Angelo Carusone on MSNBC: Trump's critics on the right over Epstein are in a quantum state: “They are still supporting him and yet criticizing him at the same time”
Published
Citation
From the September 8, 2025, edition of MSNBC's The Weeknight
MICHAEL STEELE (CO-HOST): Congress is facing a looming government shutdown with funding set to run out in just ten legislative days unless they pass a new spending deal. And while Republicans control both chambers of Congress, Democrats have some power in the senate where 60 votes are needed to pass a budget bill. But the question is, how will they use that power? Ezra Klein writes in The New York Times that, quote, Democrats will face a choice. Join Republicans to fund the government that President Trump is turning into a tool of authoritarian takeover and vengeance or shut the government down.
Well, let's get into it. Joining us now, Angelo Carusone, chair and president of Media Matters, and Brendan Buck, who served in senior staff roles for two Republican House speakers. He is also an MSNBC political analyst. Welcome, gentlemen.
SYMONE SANDERS TOWNSEND (CO-HOST): Brendan is our resident congressional guru here. A lot of former staffers and a chairman around the table. Okay. I don't always agree with Ezra Klein, but on this, I agree with him. I only agree because Democrats don't have a lot of leverage here.
You know, we sit around tables all the time, and the viewers, they email us, and they're like, you're asking the Democrats to do so much, and the Republicans are in charge. Lay off of them. Fine. But on this, the Democrats can control if they give their votes or not.
Why should they give their votes to a government that is running roughshod over the Constitution?
BRENDAN BUCK (CONTRIBUTOR): Look. If the Democrats want to do it, knock your socks off. My question would be, you go into a government shutdown and then what? Are you going to convince the American public so much that Donald Trump is going to change his ways? How long are you going to be in a government shutdown? What is the plan to get out of the government shutdown? Those are all questions you need to have answers to. I've been through a lot of government shutdowns. They never work out well for the party that triggers the government shutdown.
I've been through two where we we sat there for literally almost a month. Didn't end. We didn't — it didn't end when we got something out of it. Democrats didn't give us something. Obama didn't repeal Obamacare when we shut down the government in 2013. We just — it ended when we got our face kicked in for long enough, and that's what happens every single time. So I don't know exactly what they think they're going to get out of it. You can make the point. If the whole idea is just to make a point, that's fine. Make a point. But just know you're not getting anything out of it, and you're putting a pretty significant cost on the country to make that point by shutting down the government.
SANDERS TOWNSEND: Alicia, I will just say Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office last weekend, and was like, I ain't talking to Democrats. So I think at least you should force the president to speak to you because that's how this works. In what universe am I going to rally my caucus for some votes striking a deal with Johnson, and the president is like, f these Democrats.
BUCK: Nancy Pelosi didn't talk to Donald Trump for, like, a year and a half. That that's just how it how it operated. They can fund the government without talking to Donald Trump. They did it last time. So yeah.
ALICIA MENENDEZ (CO-HOST): The funding of the government is not really what we're talking about. Not at least in sort of the Ezra Klein argument, which I also wanna say in terms of his intellectual honesty. I appreciate that he makes the case for this, and then at the end, it's like, I mean, but I don't really know guys. Like, maybe this is a terrible idea. Because he's not the one who's actually going to have to operationalize, and he's not the one who's going to have to message around. It's easier to write an op-ed about this than it is to actually do it. I think the thing that he is getting right, the piece of it that doesn't speak to everything that you were laying out, which I also think is right, is that it's an an attentional opportunity. It's an attentional event, and we're living in a chaos environment where it is so hard to focus people and get their attention that if Democrats were to have an opportunity, this is most likely it.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): Yeah. I mean, that is it. I mean, the piece really was about how even it was — It was calling for a government shutdown, but it was basically saying is that there are no good options and everything is bleak. And the best option right now is not even about governance and and part of the — but it's actually about Democrats shoring up their base and more importantly, demonstrating that they can do something, that they are willing to act in as an opposition party, which so far, they really haven't been.
And, you know, there are reasons for why they didn't do this action the first time. I'm — I get the challenge here. But the through line of the pieces, essentially they need to win an argument. It's about attention. And what they say what he basically says is that this only really matters is if you recognize this one little bit of power that you have in a moment.
And I think this is the you know, a lot of stuff in the article is important. He pointed out that we're no longer at the phase where we're just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall. We're in the authoritarian consolidation phase, which means that you may not get a second chance as good as this chance right now to make an argument where you can actually achieve some kind of political outcome. So to me, the net effect of all of this is that get out there, do something more than just argue for a few thousand dollars about the ACA and make a larger case that what is happening here right now, and all the polling reflects it, there's something unsettling in the water. And everyone is now afraid to be the first to act.
So now it's the opposition party to demonstrate that, a, they're going to act, and b, that it matters, that they can actually achieve some kind of tangible political consequence. And I think that's what he was arguing for, but there's a real lack of confidence even in his piece. It's basically this is the long shot. It presumes a lot of things about messengers and more importantly, something that I've been hammering about is that Trump has narrative dominance. And even the people that were criticizing him about Epstein are still criticizing him about Epstein are in a quantum state.
They are still supporting him and yet criticizing him at the same time. And this is why it's important for Democrats to win this attention argument because there are people that are willing to make a jump, but you gotta give them something to jump to. And this is kind of one of those moments.
STEELE: I could not agree with that more. Very well stated.