‘Mad House’ exposes Congressional disfunction, from petty feuds to physical threats

Transcript:

DAVE DAVIES, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Dave Davies. If you follow the news, you know these are strange and turbulent times in Washington, as the Trump administration seeks to shrink and recast the federal government with blinding speed and fury. Trump’s opponents would no doubt like to see Congress assert its authority to stop the dismantling of agencies and programs its past members have authorized. We haven’t seen much of that, but we have seen bills introduced to enable a third Donald Trump term, rename Dulles Airport after him, and carve his image into Mount Rushmore. Whatever happens, our two guests today have the experience, insight and sources to tell the story. Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater are both veteran reporters who cover Washington for The New York Times, and they’ve written a new book about the 118th Congress, the one elected in 2022. It’s a look inside the corridors of power when Democrat Joe Biden was president, dealing with what the authors say was the first MAGA-controlled Congress, one that fully adopted the extremism and stagecraft of Trumpism. There are fascinating accounts of high-stakes negotiations and of House members cursing, insulting and threatening each other, but not a lot of serious legislating. The House passed only 27 bills that became law in its two-year session, the lowest number since the Great Depression.

Before joining The New York Times in 2018, Annie Karni worked at Politico, the New York Daily News and the New York Post. Luke Broadwater worked for nearly a decade at The Baltimore Sun, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for stories about a scandal at the state’s largest hospital system that led to the resignation of Baltimore’s mayor. Karni and Broadwater’s new book is “Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, A Former Used Car Salesman, A Florida Nepo Baby, And A Man With Rats In His Walls Broke Congress.” We recorded our conversation yesterday.

Annie Karni, Luke Broadwater, welcome back to FRESH AIR.

ANNIE KARNI: Thank you so much for having us.

LUKE BROADWATER: Yeah, thank you.

DAVIES: That is a colorful title (laughter). And I thought we would begin with an audio clip of a moment in 2024, which kind of captures some of the craziness of this particular Congress and its breakdown in civility. This was a hearing at the House Oversight Committee, where the ostensible purpose was to consider a motion to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress. Now, the sound we’ll hear – you might have heard it before. It’s a little confusing at moments. We’ll hear eventually from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but it begins when Texas Democrat Jasmine Crockett is criticizing Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Greene makes an insulting comment about Crockett’s eye makeup. Let’s listen.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

JASMINE CROCKETT: Do you know what we’re here for? You know we’re here about AG Garland…

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Just to – a point of order (ph).

CROCKETT: …The president.

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: I don’t think you know what you’re here for.

CROCKETT: Well, you the one talking about – I guess you…

(CROSSTALK)

GREENE: I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.

CROCKETT: No, ain’t nothing…

JAMES COMER: Hold on. Hold on.

CROCKETT: This…

(SOUNDBITE OF GAVEL BANGING)

COMER: Order.

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: I do have a point of order. And I would like to move to take down Miss Greene’s words. That is absolutely unacceptable. How dare you…

COMER: Meeting will suspend. Meeting will suspend.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: …Attack the physical appearance of another person?

GREENE: Are your feelings hurt?

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Move her words down.

GREENE: Aw.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Oh, girl, baby girl…

GREENE: Oh, really?

OCASIO-CORTEZ: …Don’t even play with me.

GREENE: Baby girl? I don’t think so.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: We’re going to – we are going to move, and we’re going to take your words down. Thank you very much (ph).

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: I second that motion.

CROCKETT: I’m just curious. Just to better understand your ruling, if someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities. Correct?

COMER: A what now?

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Chairman…

CROCKETT: I’m trying to find clarification.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: …I make a motion to strike those words.

COMER: I don’t think that’s a…

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Come on (ph).

COMER: …Part of a…

CROCKETT: I’m trying to find clarification on what qualifies…

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Chairman…

COMER: I didn’t…

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: …Motion to strike those words.

COMER: I have no idea what you just said.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: We’re not going to do this. Look. You guys, earlier, literally just…

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Oh, y’all did it first.

CROCKETT: You just voted to do it.

DAVIES: Good times under the Capitol dome.

(LAUGHTER)

BROADWATER: That was an insane night, for sure.

DAVIES: Yeah. Well, so either of you can pick this up, but just tell us a little – give us some context for this and what it tells us about this Congress.

KARNI: Well, first of all, let’s remember this is a hearing that’s happening at night to start with. And why is it happening at night? Because some of the members who are on this committee had spent their workday that day in Manhattan outside of the federal courthouse where Trump was on trial, defending him because a gag order prevented him from speaking for himself. So it’s already a little emotional – like, different vibe when you start a hearing at 8 p.m. Famously, like anything that starts in the evening in Congress, many people are drunk. There is something called the drunk caucus that other members refer to. Leadership is always wary of scheduling votes at night because drinking is a problem.

DAVIES: Sorry to interrupt.

KARNI: Yeah.

DAVIES: But I read this in the book, and I was astonished to read this. Really?

KARNI: Yes. It’s – among people who work in the Capitol and reporters, it’s, like, not a revelation. Everyone just knows this, but it is a revelation to most people who don’t. So anyway, this is starting at night. When you were playing that clip, I just couldn’t help but thinking that everyone is being peak themselves in that moment. Ostensibly, like, who even remembers what this hearing was about? What happens here is that Greene makes what Crockett thinks is a racist attack, kind of making fun of her eyelashes, which Crockett in an interview later told us she’s seen those attacks online. It’s, like, a ghetto girl thing, and Marjorie Taylor Greene was picking up, like, some – a loaded comment to make a comment about her. And all the crazy things that Greene has said during her time in Congress, talking about eyelashes might really not rank up there.

But there is one hard and fast rule that you can’t do face-to-face ad hominem attacks. It’s known as, quote-unquote, “engaging in personalities.” So there’s not a lot of rules in Congress, but you actually can’t engage in personalities, and this was an ad hominem attack. So they go after Greene. And when Jasmine Crockett comes up with her famous-now line, she smartly phrases it as a question. So it’s not actually a direct ad hominem attack at Greene. So they’re all kind of playing a game here.

And one interesting thing is you can hear AOC getting pretty heated here. And in some ways, this was a moment that Greene won. Greene is constantly wanting to engage with AOC. She wants to get into it with the most famous House Democrat. And usually, AOC does not take the bait. But in this clip, you can hear she gets to her. She takes the bait. She gets into a heated back-and-forth with Greene, which is kind of what Greene wants here.

DAVIES: Right – calls her baby girl (laughter).

KARNI: Yeah.

BROADWATER: Yeah. I mean, in some ways, this was the real moment when the Democrats in the House embraced the Republican style of politics. During this Congress, the first Congress controlled by the MAGA movement, pretty much every Republican who got themselves on TV did so by emulating the style of Donald Trump. And Democrats had always believed in Michelle Obama’s axiom, which was when they go low, we go higher. And Jasmine Crockett clearly decided when they go low, we go lower, and we’re going to fight them down in the mud. And, you know, it sort of typified and exemplified everything that this Congress became.

KARNI: Right.

BROADWATER: And that is dysfunctional, ceding power to Trump, really just fighting to fight, to make viral moments.

KARNI: Right. And, you know, whether going lower is an improvement or not is a matter of opinion. Whether this was, like, a great moment for Democrats or not is really a matter of opinion. But usually, when things go viral online, it’s not a great sign for the functionality of Congress. And, you know, in this case, no one even remembered what the hearing was ostensibly about.

DAVIES: You know, it’s interesting because I remember in the book where you describe this shift in strategy by Democrats – we’re not going to sort of stay above the fight. We’re going to engage and give it right back to them. And part of the theory was that Republican members would think about what their future careers will be like if they have embarrassed themselves and adopted things which, you know, defy reality or decorum. Did that strategy work at all?

BROADWATER: Yeah, so I don’t believe (laughter) it has worked. According to the election results, the…

DAVIES: Right.

BROADWATER: It seems that voters actually like the fisticuffs. They like Donald Trump’s brand of politics. Certainly, in these red districts, they like it. And this is a successful way to win primaries on the right, is to be the loudest, the biggest fighter, the most extreme. That gives you a loyal, loving fan base on the right. And so, you know, what we’re seeing now in the Democratic Party is I think there’s a desire among the populace for the Democrats to become more of the party of fighting and not the party that plays by, you know, “Robert’s Rules” and keeps things super professional.

DAVIES: You know, one other thing, that I just – a general observation about the account of this Congress that you provide us is how many times there are physical threats among members, and I mean, in many cases, leaders of Congress – things, you know, say that again, and I’ll kick your you know what, or I’ll drop you.

KARNI: Right.

DAVIES: You both have been around a while. Luke, I know you covered City Hall and the Maryland legislature. You ever seen anything like this?

BROADWATER: Not like this. I mean, the – you’re right. That was a striking revelation as well. We would often go back to people and ask them what happened in this room or that room. And time after time, they would recount how somebody said something to them and they would say, you know, if you do that again, I’ll knock you out or some other sort of threat. And some of these were examples that played out on the House floor, you know, Eric Swalwell and Kevin McCarthy coming up to each other and using the P word, right? You had Tim Burchett and Kevin McCarthy in the hallway. You had…

KARNI: Tim Burchett and Patrick McHenry on the floor. A lot of it is Republican on Republican, not just interparty feuds.

BROADWATER: Yes.

KARNI: Yeah.

BROADWATER: Yeah. Oftentimes, it’s members of, you know, the same caucus even, getting into it with each other. Obviously, we talked about Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene and why they hate each other so much. One thing that I learned in that scene with Jasmine Crockett in the oversight room, is – going back and reporting it later, is that Lauren Boebert is actually the preferred Republican of the Democrats, that they see her as much easier to work with. And actually, she has friendships on the left. When she – when her grandchild was born, Jamie Raskin, of all people, sent her a baby gift that said, I may take a lot of naps, but I’m still woke.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVIES: Reporters are sometimes criticized for revelations in books that people wish they had read in the newspapers. As you did this, did you put some of this stuff in the paper, or did you mostly save it for the book?

KARNI: We did. I think that, along the way, I found reporting the book a great help to my day job writing about Congress for The New York Times. I got a lot of daily stories out of book reporting. But you can also – you’re doing interviews under embargo. So people are willing to tell you things that they wouldn’t tell you for the daily paper when you say this is not for use until March 2025. So I think that criticism, I understand why it’s made, but it’s not really fair. A lot of stuff isn’t available in real time. And I think it’s valuable to have it out eventually for history, for understanding the moment better. But it’s just simply not available to use in real time. So would you rather have it never, or would you rather have it later? And the book is the later. So sometimes we would be able to peel off stuff and ask sources, is it OK if I use this now? But the agreement when you do these interviews is that it’s embargoed for the book, and you can’t really violate that agreement.

DAVIES: We need to take a break here. Let me reintroduce you both. We are speaking with Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater. They are both correspondents for The New York Times. Their new book is “Mad House.” We’ll be back after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF SLOWBERN’S “WHEN WAR WAS KING”)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we’re speaking with Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater. Both are correspondents for The New York Times. Their new book about the 118th Congress, the one elected in 2022, is “Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, A Former Used Car Salesman, A Florida Nepo Baby, And A Man With Rats In His Walls Broke Congress.”

Well, I want to talk about what’s going on these days in the Capitol. I mean, your book deals with the two-year period that ended, I guess, in January. But, boy, a lot’s happening right now. And Democrats are trying to figure out how to deal with Donald Trump, who is riding a wave, and with his team, trying to reshape government in dramatic fashion. And there are real divisions within the Democratic Party on what to do about it, how to handle it. You’ve written about how the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, kind of has a take-it-all-on approach, you know, respond to everything. Whereas Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House, kind of picks his battle. I guess a difference in emphasis. I’m wondering what you are hearing from rank-and-file Democrats in Congress about this debate.

KARNI: Frustration, I think, you know, right now, what’s happening is Chuck Schumer has become the bogeyman of the Democratic Party among rank-and-file House Democrats and among voters for just emotion and frustration at just wanting to do more, wanting to fight back. And this is because last week he voted with Republicans to stave off a government shutdown. If Democrats had not joined Republicans in the Senate, we would be in a government shutdown right now. And Chuck Schumer has been defending this decision for the past week, saying that would’ve been much, much worse – Elon Musk and Donald Trump wanted a shutdown. It would’ve allowed them to decide which programs are essential and not essential and therefore never bring them back. His example that he’s been talking a lot about is SNAP, food stamps. They could just say, during a shutdown, this is not essential. And during a shutdown, there’s no court check, so that could just go away.

So on the merits, there’s a good argument there. It’s understandable why he did what he did. On the politics, there was white hot anger at caving to Donald Trump. One day, he said he was going to stand up and be against it. The next day, he voted for it. So he’s under a lot of pressure right now. I think the issue that’s going on right now is there was not a lot of explaining that a short-term government spending bill in March of 2025 is not the fight. People want to know, what is the fight? Where are we going to have an opportunity to stand up to Republicans? This looked like one of the few times when Democrats had a role to play, and they caved. Chuck Schumer has been hammered by Nancy Pelosi. Jeffries has been not really supportive. He was asked, do you have confidence in Schumer’s leadership, and he said, next question. So it’s – there’s a lot of intensity right now between the House and the Senate. You’ve seen Bernie Sanders and AOC out there doing these huge rallies over the past few days. I mean, they don’t – we’re – it’s not clear yet what Democrats are doing, but there’s obviously such a huge, deep desire to do more than their leaders are currently doing.

BROADWATER: And people feel that Schumer is out of step with the moment. You know, he sat for us for the book, and he told us – these are his words – that once the Republican Party removes the turd of Donald Trump, it will go back to being the old Republican Party. And he described Donald Trump as being sort of an evil sorcerer, in his words, that had sort of cast a spell over Republicans and Republican voters. And what we really discovered reporting this book out is that every member of the House Republicans that we talked to had embraced the MAGA movement and made it their own. It was not solely the function of Donald Trump anymore. And they had taken it in some some instances even further to the right than where Donald Trump is with MAGA. And so, you know, our belief is, having done all these interviews, that MAGA will exist long after Donald Trump leaves the political scene.

DAVIES: Right, and there’s plenty of evidence in stories you tell in the book that if people forget the MAGA base, they will pay for it. And so…

KARNI: Yes.

DAVIES: …It’s not just Donald Trump.

KARNI: Right.

DAVIES: It’s the people who have come to believe…

KARNI: Right. A lot..

DAVIES: …All those tenets of…

KARNI: Another thing that’s…

DAVIES: Yeah.

KARNI: Another thing that’s developed is it’s not just Donald Trump. In fact, there’s a whole right-wing ecosystem that does the work for him of threatening of making you fall in line. He really doesn’t need to anymore, be the one to threaten you with a primary challenge if you don’t vote the way he wants you to vote. There’s Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon and this whole ecosystem that knows the playbook and doesn’t need direction. So it kind of just exists on its own now.

BROADWATER: Yeah, two of the, I guess we could call them characters in the book, were Steve Bannon and Russell Vought, who now are wielding even more influence in the Trump administration. And we document in this book how they were able to sort of dictate how things were happening on Capitol Hill, through their allies in the House Republicans and also through their influence, especially on Bannon’s podcast. He was able to text directly with members and acted, in some cases, like a stage parent, sort of coaching them on how to approach certain situations to get the most MAGA outcome.

DAVIES: You know, people know of Steve Bannon. They may know he has a podcast, but it’s a four-hour daily podcast. Is this right?

KARNI: He’s recording four hours every weekdays and two hours every weekend. And what he’s really doing – his recording studio is in his basement, which is about a stone’s throw from the Capitol, and he allows these far-right members that he agrees with to come on, and he gives them a platform. He – they raise money there. And like, he asks, like, where do you send donations? He prompts them multiple times during interview. He gives them a platform that allows them to circumvent usually how you gain power in Washington, which is through leadership, through, like, the leadership suites and lobbyists and mainstream media. This circumvents that. This is just directly to the base, and he gives them this huge platform. And there’s just this, like, constant stream back and forth between Bannon’s house and, you know, the House floor. They just walk back and forth. He worked a lot closely with Matt Gates on unseating Kevin McCarthy. He was like a strategist and a stage parent. So that is a whole new ecosystem that’s helping the far-right members.

DAVIES: We’re going to take another break here. Let me reintroduce you. We are speaking with Luke Broadwater and Annie Karni. Both are correspondents for The New York Times. Annie Karni covers Congress. Luke Broadwater covers the White House. Both of them were deeply involved in covering the last Congress, and they have a new book about it. It’s called “Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, A Former Used Car Salesman, A Florida Nepo Baby, And A Man With Rats In His Walls Broke Congress.” We’ll be back to talk more after this short break. I’m Dave Davies, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALLEN TOUSSAINT’S “BRIGHT MISSISSIPPI”)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we’re talking about events in Washington and the United States Congress with Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater. Both are correspondents writing frequently about the Trump administration’s aggressive moves to shrink and reshape the federal government and congressional reaction to those moves. Karni and Broadwater have a new book about the previous Congress elected in 2022. It’s called “Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, A Former Used Car Salesman, A Florida Nepo Baby, And A Man With Rats In His Walls Broke Congress.”

You know, Annie Karni, you were saying that – and I think you both mentioned this – that there were cases in the last Congress where there were Republicans who publicly towed the MAGA line and were good soldiers but that privately had serious qualms about it. And I’m wondering if you are hearing privately from Republican members these days whether they’re worried about the cuts that the administration is making through Elon Musk and DOGE and, you know, I don’t know, the effect of tariffs. Are they concerned about what this is going to do to Republicans’ popularity?

KARNI: Yes. I mean, vulnerable Republicans are very scared. Like, our colleague Catie Edmondson did a profile of David Valadao, a very vulnerable member from California who, I mean, a huge percentage of his state is on Medicaid. So this idea, this threat that they’re going to cut Medicaid is very worrisome for some Republicans across the country. And we’ve seen some senators trying to support DOGE in abstract but trying to defend against cuts in their state. So they’re scared because the cuts in their state could lead to them losing their jobs. We’ve also seen senators like Thom Tillis of North Carolina try and find a way not to support some of these most controversial cabinet nominees. Thom Tillis went to great lengths to try and find a way to vote against Pete Hegseth for defense secretary. And ultimately, it was too hard, and he fell in line. Joni Ernst, too, is a – of Iowa, she’s a survivor of sexual assault, has a military background, expressed concerns about Pete Hegseth and the right-wing echo chamber threatened a primary challenge, and she fell in line. So we’ve seen tiny attempts to break with the party line, and those who want a political future who care about getting reelected eventually cave. There’s not a lot of room for that right now, but certainly, vulnerable Republicans are very concerned about potential Medicaid cuts that would be deeply unpopular with their voters.

DAVIES: I’m wondering how they feel about Elon Musk generally. I mean, this, you know, he came in and, you know, got ahold of the payment system in the treasury department and was able to essentially, as he said, it put AID and the wood chipper, the Agency for International Development. How do they view his role?

BROADWATER: I mean, it looks to me like they are embracing Elon Musk and his mission very much so. Each chamber has set up its own DOGE caucus, and they are trying to implement his cuts into their various spending plans. When he comes to Capitol Hill, he gave out his private cellphone number to members. He has tried to court people individually, and, you know, he’s posing for pictures. But Elon Musk, his polling is much lower than Donald Trump’s. The public at large does not feel the same way they feel about Trump as they do with Elon Musk. And Democrats, I believe, are focusing in on him as perhaps their best target. He wasn’t elected. He’s extremely rich. They know that there’s a lot of populist anger against the wealthy. And so if the richest man in the world, who has all these contracts with the federal government, is coming in, slashing the jobs of, you know, regular workers – and there are, you know, federal workers not just in DC, but all over the country – you know, you can see how that could be a potent political weapon for Democrats to wield.

DAVIES: Trump has a big agenda of tax cuts coming apart from all of, you know, all that he’s doing to restructure the government, you know, he wants to make the tax cuts that were made in the last administration permanent, and that’s probably going to have a big impact on the deficit, increasing it. How does that look to play in the Congress?

BROADWATER: I think that that is one of the very salient points that you’ve made. As Elon Musk and DOGE are cutting small agencies and saving pennies on the dollar, the House Republicans are planning to extend these tax cuts, and they’re planning to raise the debt by $4 trillion. And so there’s a bit of discordant notes within the Republican Party about how much they actually care about the debt because the bigger actions they’re taking are going to increase the debt, and, you know, one could see, you know, dismantling the Department of Education and dismantling USAID and laying off probationary workers as, you know, very, very small-dollar figures compared to the amount of debt that they are going to be increasing. And so, you know, I don’t know how Republican voters process that. It seems that many care about the debt when it’s under a Democrat but don’t care when it’s under a Republican. But this Congress is planning to raise the debt significantly.

DAVIES: Let me reintroduce you again. We are speaking with Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater. Both are correspondents for The New York Times. Their new book about the last Congress is titled “Mad House.” We’ll talk more after this short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF THE HORNHEADS’ “ZEETIN Z’BO”)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR, and we’re talking about events in Washington and the Congress with Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater. Both are correspondents for The New York Times. Their new book about the 118th Congress, the one elected in 2022, is called “Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, A Former Used Car Salesman, A Florida Nepo Baby, And A Man With Rats In His Walls Broke Congress.”

One of the reasons that the last Congress that you wrote about was so chaotic was that Republicans had a majority, but a very narrow one. And you had about 20 or so members who simply were going to follow their own dictates and couldn’t be persuaded by Kevin McCarthy or anybody else to do what the leadership wanted. Who were they? What were they after?

KARNI: So, yeah, I mean, that is the basic issue of the last Congress and this Congress is that when you have a tiny majority, any member can throw themselves in the mix and make themselves the deciding vote. And in the last Congress, it gave this group of the 20, who are far-right members, outsized power. And I think that one of the best examples of how further right the House was than the country was, was during those three weeks when they could not elect another speaker. One of the people going for it was Tom Emmer. He’s been in leadership for a long time. He’s from Minnesota. He – at some point, when he was a state legislator, voted for same-sex marriage. When he was up running for speaker of the House, this position was a nonstarter for a lot of these deeply-Christian, red state congressmen who got up and said to him, you don’t need to get right with me. You need to get right with God. And I can’t support you for speaker if you took that vote.

Now, this was, like, remarkable to me, because this is a moment when, like, you can’t get elected president. Like, same-sex marriage is broadly popular with Republicans and Democrats alike across the country. You couldn’t be elected president by being anti same-sex marriage, probably. But in the House, which is pulled right by these small faction, you can’t get elected speaker with that position. These people wielded outsized influence, and they’re socially conservative. They’re fiscally conservative. They’re mostly pro-Trump, and that’s who really kind of decided how the House functioned last year or more likely did not function.

In our book, we document how Mike Johnson plotted his way to the speakership. He likes to say it just sort of landed in his lap, but you don’t become the most powerful person in Congress by accident or by just praying. He was strategizing from January about maybe there’s a path for him, and he and his very canny chief made it happen. But, now, his entire ticket to power is Trump. And he has acted more like a junior member of the White House staff than as a leader of a coequal branch of government because he has no power without Trump. The way he gets his members to fall in line on a bill he needs them to vote for is to say, well, you don’t agree, you’re going to have to call the president.

DAVIES: Right, and he’s done a complete 180 on Ukraine. I mean, one of the…

KARNI: Yes.

DAVIES: …Things that you described is when Biden was still in office, and they wanted to get that military aid package for Ukraine done, that Mike Johnson actually quite skillfully negotiated an arrangement where he could make that happen and…

KARNI: Yes, we wrote a lot about – there was a lot more behind the scenes going on of Johnson working secretly in a very – with the White House to get this done. Like, he can’t…

DAVIES: The Biden White House, right? Yeah.

KARNI: The Biden White House.

DAVIES: Right.

KARNI: Like, he – his chief of staff would meet with a top Biden adviser late at night in a dog park in their neighborhood and trade paper folders because they didn’t want anything in writing. They thought that if these hard-right members got wind of what they were doing, it would fall apart. So he was really working to get this deal done. He had been convinced by the intelligence that if Ukraine did not get financial support, Putin would steamroll across to Poland, and then we would have to get involved in a war. And he made the case, and he did finally bring a funding bill to the floor. At the time, this was seen as fairly remarkable in the same way that Pence – Mike Pence was remarkable in that you’re not really doing anything particularly remarkable. You’re literally doing your job, which was bring a bill to the floor and see if it has the votes to pass. But in a moment with the pressure on him, it seemed like he had actually stood up to the pressure. And, at the time, Marjorie Taylor Greene was threatening to oust him from his job because of this. So he actually did, you know, at the time, make a hard decision, which was, I’m going to potentially risk my job to do what I think is the right thing.

And, now, we saw him at the State of the Union. I actually couldn’t help but knowing from our reporting all that he had done to secure Ukraine funding. When Trump, during his address to the joint session was complaining about Ukraine funding, Johnson was shaking his head on the dias behind him, like, I can’t believe this. Terrible, terrible. And now he – the only way he defends what he did last year is to say, I set the table for Trump to end this war, but it’s a complete 180 to fall in line with Trump’s position.

BROADWATER: And in the book, we take you inside the room for a private one-on-one meeting between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Mike Johnson, as she’s trying to kick him out as speaker and he’s trying to fund Ukraine. And the showdown between these two is pretty incredible. So I would encourage people when they get the book to read that chapter.

KARNI: He says to her, Marjorie, have you ever been to Europe? And she says, no. And he says, have you ever served in the military? And she says, no. And he says, but you expect me to take your word for this over our generals, four-star generals, our guys, Trump guys. And she says, well, the American people know, and you would know if you weren’t such a P word.

DAVIES: Right. The guys are all in a deep state now.

KARNI: Yeah. Just, yeah.

DAVIES: I found this section of the book interesting, where you described so many Republicans who are just leaving Congress, either not running for reelection or in some cases, quitting midterm. Apart from the difficulty of living in a world where if you don’t fall in behind Trump, it’s awful, it just isn’t a great gig, really. Which is surprising, you know, because, I mean, look, this is a dream come true. You’re a member of this body that Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy served in. What…

KARNI: Right.

DAVIES: Why was it a bad thing?

KARNI: I mean, writing this book convinced me that being a member of Congress – maybe being a senator is a nicer gig. You’re not always running for reelection. A lot of them, with their nice six-year terms, actually make a life in Washington and, like, can live with their children and have some semblance of a normal life. But for these House members, it’s a slog. First of all, there’s the travel. I mean, you are back and forth every week. Like, if you live across the country, the jet lag and the travel is just crushing. Then there is, you know, not seeing your family. Like, a lot of people, when they leave, it always sounds like kind of a cop out or not the real reason if you say, like, I want to leave to spend more time with my family. But it’s not actually, like, not a factor.

We talked to one, Brad Wenstrup, who left Congress last term, and he said that, like, his 10-year-old son would tell his wife, like, it feels like dad doesn’t even exist. So that takes a toll.

We talked earlier about the physical violence and the threats has become huge. I mean, that – these members are under constant threats of violence, and they don’t have protection. If they want protection, they have to pay for it themselves from their campaign accounts. Not to mention, then you’re doing all of this traveling and not having a regular family life and being threatened, and then you’re – look at it, and you’re like, for what? When we’re here, the House floor is frozen. We’re not actually voting. We’re sitting and taking 15 rounds. It took a week to elect a speaker. Like, for what? So a lot of people just made the calculation, like, it’s just not worth it anymore. I mean, it’s broken, and I’m killing myself for nothing.

DAVIES: I was also just surprised to read that a lot of members sleep – don’t rent apartments. They actually sleep in their offices and then shower in the members’ gym.

KARNI: Well, that’s, like – I mean, it saves money. The – you know, they don’t – a lot of people can’t have two residences, and the office sleeping is a long time thing. It kind of got less popular during COVID and after the #MeToo movement because it’s an awkward…

DAVIES: Yeah.

KARNI: …Thing to be, like, living in your office and having staffers walk in in the morning and you’re, like, brushing your teeth. But it – people still do it…

BROADWATER: Yeah.

KARNI: …To save money.

BROADWATER: It’s kind of gross, but they…

KARNI: Yeah.

BROADWATER: I mean, they get paid $177,000, which I think to most people sounds like a lot of money. But D.C. – it’s extremely expensive to live in D.C., and then you have a family back home and probably a house or a mortgage, or at least an apartment back home, and so you have two residences, and it becomes kind of untenable for them to do on one salary, unless you’re independently wealthy, which many…

KARNI: Which a lot them are.

BROADWATER: Yeah, a lot of the members of Congress…

KARNI: Right.

BROADWATER: …And a lot of the senators are extremely wealthy. But if you’re somebody like AOC…

KARNI: Right.

BROADWATER: …Or somebody else who comes from…

KARNI: Right.

BROADWATER: …Smaller means, it does become quite difficult.

KARNI: Also, I’ve spent a lot of time with some younger women, female members who, just doing the job, drives home every day for them that this was not created for me. Like, this was a job that was originally created for, like, older, white, wealthy men. It was not – like, I spent some time with Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. She’s from Washington state, so, like, her commute is horrible. She has a toddler. She lives in the woods. Like, every time she’s on that flight back to Washington, leaving her kid, she’s like, this job was not created with me in mind. So that’s another factor of making these jobs just really – it takes a toll.

BROADWATER: Yeah, and if you want to bring it back to current events there, I mean, there’s a bill right now to try to allow women who have recently given birth, right…

KARNI: Right.

BROADWATER: …To be able to vote remotely, which is currently disallowed under the…

KARNI: Right.

BROADWATER: …Current rules of Congress.

DAVIES: That’s a bill that’s under active consideration.

KARNI: They’re trying. There’s a bipartisan group who want maternity and paternity leave for new parents.

DAVIES: Annie Karni, Luke Broadwater, thank you so much for speaking with us.

KARNI: Thank you for having us.

BROADWATER: Yeah, thanks so much.

DAVIES: Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater are Washington correspondents for The New York Times. Their new book is “Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, A Former Used Car Salesman, A Florida Nepo Baby, And A Man With Rats In His Walls Broke Congress.” We recorded our conversation yesterday.

Coming up, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead reviews a newly released recording of Ella Fitzgerald in concert. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MICHAEL NYMAN, WINNIE BOWE, MARIE ANGEL, HILARY SUMMERS, HARRY NICOLL, OMAR EBRAHIM & MICHAEL NYMAN BAND’S “HOW DO I KNOW YOU KNOW?”)