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Senate Votes To Avert Government Shutdown; Two Dead, Dozens Injured In Car Attack On German Christmas Market. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired December 21, 2024 - 00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[00:00:00]

KARA SWISHER, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Say, congratulations, Mr. President. And in other cases, it's a little much. And in the case of Jeff Bezos, that's certainly true because he also owns the Washington Post.

And so he's a little, you know, it's a different relationship. But he wants space contracts. He's competing with Elon Musk. I don't think he liked Elon showing up and sort of interrupting the dinner last night. But he couldn't have been surprised because Elon is the guest that never leaves Mar-a-Lago.

LAURA COATES; CNN ANCHOR: Really quick, speaking of the Washington Post, anything you want to confirm, deny? Are you going to have a new title?

SWISHER: I said the quote on the record. I said the quote on the record. I think it could have a better ownership structure. And I have some ideas, that's all. And my whole idea is like, why does it have to be these billionaires, you know. They don't know how to run anything better than many people like myself and others.

So, I just think it's interesting to start to discuss whether this is the right owner for the Washington Post. And I have some ideas. And there's no -- and I know some rich people. So we'll see.

COATES: I love a good Kara Swisher idea. Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

SWISHER: Thank you.

COATES: Well, at any moment, we're expecting a vote in the Senate to pass a bill to stop a government shutdown that was set to start right now, midnight.

Now, technically, that deadline has already passed, But the Senate is expected to approve it. And once it does, the bill will go to President Biden's desk for his signature. Now, that would mark the end of a wild couple of days that after Donald Trump and Elon Musk killed a bipartisan agreement to fund the government.

This new bill strips out many of the provisions that were in that initial deal. But it's also missing something that Trump wanted very important to him, a suspension of the debt ceiling.

Now, he demanded Republicans include that in any deal, even threatening primaries for lawmakers who did not play ball. But most of the GOP went against him in this final bill. CNN's Lauren Fox is on Capitol Hill. Lauren, another late night vote. How close is the Senate to approving this deal, even post deadline?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they are very close. Look, lawmakers are remaining on the floor. You have senators who are largely sitting in their desks waiting for their names to be called so that these votes can move as expeditiously as possible.

Let me just set the stage for you. They are basically on vote five to get to vote seven, which is the one we are watching really closely. That spending bill we expect to pass in the next several minutes, perhaps in the next, within the next hour. But, you know, there are a lot of variables still. It depends on how long senators want to debate that bill. Obviously, we're watching very closely there. But this all really could have been avoided. This was something that lawmakers knew was coming for the last several months.

In fact, the negotiations over that package that they unveiled on Tuesday night, that had taken months to get Republicans and Democrats on the same page. Obviously, that deal was nixed by Donald Trump and Elon Musk. That really threw the House of Representatives into chaos, especially Speaker Mike Johnson, who really felt like he needed to find a way forward that was different than that Tuesday night bill.

But I'll tell you that a lot of relationships were damaged over the course of the last 24 hours, because suddenly a negotiation that everyone thought was the last negotiation of the Biden administration became clearly a negotiation that may represent the dynamics of the first negotiation in the next Trump administration. And I think that dynamic was something that maybe caught both Republicans and Democrats off guard.

But that meant that Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, felt that he needed to stick to that original agreement. And last night, Democrats were not cooperating on that bill that House Republicans put on the floor. They let it go down. They also let -- they also watched as more than 30 Republicans voted against that proposal. Now, we are in a position that has all been resolved. But it was a really rocky 36, 48 hours, Laura.

COATES: And this is before the next Congress comes in, you know, later, less than a month away, frankly, and a new inauguration a little more than a month away. What is all that we're seeing right now signal to you about how that next Congress, even in light of a Republican trifecta here in Washington, D.C. going.

FOX: Yes, I mean, just think about the timeline tonight. So the House of Representatives voted this evening, early evening. They were really wrapped up around 7, 7:30. And I was spending a lot of time in the United States Senate where Republicans that I was talking to were sort of signaling like this is the beginning of what could be a really tough season of getting legislation through. I was talking to Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is a Republican, someone

who sometimes votes with Democrats. And I asked her, you know, what does this foretell about the next several months?

[00:05:00]

What does this mean for your efforts on tax reform, your efforts on immigration, your efforts to even just pass another spending bill in just three months? And she said one word came to mind and that was interesting. And she said that was probably the most polite way that you could really phrase it at this point because everyone is bracing themselves if you had forgotten. The reality is that sometimes Donald Trump thinks that one idea works in one moment and then thinks another idea might work better in another moment. And that makes things on Capitol Hill, in the words of Lisa Murkowski, interesting.

COATES: How is Trump feeling about all this interesting activity?

FOX: Yes. I talked to one lawmaker who spoke to Donald Trump about just a few minutes before the House began their vote this evening. And it became clear in the course of that conversation, the lawmaker said that Trump was very disappointed, very upset about the fact that the debt ceiling, something that he injected as a 11th hour negotiating tactic, that wasn't included, that had been something that Donald Trump thought was really important.

He wanted to clear the deck in his presidency. But, you know, a lot of Republicans I talked to said they probably could have gotten that done if it had been communicated earlier to them, that had been a key priority. Instead, over the course of the last several hours and days, Donald Trump was convinced by lawmakers and close advisers that if a government shutdown happened, and what we saw last night was more than 30 Republicans not willing to go along with that debt ceiling gamble, that Donald Trump potentially could be blamed for it and that this would be really difficult to get out of because going into a shutdown is one thing. Getting out of a shutdown is another thing.

And there was a scenario where you could be staring down Donald Trump's inauguration where lawmakers still had not found a way out of a government shutdown. And that obviously would set up a dynamic for Donald Trump in the first days of his presidency that would be extremely complicated and really historic.

COATES: Unbelievably so. Lauren Fox, thank you. Stick with us, please. Joining me now, CNN political commentators, Republican strategist Kristen Soltis Anderson, Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, and former deputy assistant press secretary to President George W. Bush, Pete Seat. Glad to have all of you here.

Let's begin with you, Pete, because I read this really interesting piece from the Washington -- the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board calling this budget fight a fiasco. What is the lesson here for Republicans?

PETE SEAT, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT PRESS SECRETARY TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The lesson is that Congress, the C in Congress, stands for chaos. We have literally watched this movie before nearly every holiday season. It is something you can guarantee, just like watching the Grinch or, you know, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, we're going to watch the House and the Senate prolong spending bills, passing CRs on the floor.

It's another chapter in the martyrdom of Congress where, you know, we stayed so late. We were there till 1:00 a.m. you knew when the funding deadline was boys and girls, and you created this deadline. You allowed it to go this long. No one has sympathy for Congress in this moment.

But the lesson to your question directly, Laura, the lesson for Republicans, and I have been preaching this message since the election, you can call the mandate whatever you want. You can say it was sweeping, it was a landslide. It really wasn't.

What this is, there are small margins in both the Senate and the House, and obviously we don't have those very small margins at this moment. But if they're struggling now, just wait until we get to January 3rd and then January 20th, when a couple of members leave the House to enter the Trump administration and a member of Congress from my home state of Indiana, Victoria Sparks, may not even vote at all. I think at that point, Republicans will be down to a one seat majority and getting things through is going to be very difficult.

COATES: We'll see if that C in Congress really does stand for that chaos as you described. Maria, let me bring you in. Speaker Johnson, he understandably, given what we're talking about, he had to get Democrats on board. He had to turn to them to get this thing passed. There was a bipartisan deal on the table earlier this week. Should Democrats have voted no for that?

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, this is -- I think what this comes down to is that Democrats are the ones who are willing to compromise, are the ones who are willing to negotiate. And Speaker Johnson knew that, which is why he came to Democrats initially to try to get this done without the chaos that erupted as soon as Elon Musk and Donald Trump realized what was happening and I guess wanted to put their finger on whatever scale, for whatever reason. And I do think it's because of chaos. And then they blew everything up.

[00:10:04]

I mean, let's remember, Laura, we didn't really expect to be here right now at this moment in time. And look, during this election, Democrats warned that this is exactly what we would get under a Trump administration. We would get chaos. We would get the clown car. The clown car of chaos, I think, is what we should call it.

But I don't think that any of us expected to see it this soon. And, you know, weren't really talking about the CR. We weren't really talking about the possibility of a government shutdown. We knew this deadline was looming.

But to your point, everything was on track for there to be a negotiated bipartisan solution with a continuing resolution to fund the government that included a lot of things that both parties wanted and not everything that either party wanted. That's how negotiations work.

And so you know that Speaker Johnson, when he saw Elon Musk's tweet, was probably thinking to himself, what the f just happened? He was with him. He was with Trump earlier. Right. And you can't tell me that this did not come up.

And so I think at the end of the day, what this is proving to the American people is that under Donald Trump, with Elon Musk whispering in his ear as the puppet master that he proved himself to be this week, the American people are going to get chaos. They are going to get a clown car.

When, in fact, what I believe the majority of them voted for was somebody who promised to lower grocery prices, lower inflation, work on housing prices. And he, Donald Trump, is doing none of that. He is listening to his billionaires, his oligarchs, who are now his advisors, and he is going to turn his administration into an administration of who can cause the most dumpster fire chaos. And that is not what the American people voted for.

So I think Democrats have a real opportunity here from a messaging standpoint to underscore yet again that Republicans under Trump have no interest and really are kind of clueless on how to really govern here with a spine and with the guts to actually do what's right for the American people.

COATES: Well, Kristen, let me bring you in here, because Donald Trump isn't even in office yet. I mean, he's been in office before, as you well know, but you have the Republican spending hawks that have defied him already on his debt ceiling demand. I wonder. We've heard clown car chaos. We've heard about puppet masters and beyond. Is this a preview of what's to come?

KRISTEN SOLTIS ANDERSON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, Donald Trump wants to send a message during this pre inauguration phase that I am the captain now, so to speak, I'm the one in charge. And so you've seen a lot of these moments where to now use another movie metaphor because it's late. Why not?

COATES: And it's Laura Coates. I love these movie metaphors.

ANDERSON: He is like a raptor testing the fences. Right. He nominated Matt Gaetz and discovered, oh, fences electrified. Don't touch that one. Swapped him out for Pam Bondi. But he may find with some of his other nominees, Republicans are saying, you know what, OK, I can let that one through on this debt ceiling. Tried touch the fence. Turned out that was electrified. Turned out there are a couple dozen House Republicans that aren't too big a fan of the idea and pushed back against it.

And so I think you are finding Donald Trump testing the limits of what is possible and where is he going to face pushback. And he's doing it now in this moment when he's actually not the president. He's not actually the one in the White House at the moment. Just trying to get a sense of what will the four years be like, how much leeway will I have?

COATES: Well, that's probably the same set of questions that somebody, Pete, like Speaker Johnson is actually asking himself tonight. And I spoke with Congressman Corey Mills earlier tonight and he talked about the prospects of Speaker Johnson being vulnerable when his own fences are being tested. Listen to what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CORY MILLS (R-FL): Well, I was actually part of the Trump administration in his first term and I've supported the president. I'll always continue to support the president's agenda. I want it to succeed. But we can make things successful in a very physically responsible way.

I think that Johnson should be concerned. He's losing a lot of the confidence of his own conference when he would rather try and make a deal across the aisle than actually rally his own conference.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COATES: Pete, when you hear that and obviously look at the numbers any speaker is going to have to incorporate and get some buy in from the Democrats. But what's your take tonight, knowing what has transpired and the potential vulnerability of someone like Speaker Johnson?

[00:15:05]

SEAT: Yes. Well, if we're doing references tonight, I think of Chevy Chase playing. I think it was Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live. You know, I didn't know there was going to be math. And that's the reality is the numbers are the margins, and Mike Johnson has to be worried about those.

But he is living. There's the art of ambition and there's the despair of reality. And the reality is when you have those tight margins, you're going to have to work across the aisle. So one of the questions that Mike Johnson has probably asked himself and wondered what the answer is why is it when 12 appropriations bills passed committee in the House, five passed the floor, why is it that the Democrat controlled United States Senate didn't pass any of them? They sat on them five appropriations bills.

Now, I wish it was all 12. It wasn't, but that's a decent batting average for Congress. But the Democrat Senate did nothing. They sat on their hands. So if folks want to work together, Maria was talking about, you know, a bipartisan deal being hatched. There's some bipartisanship that could have happened along the way.

I do want to make one more point to what Maria said. There was a lot to unpack there, but I'll just make one more point. Is this whole idea of Elon Musk being the puppeteer. It wasn't that long ago that Donald Trump was a fascist dictator, and now he's Kermit the Frog being controlled by Jim Henson. Which one is it? Democrats lost for a lot of reasons, but one of them is because messaging for them is squirrel. It's -- whatever it is, they can grab ahold of that day. They grab ahold of today. It's puppetry. Come January 21st, I'm sure they'll be back to dictator.

COATES: Well, we can all agree it's not easy being green. Just ask Kermit the Frog. Stand by, everyone. I had to do it. Couldn't help it. Up next, Democrats calling tonight's vote a win against Donald Trump. So what's their plan for the next time? And they're will be next time this fight comes up. Congressman James Clyburn joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:21:42]

COATES: Breaking News. The Senate set to vote at any moment on a bill to keep the government open minutes after the midnight deadline passed, doing a few minutes of debate before commencing the vote, which is exposed expected to pass.

Meanwhile, House Democrats claiming they are the real victors in the funding fight. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declaring as much after the measure to raise the debt limit was dropped from the bill.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D) HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: House Democrats have successfully stopped the billionaire boys club which wanted a $4 trillion blank check.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COATES: Joining me now, Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn from South Carolina. Congressman, good to have you on after all of the emotional rollercoaster of yet another discussion of whether the government would shut down. But Democrats are bailing out Republicans again. Was that the right thing to do? What do Democrats get out of that?

REP. JIM CLYBURN (D-SC): Well, thank you very much for having me. It is what the American people get out of this and that's what this is all about. Yes, Democrats have time and time again. The record is very clear. For years we have been the ones bailing out these MAGA Republicans and their sympathizers every year when it comes to putting the funding bill together, they seem not to be able to do it.

And as you know this today were able to do it simply because we stayed focused on the things that are best for the American people. And that's why we refused on yesterday to capitulate and to award President-Elect Trump with raising the debt limit to give him trillions of dollars to have another tax break for his billionaire friends. We were not going to do that. We did not do that. And the American people are better off today because we held the line.

COATES: You know, there is a lot of conversation, Congressman, about who had the most influence on the Republican side about what was going to be in the package and what was not going to be a part of the bill. Elon Musk not elected, but has been heavily involved, it seems, in the negotiations. Would you be willing to talk with him? Are Democrats looking to talk to him? Is he somebody that you all view as influential enough to enter into negotiations, or should he be left out of this completely?

CLYBURN: Well, you know, we Democrats are basically traditionalists. We want to do things the way the American people expect for them to be done. And that's why we have elections to elect people to represent. We have a representative democracy. That's what a republic is to the republic for which it stands.

[00:25:04]

That is what we are about. Elon Musk has not been elected to anything, and therefore he should not be in these discussions. And we have seen with his tweeting that when he puts himself into the discussions, calamity breaks out. And that's what happened here. If he stayed out of this on yesterday, it would have been done, and the American people should have started the holiday season on a much better note. But we finally got it done, and I would hope that he would stay in his lane.

COATES: You know, Axios is reporting, Congressman, that Congressman Jeffries is privately floating killing the debt ceiling forever at some point next year. If so, how would Jefferies justify that after criticizing Trump for wanting to do the same thing?

CLYBURN: Well, because Jeffries has been a part of a discussion that's been going on for a long time. I've been in the Congress 32 years. And for the entire time, you will see the records clear. I have argued against having the debt limit. I don't think it should be in the law at all. We need to get rid of it. I've been saying that for 30 years now. And I am glad to know that Leader Jeffries is of the same mindset.

COATES: Of course, Republicans would counter that point quite quickly and suggest that just gives a blank check to having debt forever in the future. What's your response?

CLYBURN: My response is we keep raising it. Every time we bump up to it, we raised it. So what's the difference? I don't think that we ought to worry about that. We ought to be the kind of stewards that would protect the American people. And there are sometimes. My dad used to tell me all the time, son, keep your credit clean. This country runs on credit.

So long as we are responsible and make sure that we fund the government in such a way that we can keep our critic triple A, then we're OK.

COATES: Well, speaking of someone who seems to be keeping, I guess, their nose clean in all this, we haven't heard much from President Biden. He has not been publicly involved with the negotiations. Is it happening behind the scenes? Is his absence creating a power vacuum of sorts in Washington in favor of the president elect?

CLYBURN: Once again, President Biden is a traditionalist. He knows that all money bills begin in the House of Representatives. He has respected that. And that's why he's been so successful legislatively. When people said he couldn't do this, that or the other, he's done all of them. And he's done them with the kind of plum that you expect from someone who respects the process.

So he respects this process. He has his staff working with the people on the House side and hopefully on the Senate side as well. And they are doing good work. He kept himself out of these discussions because he does not belong in them. These are discussions that are handled by what we call the four corners. We have the leader, the two leaders on the Senate side, the two leaders on the House side. Those four people are the people who put these things together.

And that's what happened. And we had a good bill that was put together by these four people. Then all of a sudden, 100 tweets come in from an unelected billionaire who was fined with the government bailing out his business. When Tesla was about to go under, he went to Barack Obama and he was saved by the Democratic president and it was fine for him.

But now he doesn't want to fund cancer research for little children that will tell the American people all they need to know about his mindset.

COATES: Congressman James Clyburn, thank you so much for joining us this evening.

CLYBURN: Thank you very much for having me.

COATES: As you're hearing in the background by the names being called, the Senate is now voting to avert a government shutdown. Let's go to CNN's Lauren Fox who is on Capitol Hill. Lauren, the Senate is finally getting there. What's going on?

FOX: Yes, just a little bit too late for that 12 o'clock deadline. But the Office of Management and Budget did alert that they have ceased preparations for a shutdown. Obviously, they are tuning in. They know what's going on the Senate floor. Senators well on their way to passing this government funding bill after what has been a whirlwind at 36 hours.

[00:30:03]

Obviously, lawmakers unveiled a deal earlier this week. That negotiation took months to finalize. Everyone thought that this was going to be pretty smooth sailing. Perhaps lawmakers would even get out of town the day before this deadline. Then what you saw was Donald Trump, Elon Musk saying that they wanted in the 11th hour a debt ceiling increase attached to this negotiation. Democrats were furious. They argued that this was really reneging on a deal that they had already set forth with Speaker Mike Johnson.

And that was a really a turning point for Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, who has had a very close and trusting relationship with Speaker Mike Johnson. Just remember, it was only a few months ago that Democrats saved Mike Johnson and his speaker's gavel after all of that transpired, though, lawmakers in the House today came together to find a way forward on what was sort of a scaled back spending package that includes more than $100 billion in disaster aid, $10 billion in assistance to farmers, and a government funding bill that will go until March 14th.

What you're seeing on the floor right now is senators finishing up these votes. Just -- this is also the last vote series of this Congress. That means saying goodbye to your colleagues who might be retiring, your colleagues who may not have won reelection. This is a moment for lawmakers to just kind of take in what has been a really ambitious last few months.

And obviously this turned out to be a negotiation that was kind of the first of Donald Trump's second term that came a little sooner than some lawmakers had expected. But I think this finally did come together. Kind of one of those jet fuel miracles on Capitol Hill. But it was a very rocky road to get here, Laura.

COATAES: Indeed, in little more than a month's time. It's a brand new Washington with a new presidential administration, one that we've seen before, but perhaps in a different light. But it's also a time when there will be a fight for who will be the speaker of the House. What are you hearing about the prospects of Speaker Johnson being able to hold on to that gavel?

FOX: Yes, Laura, when we started this week, you know, I had been talking to a lot of Republicans about Speaker Johnson's future. And so many of them were really confident about the fact that January 3rd was not really going to be that eventful, that this was going to be a really easy road for Speaker Johnson. You know, behind closed doors, there had been a vote where he had broad support of his Republican conference because there was this feeling that Donald Trump was really behind Mike Johnson.

Obviously, the last 48 hours have really led some Republicans to question some of the decisions he made, question whether or not he's up for this job, question what his relationship with Donald Trump is. Obviously, Donald Trump did not come out against this bill that the House voted on, but we know from our reporting that he wasn't happy that the debt ceiling wasn't included in this package.

So that leaves a lot of question marks, because Mike Johnson does not have room for air when it comes to this speaker's race. He can only afford to lose just a few number of votes. And obviously, Laura, that makes this a really complicated negotiation for him to get that speaker's gavel on January 3rd. It really does.

As one lawmaker I was talking to earlier said to me, it really does empower any one House member to be king for a day when it comes to Capitol Hill, because anybody can really make this a very difficult process for Johnson, make this a very difficult process for Donald Trump.

I do think that if you're Donald Trump, you probably don't want to go into Inauguration Day still contending with a speaker's race. We saw last time Republicans ousted a House Speaker, it took them three weeks to find another one. And, you know, one thing that Mike Johnson has sort of been joking about is it's not easy to get 218 votes. And it's not really clear who else could do it at this point. COATES: Certainly. And there's even been talk, we've heard from Hakeem Jeffries, who has said this is really a victory for Democrats. What are you hearing behind the scenes? Are Democrats believing this to be their victory? Are Republicans angered by that? Is this political spin? What's going on?

FOX: Well, I think Democrats needed to sort of start setting the terms of what negotiations with them are going to look like under the next Trump administration. They couldn't have a scenario where at the last minute, Donald Trump injected himself, Elon Musk injected himself into these negotiations, and they just went along with whatever they put forward.

There were a lot of reasons why Democrats didn't want to vote for a debt ceiling increase right now. What you heard from Leader Jeffries was that they didn't want to make it easier for Republicans to pass their tax reform bill. The other reason is because in a debt ceiling negotiation, it's an opportunity for Democrats to have a little bit of leverage.

[00:35:00]

You saw yesterday that there were more than 30 Republicans who were willing to defy Donald Trump, someone that they believe in, someone that they admire, someone that they want to support. Because the debt ceiling is just one of those issues that some conservatives are not going to cross for anyone, including Donald Trump.

Well, that means that Democrats are going to need to provide some votes in order to increase the debt ceiling, likely in the new year. And if that is the case, then that becomes a leverage point for them when they don't have the majority in the Senate, in the House or in the White House.

So I think for Democrats, this was a political move as much as it was just an important moment for them to set the terms of how these negotiations are going to go. You can't change your mind is the argument that Hakeem Jeffries has been making at the last minute when we already had an agreement.

COATES: And we're watching right now on the floor. And this is clearly after midnight now, the vote just a few minutes away from being complete. They are voting to avert the shutdown after this deadline has passed. You see, in clear contrast to how it was just a little more than an hour ago, where everyone was milling on the floor. They were still there. They were told by speaker, I mean, by the majority leader, Schumer, to remain in their seats to facilitate this multiple, I think, seven rounds to get to this particular point in time.

We could have been here earlier in the week, of course, and yet here we are with the intervention, so to speak, of tweets from people like Elon Musk, who some believe may have an outsized influence in Washington, D.C. The Senate is voting to avert the shutdown after that deadline is passed, we'll stay tuned to the final vote that is tallied and what the numbers bring us. With me now, presidential historian Douglas Brinkley and CNN senior

political analyst and senior editor for the Atlantic, Ron Brownstein here as well.

Let me get with you, Ron, on this. Because Trump demanded a vote on the debt ceiling and a block of Republicans said no. Do these defections mean that Trump might not have the stronghold or the mandate that he believes he does have?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think overall, I think if you look at the overall situation, Trump is clearly in a stronger position going in 2025 than he was in 2017. The Republican leadership is much more deferential to him. He has a much more favorable Supreme Court. We see evidence that elements of the media may not be as aggressive in covering him as did the first time.

The one thing that is tighter, the shoe that is tighter is that he had 241 House Republicans in 2017, and he has 219 to 217, depending on exactly when people are leaving this time. What was revealing here was that the criticism and the defection came from the right. And I think that is likely to be the only source of restraint on him out of this Republican Congress.

The conservatives in the House who don't think he's going far enough in upending the federal government. To Lauren's point, really important, the debt ceiling suspension ends on January 1st. The treasury can maneuver around that for a while, but they are going to need Democratic votes eventually. The last time Republicans had unified control with Trump in the White House, 67 --

COATES: Oh wait, standby please. I want to listen in. They're having a vote right now. Let's hear the tally.

UNIDENIFIED MALE: The bill is passed.

COATES: It has officially been passed --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Under the previous order the Senate will resume executive session to consider the following nominations and block calendar numbers 851853 --

COATES: They have right now. Doug, let me go to you now as Speaker Johnson was saying tonight that he spoke to Trump and to Elon Musk about the negotiations. Has there been ever been anything like this duo going to Washington, D.C. and having a result like we've seen?

DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: You know, it kind of reminds me of 1995, '96, when Bill Clinton got entangled in a spending bill and you had Newt Gingrich kind of overplay his hand. And that went up for 16 days, that particular shutdown.

But this, what we're seeing here's a miraculous kind of win for the Democrats this week. Win, because the Democrats since the election, Harris losing, have been divided. They can't unify. They're not even sure if the Democratic Party will go to Trump's inaugural or not. I mean, they don't know what to do. And out of nowhere now, due to Elon Musk and Trump overplaying their hands, the Republicans heading in here are getting a black eye for I think what they've try to pull off this week. They're showing chaos, confusion. And it's -- the big thing is Hakeem Jeffries has come out as a -- with an upward arrow.

[00:40:00]

And it reminds Democrats it's don't throw in the towel. Trump's not invincible, that he's going to need Democratic votes to get anything done. Congress is the purse strings of the nation.

COATES: Doug, on that point to follow up, I mean, just thinking about history as a guide, having the Washington, D.C. political trifecta is not always what it's cracked up to be with margins this low. Right?

BRINKLEY: Well, exactly. And that's the big point. And there's not a big surprise going on right now. I saw on CNN earlier this week David Axelrod offering commentary about Rahm Emanuel saying nothing gets people's attention more than the smell of jet fumes on the runway. Meaning all of these senators went out of Washington right now. They want to go home for the holidays.

The winners right now are the people of this very hard year that had to deal with hurricanes and flooding and wildfires and they need billions of dollars. And you know, people that are our veterans or armed forces, people that need cancer funding or, you know, sickle cell anemia funding, whatever the case may be, if somebody was going to get blamed for this.

And Biden, President Biden, I think very shrewdly stepped back and let the Republicans have their own war this week. And now the story is, as you rightly pointing out, can Speaker Johnson weather this? Can he hang on there? And now suddenly you're seeing Republicans for, I really think for the first time since the election, stumbling very badly. And Elon Musk is the one who did the tripwire.

COATES: We will see how it all plays out. At least tonight the government remains open. Ron Brownstein, Douglas Brinkley, so great to have both of you on tonight. Thank you. And thank you all for watching. CNN's live coverage continues with Zane Asher right after a quick break.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN Breaking News.

ZAIN ASHER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, hello and welcome to all of our viewers watching here in the U.S. and around the world. I'm Zain Asher for you in New York.

I want to start in Washington where just after the deadline, 40 minutes or so after the deadline, in fact, after days and days of a lot of chaos, lawmakers have indeed averted a crisis. U.S. federal government is now avoiding a shutdown after a stopgap funding bill was just passed in the Senate by a vote of 85 to 11. The House of Representative passed it earlier. We know that the

president Biden does have to sign it before it formally goes into law. Now, the called Plan C extends government funding into March. It's only for a few months. It includes disaster relief and farming provisions, but it does not include a debt limit suspension.

That was a key Donald Trump demand. That piece was stripped after a bipartisan revolt on Thursday. Apparently frustrated yet resigned, Donald Trump told one lawmaker that he was disappointed the deal couldn't include a debt ceiling hike. And a source is saying that Trump now realizes that there are some issues that conservatives will not budge on, even for him.

Let's bring in Ron Brownstein. He's a CNN senior political analyst and a senior editor at the Atlantic. Ron, always good to see you, my friend. So just talk to our international viewers about what happens next. I mean, obviously, President Biden does have to sign it into law. And even though it was after the deadline and technically funding has lapsed it's such a short period of time that it doesn't actually matter because nobody is going to feel the effects of the shutdown. Just take us through that.

BROWNSTEIN: Right. The government is going to stay open. You know, it's not unusual, especially in the last 20 years, for Congress to kind of revert back to the least possible thing they can do to avert full scale disaster and then find the will to pass that sort of like what Churchill said, you know, the U.S. always does the right thing after it's exhausted all the other options.

And this was an example. I mean, I think the lesson has really taken in both parties that you don't win by government shutdowns. You can't really advance policy goals and not a lever that you can use to try to force concessions from the other side. And ultimately, despite all the chaos that Trump and Musk introduced into the process, that was still the controlling dynamic that led to this agreement.

ASHER: Yes, and I do want to talk about Donald Trump in all of this. Obviously he didn't get the key thing, the one thing that he wanted in all of this. But, you know, just talk us through who wins in this bill. Some people are saying this is a win for the Democrats. Your thoughts?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, it is a win for the Democrats in the sense that it preserves what may be their one real point of leverage in the opening months of the Trump presidency, which is that he will now have to raise the debt ceiling.

The last time Congress dealt with the debt ceiling dealing was in 2023, and they did what is called a suspension, where they just put it in abeyance until January 1, 2025. Now treasury has what are the creative measures that allow them to go past that date.

But at some point, presumably in the spring, Donald Trump is going to have to raise the debt ceiling. And one thing we know again this week is that there are a number of conservative Republicans, especially in the House, who will not raise the debt ceil any circumstances. In fact, when Republicans had unified control and Donald Trump was

president in 2018, there were 67 House Republicans and 16 Senate Republicans who voted against raising the debt ceiling.

[00:50:05]

What does all that mean? That means that Republicans in a few months will either have to get Democratic votes to raise the debt ceiling or risk the country going into default, which could have catastrophic impact on the economy.

In the past, Democrats have been willing to give their vote to raise the debt ceiling without much on the other side. But I'm guessing that history is over after watching the way Republicans used it against Obama and Biden and what Democrats achieved, if anything. Obviously they avoided a government shutdown, but they kept this point of leverage that will be available at some point in a few months. John Thune and Mike Johnson are probably going to need Democratic votes to raise the debt ceiling, almost certainly. And that will give Democrats an opportunity to ask for something. We don't know what yet in return.

ASHER: And leading up into this point, we really got a close up view of the limits of Donald Trump's power and influence in Washington. Some lawmakers saying, listen, we love Donald Trump, but we're not going to budge on this one, even for him. Ron Brownstein, we have to leave it there matter time. Thank you so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

BROWNSTEIN: Thanks for having me.

ASHER: All right. Of course. All right. Still to come, a deadly attack on a Christmas market in Germany. We'll have details for you just ahead.

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ASHER: I want to turn out to the other breaking news story we're following here. Officials are working to learn a little bit more about the deadly attack on a crowded Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany. You know that two people were killed, 68 injured when a car drove through a crowd.

Officials say the driver was a 50-year-old man who was from Saudi Arabia and he has apparently been a permanent resident of Germany for about 20 years.

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TAMARA ZIESCHANG, INTERIOR MINISTER, SAXOMY-ANHALT STATE (through translator): As far as we know now there have been two fatalities and a large number of injuries. The perpetrator has been arrested. He is a 50-year-old man from Saudi Arabia who entered the Federal Republic of Germany for the first time in 2006. He had a settlement permit and thus a permanent residence and has been working as a doctor in Bernberg. According to our current knowledge, he acted as a lone offender. There is no information about other perpetrators.

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ASHER: All right, thanks for watching. I'm Zain Asher. I'll be back with more news after this short break.

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