nearly a decade in a russian prison. good morning. and welcome to way too early. on this friday, august 5th. i m jonathan lemire. thanks for being here. news from last night, senator kyrsten sinema has agreed to back democrats reconciliation bill. clearing the way for a vote later this week. her decision comes after days of fellow democrats lobbying her on the deal. in a statement last night, the senator said she would come on board after the carried interest tax provision was removed. lawmakers also agreed to combat droughts that plague her home state of arizona. democrats are now just waiting for the sign-off from the senate parliamentarian. majority leader chuck schumer says the final version of the bill will be introduced on saturday. the senate will take today off before a long day tomorrow a rare saturday. even rarer one in august. there will be up to 20 hours of debate after the first procedural vote. and then comes what is known as a voter-a-ra mr. a where senat
federal employees in a way that would strip a lot of their job protections, allowing the president to fire them at will. and the plan for trump and his allies is to use that to basically purge the civil service of those deemed hostile or disloyal. it is something that other potential 2024 presidential contenders on the republican side have voiced support for, so there is clearly, you know, a lot of support for this in theory on the republican side, and you saw that yesterday in a trump fundraising email that used it to plug trump s quote-unquote drain the swamp slogan. you know, they clearly feel that this is something that resonates with the grass roots, and it is going to work from a fundraising perspective. so they re milking it for political dollars at the moment. so it has been a big week for the big lie, i promise that s not a reference to my book, candidates who support donald trump s false claims of election fraud did well in michigan and did very well in arizona. give us the
best money, lot of money from corporate owners, the president ran on a drain the swamp slogan being concerned. it is a real conflict of interest for those donations. i think that this is just like a campaign in the sense that you have the that there is full disclosure on this for a reason so you know what is happening. i think funding the inaugural committee is a nonpartisan activity that is going back every administration going back through administrations. so this is a time for our tradition. i think a lot of americans, companies, entities are proud to support the inaugural, and i think that you have seen that over time. there are people who really take pride in helping us show the world a peaceful transmission of
million to trump and groups backing him and $57 million to other republicans. well, do the math. that averages out to about $800,000 per donor. here to talk about all of that and other political headlines, ben kemisar, reporter for the hill. let me begin with you, ben. so what essentially happened to the drain the swamp slogan that we heard? was that anything more than just a campaign slogan, do you think? we have to see that certainly headlines like this are not going to help donald trump as we tries to push this message. but frankly, trump did say himself that he could stand out on fifth avenue and shoot people and his supporters would stay with him. frankly, i would imagine his supporters are probably not paying too much attention to this and i think, y kno when you look at the message of drain the swp, i think their hope is that, you know, all of this aside, when he comes into office, he ll be more focused and will be able to deliver on some of the issues like
spent the last year and a half trashing. this has been the struggle between donald trump and the republican base. he does not operate like other republican nominees typically would, looking out for bound ballot candidates as well. in part, that has been because this has always been part of his appeal as a candidate, and it s been interesting in the last few days since he started using this drain the swamp slogan, he talks from the podium and kind of analyzes that slogan. he says at first i didn t like it. he saw how people responded and said he really liked it. it gets back to the core part of what makes donald trump appealing to so many people. one that he s far outside the washington system, and in essence, vote all the bums out. this is something that works very well regardless of what it means for down ballot candidates and after the election. not to mention his running mate is part of that. all right. alice, listen to this. this is new part of a trump ad.