“Cape Up” is Jonathan’s weekly podcast talking to key figures behind the news and our culture. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and anywhere else you listen to podcasts.
The day before President Trump’s rambling Rose Garden remarks announcing a national emergency on our southern border, I sat down with Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.). All that was needed was for Congress to vote on the budget deal to avert another government shutdown and send the legislation to Trump’s desk for his signature. And Bass was clear-eyed about what Trump’s theater was masking.
Bass’s first visit to the podcast came just months after Trump’s inauguration in 2017. A time when the Los Angeles Democrat said her town halls had turned her into a “political therapist.” That all changed, Bass said, when she put anxiety into action.
So I asked Bass, who was part of a small CBC delegation that met with the president in March 2017, how successful the caucus could be in thwarting him and achieving its goals with Trump in the White House. “With 55 people and the amount of power that we have on a committee and subcommittee level, it’s all very doable,” she said. CBC members now chair the committees on homeland security, financial services, oversight and reform, education and labor, and science, space and technology.
Listen to the podcast to hear Bass talk more about Trump, the Democratic Party and her thoughts on the freshman House member everyone can’t seem to stop talking about: “AOC,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).