After being forced into submission by people like Donald Trump and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., one would think Speaker Kevin McCarthy would have downgraded his own self-assessment as a master negotiator. But no, ever since he finally secured his seat after 15 humiliating rounds of his own caucus voting against him, McCarthy has forged ahead with what he clearly thinks is a genius plan to trick President Joe Biden into destroying Social Security and Medicare for him: Mobster tactics.
As I explained in the Standing Room Only newsletter, McCarthy's strategy seems to be to threaten to force the U.S. into debt default and simply let Biden intuit the ransom McCarthy would like paid, i.e. the destruction of Social Security and Medicare. That McCarthy really thought this would work suggests that he is not faking his very public admiration for Trump, who loves to use insinuation to communicate his desires that, usually for legal liability reasons, he can't speak out loud. McCarthy, not known to anyone to be a bright man, appears to have really thought he could somehow trick Biden into not just decimating these long-standing health care and retirement programs, but that he could do so in a way to force Democrats to take the fall.
