Catharsis Day
Breaking down the Iran address, the DHS deal, and everything Trump has named after himself
Today is catharsis day. The way the presidency has collapsed into one man has been piling up on us, and we needed to get some of the bees out of our mouths.
We start with the DHS shutdown — 45 days of hell for TSA agents and travelers, only to land right back where Democrats offered to start. Then we turn to the president’s prime-time address on Iran, an 18-minute scripted speech in which he used some version of “never before” or “nobody’s ever seen” twelve times and offered zero concrete objectives for a war that is now 32 days old. He told us earlier in the day that the speech would be about how great he is. He was right.
From there, we talk about what’s hitting people at home — gas over $4 nationally, raspberries as the canary in the coal mine for grocery prices, and a Forbes breakdown showing the president added $1.4 billion to his personal fortune this year by leveraging the office while his actual business lost $1.3 billion. We walk through the truly staggering list of things he’s named after himself and land on the East Wing case, where a federal judge — the Honorable Richard J. Leon — delivered an opinion so exasperated it included exclamation points.
Outside of politics, we settle a critical question: is a long weekend better when it starts on Friday or ends on Monday? (It’s Friday. Obviously.)
We’ll miss you in real time next week as we’re out with our families for Spring Break, but there will be brand new episodes for you on Tuesday and Friday and on Substack. Have the best weekend available to you. - Beth
Topics Discussed
The DHS Funding Standoff: Right Back Where We Started
Donald Trump’s Primetime Speech on Iran
The Corruption Is the Point: Coins, Pardons, and a $1.4B Year
Outside of Politics: The Best Long Weekend Setup
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Episode Resources
Join us in Minneapolis for our live show this August! Tickets are on sale now!
Trump’s White House ballroom project halted by judge (Axios)
CBS News price tracker shows how much food, gas, utility and housing costs are rising (CBS News)
Raspberries Are the Canary in the Coal Mine on Prices (CBS News Boston)
DOJ Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations to Prioritize Immigration (ProPublica)
Artemis II Launches — First Crewed Lunar Mission in 50 Years (NASA)
Actual Clips from Donald Trump
Episode Transcript
Sarah [00:00:29] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:32] This is Beth Silvers. You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today is catharsis day, okay? The way the presidency has just collapsed into one man has been piling up on us. And today we’re just going to get some of the bees out of our mouths. We’ll talk about the prime time address on Iran. We’ll talk about the prices and the coin and the East wing and the $1.4 billion increase in Donald Trump’s net worth over this last year. And then we will take a big exhale together Outside of Politics as we prepare for our spring break with an important listener submitted question. Is a long weekend better when it starts on a Friday or ends on a Monday.
Sarah [00:01:13] Before we get started, let’s talk about Minneapolis. We are having our one and only live event there on August 29th. And you should come to see the show, to hang out with listeners, but you should also just go to Minneapolis because it’s great. I was just working on our itinerary from our summer trip to Minnesota last year when I stumbled upon this truly adorable Minneapolis tradition that I think reflects the character of this great city you should come hang out with us in. Every year, hundreds of people in Minneapolis walk silently through the streets, looking at the windows of the houses because it is called the cat tour. The residents put their cats in the window and the crowds stop to admire the cats. This is the kind of place Minneapolis is. Do you understand what I’m saying? Like, we should all go hang out there. We should have us some Jucy Lucys. We should go eat ice cream. We’re going to play some Mahjong along with everything else in the middle of the Spice Conference. And then we’re going to have a really fun live show in a really great city. So you should join us on August 29th. Tickets are on sale now, including virtual tickets. Grab them through the link in the show notes.
Beth [00:02:30] Everything is Trump everywhere all the time.
Sarah [00:02:41] You know what perpetuates the sense that he’s everywhere all the time, Beth? The fact that he keeps naming all the shit after himself. New York Times had a great little Instagram carousel of everything he’s named after himself, and it made me want to commit violence.
Beth [00:02:58] It’s an extremely long list. And it is even more frustrating to see that list when you realize it’s not like he’s just occupied by naming things after himself. There’s still like a whole world happening around him where he is actively making life harder. So let’s start there with the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, which has just been ridiculously difficult to get through because of the way that Donald Trump inserts himself, but not in a helpful way, only in a way that makes an obstacle to progress. So a while ago, for a long time, Democrats have been saying, we’re happy to fund everything in this department except ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. And Trump has said, that’s ridiculous. Mike Johnson has said what a joke. Except that now that’s basically what they’re going to end up doing. They’re just going to fund everything except ICE, and Custom, and Border patrol.
Sarah [00:03:55] Yeah, the Democrats were like this is what we’re up for like 45 days ago before we were all waiting in five-hour lines at TSA. And then they said, absolutely not, that’s ridiculous. We’re not going to do anything. He said that. We’re not going to do anything until y’all pass the Save America Act. Then the Senate was like, okay, we’ll do everything but DHS. This was not even that long ago. This was like five days ago. And the House was like absolutely not. This is outrageous. This is a joke. We’re not going to do this. And now they’re doing it. You guys, I don’t know if they are perhaps correctly assessing that all of our attention is so obliterated that people can’t put together a basic timeline of events, but I think they’re overplaying their hand here. I think people can put together that we’re right back where we started after 45 days of hell. Particularly for TSA agents and anybody else flying through an American airport, only for you to agree to the same things. Now, the bad news is the Democrats have not extracted any agreements as far as reforming the ICE agent behavior as not wearing the masks, getting warrants, all this stuff. But they’re still in a better negotiating position, especially as a minority party in both houses than they have been. They’re going to have to try to get this through in reconciliation and get the Senate parliamentarian to agree that procedures around ICE relate to the budget. Good luck, boys. Good luck.
Beth [00:05:31] It’s so silly for anybody to describe this as some great victory or defeat. Like this has just been a loss to the American public and the American economy. That’s all it’s been. We are right back where we started 45 days ago. And now we have to figure out where to go. They’re probably going to try to do some reconciliation bill. But in the vein of good luck, boys, right now they’re saying that bill is somewhere between 45 billion and 75 billion dollars. Well, that’s the range. That’s quite a range. And some of them want it to just be about funding ICE and CBP for the next three years so that Democrats can never touch those agencies, which also, that’s silly. Congress can always go back and look at its work and change something from the past. It’s all so silly. It’s so depressing. Every statement that I have read about this, I’m just like, you are not serious people. Where are the serious people?
Sarah [00:06:30] And I just feel like this is the consistent theme with his approach to Congress, his approach to the tariffs, his approach to this war. I was attempting to listen to his remarks to the American public last night about the war in Iran. And it’s just the same. Everything bad in the world is everyone else’s fault. And I am the genius who has come and fixed everything and been completely consistent the whole time, even though I’m telling you that it’s about to wrap up. Oh, and also we’re going to bomb them into the stone ages. It just happens over and over and over again, and I have to believe in my heart and as reflected in public polling that people just speak Trump at this point. The part of your brain that can go, oh, he’s just bloviating about Democrats are the cause of all problems. I’m the source of all solutions. Ignore what you see right in front of your face. All that matters is that I whip up this reality right in front of you, even if that reality is different tomorrow. And I tell you to believe something completely different tomorrow-- or forget tomorrow. How about just like six to eight hours from now?
Beth [00:08:02] Well, he told us that the speech was going to be how great he is. I mean, he literally said that earlier in the day. Tonight, I’m making a little speech at nine o’clock and basically I’m going to tell everybody how great I am. That’s a direct quote from him before he gave the speech.
Sarah [00:08:16] Oh my God!
Clip: Donald Trump [00:08:19] And tonight I’m making a little speech at nine o’clock and basically I’m going to tell everybody how great I am. What a great job I’ve done. What a phenomenal job. What a phenomena job I have done.
Beth [00:08:34] And then he gave the speech and that is what it was. He 12 times said that something had never been done before. Nobody’s ever seen it before. Everything is unprecedented. We have heard that for 10 years now. I don’t know if he walks through the world just doe-eyed, like he genuinely believes everything is new and exciting, or if that’s just his advertising speak coming through. But it hits differently when you’re putting gas in your car and you can see that gas is over $4, over $5 a gallon in parts of the United States. And it hits different when your loved one is being deployed. The reality of this war has settled in fast and it hasn’t even settled all the way in. And for him to come out and address the nation-- interrupting Survivor, by the way, to do it-- and to tell us nothing. To continue to speak in three to four week timeframes and the new regime of unnamed people are less radical, but if they happen to not be, then we’re just going to erase their whole country. I mean, it’s disgraceful.
Sarah [00:09:50] It’s disgraceful. And he brought up Venezuela, which I hope is a moment everybody remembers the Monroe Doctrine. Remember that, Beth? Remember the Monroe doctrine? We’re going to focus on the Western hemisphere, the national security strategy from last November. Not that long ago mentions the Middle East, only to say that former administration’s focus on the region was no longer necessary because America had a net energy exporter. So it’s all whim. There’s no plan. And there’s lots of things he’s doing for the first time, but they are all in service of his ego. None of them have anything to do with any sort of big strategy or plan to improve the lived existences of the American people.
Beth [00:10:34] In an 18-minute scripted speech, he could not stick to one rationale for the war. He told us we’re just there to help. We don’t really need anything from Iran. Iran’s not really a threat to us, but also they’re a grave threat to use and we’ve stamped it out and this will make your children and their grandchildren safer in the future. I mean, it’s just all over the place. All over place in one 18-minutes scripted speech.
Sarah [00:11:00] Well, and it’s even bubbling up like Axios has all this reporting from anonymous Trump officials that they don’t really know what he wants. And because there was that great Yuval Levin interview with Ezra Klein where he talked about most administrations, the work of the federal bureaucracy through the executive branch is to gather information, to gather research and then present options to the President of the United States. You can’t do that with this one. It’s the opposite. Everybody follows his whims. We are all at his whim. That’s it. And so, of course, they’re frustrated. Of course, they don’t know what to do next because he’s changing his mind. He’s saying something different, particularly with this war every five minutes. He wants to create reality and he has not accepted the reality of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz or the gas prices, much less the rising inflation. Much less the deficit. I’m so glad he’s getting richer by the day and they’re asking for more and more money as our country grows broke. And I’m a Democrat. This is not a thing I usually bitch about, but it’s out of control. You have the head of the Federal Reserve going like this is not sustainable. Our level of spending is not sustainable. This is not going to work. And he’s just sending us all beautiful drawings of his presidential library (using that word very loosely) and his gold coin and his ballroom, and it is just getting truly absurd.
Beth [00:12:48] To your point that he hasn’t accepted reality. I think the most fundamental reality that he doesn’t accept related to this war is the reality of the Iranian people. I don’t think he accepts as every military expert who talks about the war says, Iran gets a vote. And I just don’t thing he accepts that. And when he talks about bombing them back to the stone ages, as he’s talked about bombing their oil fields, bombing their infrastructure, bombing desalination plants where people get their drinking water. I just don’t think he has accepted that this is happening in a real space. I think it looks and feels to him like a video game on his screen. And that’s been the White House communication strategy. I think all of that comes, as you said, straight from the top, straight from his whims. I don’t think he can process a world as real and visceral and concrete and lasting as a war zone.
Sarah [00:13:45] Well, it’s not just the communication strategy, it is the briefing strategy. They give him, according to multiple reports, cute little reels of all the bombings. That’s how they’re briefing the President of the United States on a war that is entering its second month. Showing him videos of all of the stuff we’re blowing up. It’s outrageous. And then when a journalist confronts him with the reality that some of the stuff we’re blowing up mistakenly is school children, he’s like, I don’t know anything about that. As if that’s an excuse from the most powerful person on planet earth. I don’t know? Well, that’s your problem, not ours.
Beth [00:14:23] And I don’t think he can know because to know would be to accept that there are real kids who are dead because of his decision making. In this speech, he talked about being at Dover as dead soldiers have been brought home from the Middle East. And he said...
Clip: Donald Trump [00:14:40] Twice this past month, I’ve traveled to Dover Air Force Base, and it’s been something. I wanted to be with those heroes as they return to American soil, and I was with them and their families, their parents, their wives, their husbands. We salute them, and now we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives and every single one of the people. Their loved ones said, please, sir, please finish the job. Every one of them.
Beth [00:15:12] And my heart sank when I heard him say that. I just was trying to imagine how that lands, if you’re the families of those soldiers. That’s really been something. And then he just uses them as props. Every single person has said, finish the job, sir. I don’t believe that, one. And two, I don’t understand what he thinks the job is. The whole speech was supposed to communicate to us what the job and I still don’t know.
Sarah [00:15:39] I do think that with regards to the war because it is framed to him through a lens of pure military objectives, we wanted to obliterate their Navy. We wanted obliterated their air capacity. And I think that many of the military objectives have been met. They have bombed a lot of things. They have done a lot damage. And so you can hear him go back to that over and over again. You can hear that they are clearly presenting this part of the military strategy as successful, which I think it’s mostly has been. They have done a lot of damage to Iran’s military capacity. No doubt about that. And because that’s what’s presented to him, you can hear him instinctually like reactively go back to that and ignore the complicating factor of the Strait of Hormuz. Well, Europe’s going to help us open it. Well, you’re on your own to get your own ships through there. We don’t really need that oil, even though has no one said, like, you’re right. We don’t, but the price is set globally. So if other people are suffering, then we are too. Forget the fact that the Houthis are now threatening additional 20% of the global energy supply that flows through that particular area of the world, through the Red Sea. You can tell no one’s giving him any of the hard complications here. They’re just telling him what he wants to hear. They’re presenting the successes, and it’s maddening. I think one of the most interesting and what I can describe as ahistorical is the way the American people have not like gone on this, okay, we’ll wrap ourselves in the flag and we’ll support these military objectives while they’re happening. Like, that has never been true in my lifetime. In my lifetime, no matter how problematic the military campaign was, the American People got on board. Not this time. Not this time.
Beth [00:17:40] And I think we’ve done a mature advancement here because what I hear people saying is I don’t support this because I care about the troops. I support the individuals who go make these sacrifices, but I don’t want them to have to sacrifice for this. And that’s, I think, a really healthy place for us to be as a populace. If we can express that through our legislators as we’re supposed to be able to do and effect change, how great. If I were briefing the president today I would take him a piece from CBS News that explains that raspberries are the canary in the coal mine on prices. The price of raspberries is increasing and grocery stores are trying to absorb some of that right now. They’re not even passing the full cost along to consumers. But this piece is a great job from people who have worked in groceries for a long time saying if the price of oil is high, the price if everything is high. And you first see it in the perimeter of the grocery store, foods that have to be shipped quickly, refrigerated and sold quickly, those prices are going to go up first and raspberries are doing it right now. And we can’t keep fruits and vegetables at the low prices that they are for us much longer. If the price of oil stays high, these are going to get really, really high. The interior of the grocery store, those prices will escalate more slowly, but they’ll escalate too. And for this president who ran on explicitly lowering your grocery prices, I think somebody needs to give him this message.
Sarah [00:19:12] To me, again, the macro of all of this is the biggest, loudest narratives combined. And I know you don’t love the shorthand, but I really think it’s good, which is there is chaos that everybody is witnessing all the time around the world that is now really coming home in a way and not just through prices, but you have this chaos. You have the cost that people increasingly cannot avoid. Gas prices, exactly what you’re talking about, like grocery store prices. And then you have the other biggest stories, which is the corruption. You have the ballroom. You have the gold coin. You have fact that he’s going to sign the currency for the first-- all these like the first American president... It’s like over and over again. The first American president to prioritize his ego by showing up at the Supreme Court, by putting his name on the currency, by making an actual coin that’s all about him putting his face on the National Park Pass next to George Washington while building a big old ballroom and putting out visions of this literal gold statue of himself at his presidential library. Like, what? I think the reason that the bees are coming out of my mouth is I’ve just always been a president person. Who doesn’t love the presidency and the stories and the history and the humanness and the humanity of it all and of all of them. And his first term, for better or for worse, we thought he was strutting norms, but when it came to the most, in my mind, some of the most important ones around the office held. And this time he is just breaking through all of them in this way. I think that’s why the No Kings protest hits. It’s just he cannot stop himself from telling us in every way possible, I’m the king of America. This is the United States of Trump.
Clip: Donald Trump [00:21:32] On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem as crowds welcomed him with praise, honoring him as king. They call me king now. Do you believe it? No king. I’m such a king, I can’t get a ballroom approved. Pretty amazing, man. I’m a king. If I was a king, we’d be doing a lot more. I’m doing a lot, but I could be doing a lot more if I was the king.
Beth [00:21:58] I think there have been three statements from him this week that really reveal where his thinking is right now. One of them is saying that speech he was going to go out and tell everybody how great he is because that’s exactly what the speech was. Another one from that same set of remarks about childcare and he said...
Clip: Donald Trump [00:22:21] Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare. That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of a daycare; we’re a big country. We have 50 states, we have all these other people, we are fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up for... But it’s not possible for us to take care of daycare. Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it in a federal. We have to take care of one thing, military protection. We have the guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place, you have to let states take care of them, Russell, and you have to do it.
Beth [00:23:12] I think that clip shows that he has reconceptualized his role as being mostly as commander in chief, which is very different than what he told America he was going to do. And the third one relates to this library because it’s a library, right? They’re trying to take advantage of all of the financial things attached to a presidential library. But he said...
Clip: Donald Trump [00:23:39] I don’t believe in building libraries or museums. It’s really like the Barack Hussein Obama one in Chicago in not a good location. And it’s a very unattractive building that’s seriously late and seriously over budget. I think you’re going to see a great one here. And it’ll go up on time, on budget. Best location in Miami. They say it’s the best block in Miami and the state work with us there. It’s going to be most likely a hotel you know this concept could be office but it’s most likely going to be a hotel with a beautiful building underneath and a 747 air force one in the lobby which is going to be a trick.
Beth [00:24:20] And I think those three quotes together tell us exactly what this is.
Sarah [00:24:26] It’s this weird amalgamation of his life experience. We’re getting to the point now where he is stacking up more of his live around politics than business. So you’re getting this sense that like-- It’s like I think of Maggie Haberman saying it all the time, his most successful business venture was taking over the Republican Party. Because he could never stack up enough successes. His businesses would go bankrupt, the stakes, the university, even the licensing and the like the building, he was kind of a mess at that from the very beginning, like all of this. And so you can almost like see this new neural pathway forming in real time. And just the overwhelming corruption. He is fleecing all of us. Like the part of the library, let’s ignore the fact that how convenient that they’re all coming out saying, I think I’m going to ignore the federal law requiring presidential records to be turned over. I think it’s unconstitutional.
[00:25:47] So it’s definitely not going to be some sort of place of study of the Trump years. They don’t want that because God knows what we would find. God knows what Jared Kushner’s saying in these negotiations about the business opportunities on the other end of these ceasefires. God, I cannot imagine. And even this, again, the little bit we can see now, the little we can see now. For example, they formed a non-profit called the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Fund Inc. It was created on December 20th, 2024, and was the recipient of the legal settlements, AKA shakedowns from like ABC, Metta, Paramount, X, to the tune of $63 million, okay? So basically a legalized bribery, he put it all in the library fund. But then in May of last year, they created a second non-profit, the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation Inc. And the first entity was dissolved. I wonder what happened to the $63 million that went into the first one. It’s just a shakedown. It’s shell companies using the traditional federally protected nonprofit structure given to ex-president to take as much money as possible. I mean, how else do we explain his personal wealth increasing by almost $2 billion in one year?
Beth [00:27:23] Well, the wealth increase of $1.4 billion over this past year absolutely illustrates the point that he is not a successful business person because the business component, Trump media and technology group, lost $1,300,000,000 last year. The money has been made on leveraging the presidency for profit, as Forbes put it very succinctly. The money has been made on the cryptocurrency, on the meme coins, on all of these places where people can just hand over money to him expecting him to use his power to benefit them.
Sarah [00:28:08] Which has worked. People get pardons. People get regulations relaxed. The nursing home guy made a big old donation and then what do you know? All the nursing home regulations about staffing requirements disappeared. Wow, that’s incredible. Not to mention there’s like a whole cottage industry of paying for pardons now. Lobbyists and lawyers and the fees that they extract in order to get it in front of the president so that you can get your pardon. It is just, mmm. And don’t forget, did you see the ProPublica piece about how the Justice Department has basically let like 23,000 criminal investigations lapse because of the redirection of resources to immigration? Like, how convenient? Beth, even if that was it, even if it was just the corruption, but he can’t stop himself, he then has to like rub it in everybody’s faces by building a big old ballroom and putting his face on a gold coin and putting his face and name on everything. Again, putting out a picture of a 40-foot gold statue, like he doesn’t even have the good sense to hide it.
Beth [00:29:18] We are all suffering from his mortality crisis. That to me is what the naming is about, the buildings, the statues. He has come to terms with the fact that he’s not going to live forever and is trying to live forever in every way that he possibly can. The most cathartic thing that I did this week was read the opinion of the judge in the East Wing case.
Sarah [00:29:39] I need to read it.
Beth [00:29:41] The honorable Richard J. Leon speaks for us all in this case. I have never in my life seen so many exclamation points in an opinion. This judge has had it. And this judge has had this case for a while. There have been motions before this one. This isn’t brand new. But he opens his first sentence as “The President of the United States is the steward of the White House for future generations of first families. He is not, however, the owner!” That’s not how judges write. You can tell that this judge has heard enough. He writes, “No statute comes close to giving the president the authority he claims to have.” That’s a good summary for this entire first year of his second term. He thinks he owns everything. Everything is his. He can do whatever he wants with it. And so he’s selling all of it.
Sarah [00:30:28] Well, the reason this whole episode came from the ballroom because I was about to lose it. First of all, the White House part, literally I’m going to cry. This is how I feel about this. Like the White house part was bad enough to tear down this building that does not belong to you that belongs to all of us was such an ego-driven heinous act. That was bad enough. The way the plans ignored the way the building communicated a balance of power. This stuff is important. I know esthetics are easy to roll our eyes at, but to our conversation yesterday on Spicy Live about embodiment and about the connection between the way we move around spaces and cities and our bodies and the fact that that matters to our consciousness and our thoughts, like it matters. When the New York Times put out the piece talking about the truly dumb stuff like the staircase that goes to nowhere, the faux windows that hide bathrooms, the columns that are going to block the view, that’s all bad enough. It’s insulting. It’s insulting to everybody who’s like poured their life into architecture and design. It’s consulting to the history of this building and the carefulness, which with people brought to like the fence. The fence took three years to decide on because this stuff is important. So that’s all bad enough.
[00:32:11] But what really just pushed me over the edge and I understand why this judge had so many damn exclamation points, was the idea that this city, a city I love, that I lived in, that’s designed so that you look from Congress down Pennsylvania Avenue and you see the White House and you that these places are connected and in conversation with each other. That matters, the design, the balance of the circle in front of the White house that mirrors the circle in front the ellipse and the Washington Monument, and the mall, these places that we share, the places that belong to all of us, and you’re going to stick a ballroom in the middle of it, funded privately, it is disgusting. It is just a like psychic pylon of all of this happening during our 250th birthday. All these beautiful things that have stood the test of time, that are a testament to the history and the people who made sacrifices and poured their hearts and minds and creativity into creating a city and a structure of government. And you’re going to stick a ballroom and have a UFC fight on the lawn? God, it just makes me want to come out of my skin. It makes me so mad. Even though this judge has stopped it, and thank God, I’m just so insulted. I’m just so angry that he-- it’s one thing to like put your name up on something that we can just tear it down when you’re gone. But the idea that he would permanently change the flow of this city, our city like it’s just... God, it’s infuriating.
Beth [00:34:05] I’m curious to see how many people have to be this insulted for things to start to matter. I was so angry that he went to the Supreme Court to intimidate the justices with his presence, and then so buoyed by the fact that they were not intimidated by his presence. And I thought, you know what, this might have been one power move too many for them. The way that John Roberts did not acknowledge his presence in the courtroom, I think was really healthy. Probably the first dose of co-equal branches that he’s actually had to sit with. And then in front of the president for the justices to push on the arguments about birthright citizenship to say we may have some new circumstances but it’s the same constitution in front of this president, I think all of that was really healthy. I just think that the East Wing is so symbolic of the way he functions everywhere, sloppy, disrespectful, mine, mine, mine. I’ll do what I want. I slap it together quickly because all I’m really concerned about is the esthetic of it and it matching my personal esthetic, not having any larger symbolic meaning. I just think we might be hitting one too many. I think if nothing else comes of it, I believe the Supreme Court’s opinion on birthright citizenship will be sharper in tone because he walked himself over there to sit in the courtroom and stare at them during the argument. I think this judge stopping the East Wing construction is sharper in tone because he is sick of this way of operating. I hope that moment arrives for Congress, sooner rather than later.
Sarah [00:35:55] The polling supports our instinct that a shift is happening. I know it’s national polling. I know that there are people who truly, as he told us from the beginning, could watch him murder somebody in Times Square and would not cease supporting him. I get it. But the latest polling shows that his net approval has fallen to -23 percentage points. Worse than his previous low of -21 in 2017, and basically about the same as Joe Biden’s after his debate performance. And this was in a quote from The Economist, “When many Americans concluded he was unfit for office.” I think we’re going to see a lot more TikToks and YouTube shorts with him seeming old and erratic and out of touch. I am seeing and hearing more of that bubble up as I do this job, which I think is really interesting. The Sharpie moment really hit when he basically recited a whole negotiation with Sharpie and Sharpie said that never happened. I really think people are looking around and going, uh-uh. And some of that softening has to come from Republicans. Like the numbers don’t add up otherwise. He can’t lose support among Democrats. There’s nothing left to lose. And, yes, a lot of the coalition he built of independents, particularly young people, particularly people of color, that’s gone. So, yeah, a lot of that movement came from independents. But it’s not all coming there. It’s not coming from there. And I think that matters. And I think the midterms and how they shake out is going to matter. And I just think the show is getting old, man. There’s no more plot twists. Like we all get the shtick. You know what is important to remember always? Part of the reason he ran is because they canceled The Apprentice and he was hoping to get a better negotiation deal. Like people were even running out of road with his reality show. That’s how we ended up here. The shtick gets old after a while and I really hope we’re getting there.
Beth [00:38:13] It’s not entertaining and it’s hitting people personally. That’s a recipe for big change. And I think that we’re going to see a big change this year. Well, let’s talk about something positive for a quick second. A little palette cleanser.
Sarah [00:38:29] A little pallet cleanser, that’s right.
Beth [00:38:32] We sent people back to the moon for the first time in 50 years.
Sarah [00:38:36] It’s exciting. Not all the way to the moon. They’re not going to step on the moon; they’re just going to fly around the moon. I watched it with a bunch of kiddos at church while we were waiting to start dinner, just watched the blast off from our phones. It was so special and so fun to watch Artemis 2 take off to space. And so they’ll be up there for 10 days. They are also going on a spring break trip, Beth, just like us. Only they’re going to the moon.
Beth [00:39:05] They are. And I wish them so much safety and fulfillment on their journey. And as the rest of us make our way into spring break, you’re going to tackle a very important question Outside of Politics. Is a long weekend better if it starts on the Friday or ends on a Monday? Sarah, what’s your preference? You want Friday off or Monday off in a long weekend?
Sarah [00:39:37] The question is, what day of the week do I want my children home from school pretty much? That feels like the question before us when you scratch at it.
Beth [00:39:50] I didn’t think about it that way at all. I thought about myself. I didn’t even have to think about this. I was like I want Friday off. Immediate response. I would much rather have Friday off. I like to start on a Monday. I like the energy of a Monday.
Sarah [00:40:03] I do too.
Beth [00:40:04] I definitely don’t want my kids home on a Monday. Absolutely do not want kids here on a Monday. I just think all the way around cleanly, no matter how you look at this, Friday off is superior.
Sarah [00:40:16] I hear you. I agree with everything you just said. But Fridays are my favorite workday because we usually keep a very clean schedule and so it’s my most open day to have the house to myself and really think deeply and work deeply. So I’m loathe to give that up to have children here for a long weekend. Do you see what I’m saying?
Beth [00:40:46] I do. I also find though that if I plan well, it is much easier for me to dig out of the hole created if I’ve missed a Friday than a Monday. If we are not working on Monday and then we get back and look at the rest of our schedule, I am behind all week.
Sarah [00:41:03] That’s true. I love a Monday. It’s like probably my favorite day of the week. I love a Monday morning. So I’m definitely probably on the Friday. And I even think for travel purposes, it’s more fun to kick off the trip earlier on a Friday, get out of town, come back on a Sunday and start your week as opposed to going into Monday. And then it’s like you said, like you’re kind of starting your week at a deficit. Okay. So Friday. The answer is Friday.
Beth [00:41:32] I think you lose something either way if Monday is off, because then you really have two abnormal weeks, because your Friday energy is long weekend, can’t wait for it. So you’re less productive on Friday anyway, or less focused at school, or the whole energy of your house is like, well, we’ve got a long weekend coming up. And then the next week is a short week at work, right? Or a short weekend at school. And so that energy is disrupted. I just think it’s a lot cleaner to have that Friday off, enjoy your long weekend. Get back to it on Monday.
Sarah [00:42:03] Well, we’ve gone back and forth on spring break. We’re like sometimes on spring break, they’ll give us the Friday off and sometimes they won’t. But I have found that even when they don’t, we take it.
Beth [00:42:12] I think that’s true for the whole world.
Sarah [00:42:15] Yeah, it just makes it easier to travel for sure. It helps kind of spread it out. It’s hard to start a trip on a Saturday.
Beth [00:42:21] It is very hard. You just need the Friday off. That’s just the long and short of it. So Friday is fine.
Sarah [00:42:26] I mean, my bigger case here is maybe we just all stop working on Fridays. Maybe that’s the answer.
Beth [00:42:32] Just always four day weeks.
Sarah [00:42:33] Yeah, I think so. I think we’re going to end up there eventually. That’s my prediction. I think we’re heading that way. You know what I’m saying?
Beth [00:42:41] I’m not going to argue about that.
Sarah [00:42:41] Okay.
Beth [00:42:44] Thank you all so much for joining us today. We will be out next week for spring break, but there will be two new episodes in your podcast feed, including Sarah’s conversation with now three time Pantsuit Politics guest, Jason Kander. We should probably send him some kind of jacket.
Sarah [00:42:58] I call him the Steve Martin to our SNL, you know, like the people who host over and over. Isn’t Steve Martin the most like common or like most frequent host of Saturday Night Live? I feel like he is.
Beth [00:43:07] Sarah and Jason Kander will be here with you on Tuesday. We’ll have things going on Substack. We won’t miss a beat and then we’ll all come back together the next week in real time. So until then, have the best weekend available to you.
Show Credits
Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.
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Hahaha I’m so glad you all stuck with “This F***ing Guy” for the title! Cackled yesterday when that came up during the Spicy Live.
But how do they KEEP the cats in the windows?