manhattan DA seems to be moving toward an indictment. His vice president Mike Pence made some news himself this weekend saying history will hold Donald Trump accountable for January 6th. New Jersey governor Phil Murphy was on the road in Ukraine last week and in DC over the weekend. To add some context to all of this, I'm joined by Molly Ball, National Political Correspondent for TIME and the author of Pelosi, a biography of the former Speaker of the House. Welcome back to WNYC, Molly Ball.

Molly Ball: Thank you so much for having me. Great to be here.

Arun Venugopal: Great to have you. Listeners, we can take your calls on any of those issues, the bank failures if you're getting jittery yourself, the federal budget, the debt ceiling, Governor Murphy's political future to the extent there is one, or the GOP field of presidential contenders. Call us at 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692, or you can tweet us @BrianLehrer. All right, Molly, let's start with the banking situation, which is reverberating not just nationally, but internationally. I know you're not a finance reporter, but perhaps you can tell us about the politics of all this and whether President Biden and his administration are perceived as making good on the claim that the banking system is safe. What do you think?

Molly Ball: Well, we don't know yet. We're obviously waiting to see how all of this plays out. It is a real test for the Biden administration to see if they can handle this in a way that is reassuring to the markets, to Main Street, as well as Wall Street. What we're seeing today, I don't think we know yet whether this contagion could spread further, whether more banks could be affected. We have already seen banks other than SVB, the bank that failed, showing signs of similar runs, other mid-size banks. The question is, is that going to spread further throughout the market, throughout the banking sector? If it does, is the administration-- does it have the tools and is it able to act fast enough to contain it? It's possible that this is a blip, that the action that's been taken is sufficient and everybody goes on with their lives and we don't remember this in a few months.

It's also possible that it spirals into a 2008-type situation. I think that's obviously everybody's worst fear. If that's the case, then there could be very severe consequences for an economy that previously had been, if anything, running too hot. We're going to have to wait to see how it plays out to see whether the administration's action so far has been sufficient and whether the president is correct when he says that taxpayers won't be on the hook. We've heard some skepticism particularly on the left for that claim.

Arun Venugopal: Let's talk about the reaction from the right. How are Republicans responding to this so far?

Molly Ball: Most Republicans have been somewhat supportive from what I have seen. More of the criticism seems to be coming-- I think the 2008 era bailouts were unpopular on both the left and the right and arguably led to the formation of the Tea Party. So far, we are seeing some sort of cautious support for what's happened from the more mainstream quarters of the Republican party, but again, I think it's going to depend on whether or not the action taken so far turns out to be successful.

Arun Venugopal: It's obviously a little early here in New York in terms of the markets and how they're going to respond throughout the day. In Europe, we've seen markets dip since they're ahead of us. We've seen companies as far away as India being damaged by what's happened to the bank, to SVB. I guess it's going to take a few days for this to really, I guess, percolate down to Main Street, if it does. What do you think in terms of 2008 so far is different about this? Do we see a different reaction, were you covering the situation back then?

Molly Ball: Yes. There's obviously a lot that's different about the context. SVB was concentrated in the tech sector, hence the name, and so a lot of what we have been seeing in tech has a bearing on what's happening here. Other banks that have been affected have had a lot of holdings in crypto, another sector that's taken a big hit recently. Whereas the 2008 situation had much more to do with the housing markets and the housing bubble. We've also seen that a lot of this appears to have been brought on in part by the Feds rate hikes and the action taken to counter inflation. That wasn't something that was happening in 2008, and that relates much more to this overheated economy that we have with not enough people to fill all the jobs available as opposed to the other way around.

There's a lot that's different, but anytime you have runs on banks, obviously, it makes people really nervous. The administration today trying to reassure companies that had their holdings in SBV, that they can still pay their employees, to your point about Main Street, that people who are innocent victims of this whose companies have to be able to make payroll, that they'll still be able to have that stability. It'll just, again, depend on whether the contagion spreads further.

Arun Venugopal: To the extent you can answer this question about the banking system, most of us don't have more than 250,000 in our bank accounts, so there shouldn't necessarily be an issue with losing individual deposits. Am I right?

Molly Ball: That's not something I'm an expert on, but yes, obviously, the FDIC deposit limit of $250,000 protects people's individual deposits under that limit. What the administration has done is to, since very few individual depositors were using, this wasn't a retail bank that people went to the at ATM at, it was mostly large companies who had their holdings there, but there are a lot of little people downstream from that. There are people who work for those companies and people who had other business dealings with those companies. The idea is that by protecting those larger deposits, this is tricky politically, and the administration does not want to seem to be protecting the irresponsible fat cats who were gambling with depositors' money in effect, and that is what what they're being accused of in some quarters, but there are also innocent victims downstream from these companies that the administration says they're trying to protect.

Arun Venugopal: Molly, coming after what we've seen with crypto scandals and general loss of confidence in the tech sector to regulate itself, do you think that it's possible that both the right and the left wings of the two major parties are going to come around further sort of regulation of this sector?

Molly Ball: Well, anything's possible, but I don't think anyone would bet on swift action from this divided Congress, even if there is conceptual agreement. We've seen in Washington for a long time there has been conceptual agreement on the idea that tech needs to be regulated, but the parties are coming from such different places when they say that. There have been some efforts to put bipartisan legislation together, but they've largely run aground. Now that Republicans are in control of the House and struggling to do anything, including keep the lights on raise the debt ceiling, no one is very optimistic for major policy legislation in the next couple of years. You do have some voices saying this clearly shows the need to regulate, the President saying this morning, we need to tighten the rules and make sure this doesn't keep happening, so there could be some efforts, but I would be very surprised if in the next few months, we actually see the President sitting down to sign legislation.

Arun Venugopal: Listeners, we're taking your calls as well on any of the issues we're talking here with Molly Ball, the bank failures, the federal budget, the debt ceiling, Governor Murphy's political future. Call us at 212-433-WNYC. Again, that's 212-433-9692, or just tweet your questions at us @BrianLehrer. Molly, let's go to another area of discussion right now, which would be the President's budget proposal. When he presented it, he quoted a line of his dad's where he said, "Show me your budget, I will tell you what you value." President Biden's plan totals $6.88 trillion, includes tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, increases in the social safety net, smaller increases in defense spending while trimming the deficit by what he proposes $3 trillion. What exactly does it say about his values?

Molly Ball: Well, there was nothing at all surprising in this budget blueprint. I think it was exactly what someone would have predicted from this President and this administration, a lot of the social safety net proposals that you mentioned were previously contained in the failed Build Back Better legislation that later passed in reduced form, but things like the expansion of the Child Tax Credit were not included. Some of that went into this spending proposal. It was interesting and a little bit surprising how the White House chose to present it. Before the release of the budget, there was a lot of emphasis on the deficit reduction piece. Now, it reduces the deficit by spending more money and raising even more taxes, it doesn't reduce the deficit by cutting spending, which is more what the right would like to see and would propose, but it does reduce the deficit.

I think you have, as he prepares to campaign for re-election, the President trying to strike on the one hand a old-school democratic populist tone similar to the State of the Union, but on the other hand, a centrist message to say we do care about debt and deficits, we are working to bring them down, and having that be a major piece of the messaging. Fundamentally, this is a messaging proposal, it's not something that anybody expects to pass. As the President said, it is a statement of values, and that is what these budget proposals have traditionally been over the years as a way to communicate to the electorate what the President and his party stand for. You see a party and a President that broadly stand for taxing the rich, bolstering the social safety net, spending more money on government programs, in particular, education programs and health care programs, and then, despite the fact that we have supposedly just ended two wars, increasing the Pentagon budget as well to deal with the threat from China and the situation in Ukraine.

Arun Venugopal: Let's talk about the reaction from Republicans. One Republican senator commented yesterday on Fox, "The only way I know how to improve the President's budget is with a shredder," not especially surprising, but Republicans don't have an alternative plan just yet, do they?

Molly Ball: They don't. I think you can expect to hear Democrats in the White House hammer them for that on a daily basis until they come up with something. The Democrats really believe that Republicans have painted themselves into a corner, both with the budget situation and also with the debt ceiling, which poses a similar dilemma. Republicans have said that they want to see big cuts in exchange for raising the debt limit. They've said they want to balance the budget. They've also said, despite Biden's accusation that caused that yelling match on the floor of the House during the State of the Union, they've said that they don't plan to propose cuts to Medicare and Social Security. That doesn't leave a lot on the table if you're not going to raise taxes. Democrats are waiting for Republicans to come up with something that might have some chance of the party uniting the very slim Republican majority in the House.

That's going to be very difficult for Republicans to do. They obviously have a lot of philosophical and ideological and practical issues with the Democrats' approach to these things. It is going to be very hard for them to come up with a counter-proposal because of all of those different factions and different conditions that they've set.

Arun Venugopal: Very different scenario from, I suppose, the culture war issues, isn't it, where you have standard bearers rallying around things like anti-wokeness and whatnot, and trying to prevent the teaching of American history and some of these red meat issues that the base seems to lap up?

Molly Ball: Yes. Well, I mean, that wouldn't necessarily be relevant to a budget discussion. We have also seen that this President in particular really avoid those hot-button issues, really decline to engage in a lot of the extremely polarizing and divisive issues being discussed on a daily basis by Republicans and on Fox News, and so on, rather than mount a loud counter to that. One very big social issue that I think we're not going to see either side stop discussing is abortion. As the campaign heats up on both sides, we're going to see a lot of discussion of the continuing fallout of the end of Roe v. Wade and different Republican candidates campaigning talk about how they would propose to move forward on that issue. This is another issue where I think Democrats believe they have an advantage, whereas on some of the cultural stuff, Republicans do think they have an advantage, but it's not in the sense of balancing any budgets, more about reminding voters about some of the ways that they believe the Democratic Party is out of step with mainstream American culture.

Arun Venugopal: Let's take a call. This is Craig, and he's calling in from Morganville, New Jersey. Hi, Craig, do you have a question for Molly Ball from TIME?

Craig: Yes, I do. I'd like to know why all these wonderfully smart people who are in all these big offices, Secretary of Treasury and all these people, are not more proactive. They've all gone to Ivy League Schools, they've done economic things. This gentleman Powell was raising these rates way too fast. You can't solve inflation by putting interest rates on Prozac 50 basis points each time. It doesn't work like that. Been in Wall Street a long time, it just doesn't work like that. Now all those bonds that these banks bought and their treasuries, which are supposed to be wonderful securities, are a lot lower. These regional banks, they're not regulated enough, you can't put everything into treasuries. Everybody thinks the bank's job is to lend money to help people. Bank's job is to make money for stuff like this. If Powell didn't do everything right away so fast, we wouldn't have this problem.

The other thing is, and I hate to say, and I really liked the past president, Mr. Obama, he shouldn't have frozen Fed funds rates for that long. You can't freeze something that's traded in the market for two years like that. There's a whole generation of bond traders who never knew when you raise Fed funds rate or what the money supply was.

Arun Venugopal: Craig, why don't we go ahead? Thank you for your call. Let's see, Molly, there's a lot there. I don't know, any broad strokes in terms of Craig's emphasis here?

Molly Ball: No, I think there's going to be a lot of discussion in the coming days of all of these issues looking back on the actions the Fed has taken and discussing whether there have been unintended consequences of those actions. I think even before this happened, there was a lot of discussion of whether the Feds rate hikes had been effective, had had the intended effect given that inflation has continued and hasn't really declined, certainly as much as people had hoped. There's also a lot of discussion of whether the Dodd-Frank banking reforms that followed the 2000 financial crisis were sufficient, and also whether a partial 2018 rollback of some of those rules may have contributed to what we're seeing now.

Senator Elizabeth Warren in an op-ed in the New York Times today naming Chairman Powell as one of those responsible and also pointing to that 2018 partial deregulation measure to say that that was part of what enabled these banks to take these risks that contributed to this crisis. I don't think we know for sure exactly what caused this and what the ramifications are going to be, but I think there's going to be a lot of discussion about whether the current rules of the road are sufficient to contain crises like this.

Arun Venugopal: You're listening to the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Arun Venugopal from the WNYC & Gothamist newsroom filling in for Brian today. I'm talking to TIME Magazine National Political Correspondent Molly Ball. We'll get to your calls, and we'll also ask about Governor Murphy's future political plans after this short break. Stay with us.

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Arun Venugopal: You're listening to the Brian Lehrer Show. I'm Arun Venugopal from the WNYC & Gothamist newsroom filling in for Brian today. We're talking about all the economy and everything that's going on with the politics of the economy right now at a very particular moment when we have Silicon Valley banks falling apart and the reverberations not just nationally but internationally. We're talking about it with TIME Magazine National Correspondent Molly Ball. Let's hear something from the White House today and how they're responding to all that's going on. On Friday, the House Freedom Caucus, Republicans that is, issued its demands for any debt ceiling agreement with the White House saying they would for the first time vote to extend the debt ceiling but only if programs already agreed to when the Democrats control of the House like student loan relief, IRS funding, climate change programs were rolled back. Here's how Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young responded on CNN yesterday.

Shalanda Young: Let's not hold the debt ceiling hostage to really draconian cuts all to help the wealthiest in this country.

Arun Venugopal: All right, Molly Ball of TIME Magazine, let's talk about that. The White House is not receptive to what the House Freedom Caucus has proposed, but has speaker Kevin McCarthy responded to their demands?

Molly Ball: Not that I've seen. He seems to just have let them put this out there, and I think everybody knows that the Freedom Caucus represents the sort of far-right wing of the Republican House majority and that anything that they would propose would not likely have the support even of the entire Republican caucus, much less any bipartisan support. It does illustrate what a jam McCarthy is in because the Freedom Caucus, which has 3540 members, controls a sizable chunk of votes that he's going to need to pass anything. He's only got a five-seat majority, and we saw during the speaker fight how hard it is to maneuver when you can't lose more than a few votes. This is why the White House has taken the stance it has saying they're not negotiating at all. They're waiting for Republicans to come up with some proposal which they can then say that they are not going to engage with.

It is a real jam for McCarthy to try to come up with something that he can sell to his entire caucus, much less something that could actually get some buy-in, some negotiation with the White House.

Arun Venugopal: The latest date by which the current debt ceiling will be reached is now estimated to be somewhere between July and September. Any idea on where negotiations stand?

Molly Ball: They're really just at a standstill. The president and the speaker haven't spoken I believe since that first conversation that they had which was described as amicable but going nowhere. The House Republicans have said they've pushed off the potential release of their own budget proposal by a couple of months. I think there is a lot of concern in Washington and on Wall Street about the potential for default just given how irreconcilable all the relative parties' goals appear to be. As that deadline gets closer, as you say, it appears to be sometime late summer, early fall. We actually hit the debt limit back in January, but treasury has been taking so-called extraordinary measures since then to keep the government running. At some point, you do hit that hard limit and there is the potential for default.

We already saw a decade ago how just the threat of default, coming close to it, was enough to really pummel the markets and investor confidence in the United States. There is, I think, a lot of fear that something like that could happen again or even worse.

Arun Venugopal: All right, looks like we have another call. This is from TJ in Manhattan. TJ, what's your question for Molly Ball?

TJ: Good morning, Ms. Ball. The question I have for you is shall we see a repeat scenario of what happened in 1995 when the Republicans basically did the same thing? They wanted to eliminate several program for them to agree to raise that ceiling, then nothing happened and everybody went against them and they had to come back and raise the debt ceiling without obtaining a single concession.

Arun Venugopal: Thank you, TJ from Manhattan. Molly, a bit of a throwback to mid-'90s and the Clinton era. Any thoughts about whether there are modern-day I guess resonances or similarities to what happened in the '90s?

Molly Ball: Well, sort of. I'm not super familiar with the details of what went down in '95. There were a couple, actually, of government shutdowns in that era because of the impasse in budget negotiations between the Clinton administration and then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. The situation that the caller described is, of course, what the White House would like to see happen, that Republicans can't come up with anything, and therefore, they're forced to just capitulate. We'll see if that happens. They have insisted that they're not going to do that. Both the House and Senate Republicans have said that a so-called clean debt limit increase is a non-starter and it's just going to depend on how the next few months play out ,what if any proposal the Republicans can put on the table, and whether it is something that all parties can accept.

Even though the White House has taken this hard line against negotiating, we have seen centrist conservative Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin saying that they do want there to be some kind of negotiation, some kind of deal and positioning himself to help broker that, so there is a possibility of something happening there, but it has to start, and it hasn't really started yet.

Arun Venugopal: In a similar vein, I'm curious about the Biden budget which is seen by many as a blueprint for 2024 for his own reelection campaign assuming he does run again as expected. How much of this do you see as him trying to get Republicans on the record against some of its more popular elements for himself and for other Democrats to benefit from?

Molly Ball: Yes, that is a huge part of the politics of this, that the Democrats really believe that they benefit from this contrast, that even if Republicans are going to take this document and say this is too much spending, too much taxes, this would be bad for the economy, they're saying, "Well, what are you for?" Particularly, as we saw in the State of the Union and as we've seen consistently from President Biden pushing them to say what they are proposing for Medicare and Social Security, these are hugely popular programs that every American eventually almost expects to be able to benefit from. Any kind of modification to those has always been a political third rail, and that was why when the president brought this up as an attack on Republicans during the State of the Union, they started yelling at him and heckling him and saying, "That's not true, that's not what we're for."

He said, "I'm not saying you're all for that," but it is certainly something some people have proposed. Indeed it is something some Republicans have proposed, and we're seeing now out on the campaign trails candidates like Nikki Haley and Mike Pence saying if we want to keep these programs solvent, we do have to change the structure of them, potentially make the benefits less generous whether that's by means testing or by raising the retirement age. President Obama was interested in some sort of grand bargain akin to the Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill days back in the '80s where the Democrats and Republicans would try to agree on some combination of tax increases and benefit cuts that never came together because of the red lines on both sides. This administration has not shown any interest in anything of the sort. I think Joe Biden is a much more traditional Democrat in that sense, and just knowing how popular these programs are, sees that as a major plank in his reelection platform.

Arun Venugopal: I'm curious how much of a lesson is there to be learned from the politics around US Senator Rick Scott and his proposed and then I think I guess withdrawn proposals to issue cuts to Social Security and Medicare, which the Democrats really went to town on gleefully. How much do you think that portends what's going to happen in the presidential campaign?

Molly Ball: Well, what's interesting to me is that this isn't only going to be a fight between Democrats and Republicans in the presidential campaign. It's going to be an issue in the Republican primary. We've seen candidate former President Donald Trump attacking some of his Republican rivals for their proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare along very similar lines to how they're being attacked by the President and the Democrats. I think that this was a big part of Trump's appeal when he first ran in 2016 virtually alone among the Republican candidates. He positioned himself as a strong supporter of these programs, and primary voters across the board, particularly Republican primary voters, tend to skew older, tend to be disproportionately beneficiaries of these programs, and that was a message that won then candidate Trump a lot of support, and now we're seeing him attack his fellow Republicans.

Rick Scott and his proposal to sunset all federal programs, which originally would've included Medicare and Social Security, he's now clarified or modified to say they're not in there. I think if it wasn't him, it would've been something else because there have been many Republicans and even some Democrats that have proposed versions of so-called entitlement reform over the years. He just happened to be the nearest piñata when the President needed to take a whack at someone, but as we're seeing now out on the trail, there is no lack of politicians who have entertained these kind of proposals, and it's going to be, I think, a big issue in the 2024 campaign.

Arun Venugopal: Let's move on to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy who gave some notice last week in the New York Times and elsewhere for an overseas trip that included a visit to Ukraine, was also in Washington as the Democrat on stage at the Annual Gridiron Dinner, and that renewed speculation that he might be thinking about a presidential run. He was asked about this on Face the Nation, and this is what he said.

Governor Phil Murphy: I am 1000% behind President Biden, and I haven't really looked beyond that. I'm certain he's going to run. He deserves to run. He's earned that right. I think he's had a great run here, and I'm going to be 1000% behind him.

Arun Venugopal: Molly, what is your takeaway from this? Should we be thinking more about a potential Phil Murphy run, or are people really locking step behind President Biden in case he does run again for 2024?

Molly Ball: Well, so far, we are not seeing any willingness to challenge President Biden in a Democratic primary among prominent Democratic office holders, and that includes Governor Murphy, but it does highlight the extent to which Biden and and his reelection run have frozen the field and how many ambitious office holders there are deeper down on that Democratic bench. I don't think Governor Murphy would be the first name on the tip of a lot of Democrats' tongues if something were to happen, if President Biden were to decide not to run for reelection. I think there are other recently elected Democratic governors like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, Wes Moore in Maryland who are probably higher on that list of perceived Democratic rising stars, as well as the enormous bench of senators and others who sought the presidency in 2020, but people like Governor Murphy, people like Governor Pritzker in Illinois are also in the mix, and I think Governor Newsom in California.

If it were the case that we didn't have an incumbent in the field, it would be a real free for all on the Democratic side, similar to what we saw four years ago, but all the signs so far point to that not happening.

Arun Venugopal: I'm curious. A few years ago you heard a lot more noise from the left, people who were challenging President Biden, I don't hear as much now, but I'm curious about your take, should we expect more of a challenge from people of Progressives?

Molly Ball: Again, so far, we are not seeing it. We're not seeing any inclination by Senator Bernie Sanders who has been the most prominent champion of the left to get back in the ring, and part of it is the fact that I think a lot of Progressives may have liked to see the President do more in various ways, but they're broadly satisfied with a lot of things that this administration has done. Not everything, of course, and there are always those who would like to see the President go further, but there I think is also a recognition that Joe Biden won the Democratic primary in 2020 by positioning himself in the center, not only in the center in of the electorate, but in the center of the Democratic Party. That centrist appeal combined with the way that primary calendar has been changed to favor him means that it would be very difficult to mount any campaign from the left against an incumbent Democratic president.

Arun Venugopal: We heard Phil Murphy at the Gridiron Dinner. Also at that dinner, which is not recorded, the former Vice President Mike Pence representing Republicans, and while it's usually about telling jokes about yourself and the other party, he got serious for a minute and called out the former president by name, quoted saying "history will hold him accountable for January 6th". Molly, how surprising was that to you?

Molly Ball: Very surprising. He's had a couple of years to make this kind of a statement, and so for it to come out now and in, as you say, a non-traditional forum in front of an audience of Washington insiders, it'll be interesting to see whether he decides to amplify that kind of a statement out on the campaign trail. It also invites, I think, a fair number of criticisms and questions based on the fact that Pence is currently fighting a subpoena to testify against former President Trump. I think him saying something like this really raises the question like, well, if history is going to hold him accountable, why don't you help? I think that's a legitimate question, even if he or his lawyers might say there are more procedural or technical issues behind his objection to that subpoena. Pence has done a lot of campaign-type things. We know he's ambitious and is interested in a run for president, but statements like these are a very interesting prepositioning of where he would try to fit into that potential 2024 field.

Arun Venugopal: As you pointed out, it took him a couple years to make these statements, and setting aside the 2024 presidential run, how much of this do you see as a sense that with people like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis challenging former President Trump, the many possible indictments on the horizon, how much do you see this as a potential blood in the water moment?

Molly Ball: I think that's a good way of putting it, but it's also the case that this campaign isn't going to fully engage for another month or two. It has gotten off to a bit of a slow start so far, and we know that Governor DeSantis, if he decides to run, is not likely to do so until late spring, early summer, after the Florida legislature concludes. We have this latent competition that's going on where not-quite candidates are throwing not-quite jabs at each other and positioning themselves, but the campaign's not going to fully engage until some of these candidates actually get in the race and actually start facing each other, and once those debates start, which I believe is supposed to be in August, we'll really start to see the contrasts and the battle lines drawn,but so far, they're just circling each other. I think your metaphor blood in the water, those sharks circling around is an apt one.

Arun Venugopal: We'll leave it there for today. My guest has been Molly Ball, National Political Correspondent for TIME and the author of Pelosi. Molly, thank you.

Molly Ball: Thanks so much .

 

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