after seeding the fourth of july jamaica to his rivals. donald trump is back in action. this january we re going to win the iowa caucus. does absence makes voters hearts go fonder. and the b word and the boot. after a controversial attack on a fellow member, the freedom caucus votes to oust marjorie taylor greene. they re proving to the country they re destructionist. but no to no labels as the prospect of a third party candidate gets more real by the day. totally understand the frustrations that lead to this kind of discussion. i may have to be choice c. hello an welcome to inside politics sunday , i m abby phillip. the countdown is on. in just 190 days republican voters will cast their very first votes of the 2020 presidential race in the all important iowa caucus now set for january 15th. and it was in the hawkeye state with donald trump finally returned to the campaign trail on friday to rally the state s critical farming community. but his focus was clear. h
of mar-a-lago. but they chose to do that only in recent weeks, which tells us a lot. it tells us they are near a decision to bring possible charges against the former president. obviously, jack smith, the special counsel, works under attorney general merrick garland, who could at the last minute decide to intervene. but what this tells us a lot and the reason why you see the trump lawyers very concerned is that this signals that the special counsel is heading towards an indictment and the question is when that indictment might come, who else might be under it, and certainly the former president should believe that, you know, at this point he has the option to go to the prosecutors and say he wants to speak to the grand jury to present his own evidence and to try to persuade them at the last minute that they should not bring that case. we do not expect that donald trump will do that, jake. no, we don t. katelyn, the special counsel s enlisted a second grand jury, this one in
chris christie on stage. somehow by hook or by crook. thanks, chris. and thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. we start tonight with significant breaking news. the new york times is confirming that mark meadows, donald trump s former chief of staff, has testified to a federal grand jury as part of special counsel jack smith s ongoing investigations into trump s mishanding of classified information and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. this is a major development, and we are going to talk about it in just a minute with representative jamie raskin who served on the january 6th committee, but we start with mar-a-lago. at this point you have probably seen a picture of trump s florida resort. now, mar-a-lago is massive. it sits on about 20 acres of land. it has more than 50 bedrooms, and has all the hallmarks of luxury, all the fancy stuff, italian stone and spanish tile, and lots of marble and gold plated fixtures and expense was rugs and also has a golf cour
stranger city. take a look at this new washington post piece that might blow youmind. what do a democratic socialist and a republican veteran and a lo haired lobbyist from montana have in common? they want the government to relax mind alters substances and that is hardly the stranget bit of news in washington today. ben terrace is here with us now and the author of the big break, at true believers trying to win washington while america loses its mind. ben, it also seems like washington might be losing its mind a little bit too. but this is a interesting piece in a good way because it was about these strange bedfellows, but also about the triumph of real policy over craziness here in this town. yeah. i mean, for a long time nothing has been able to get done at all. you have to have a hostage crisis just to be able to fund or pay bills that we already had to pay. and this is a you know, a piece of legislation that could
information or that information. there are people around him who were a part of that and kind of discouraging that kind of behavior going forward requires these investigations. very interesting. we have with us ben terrace of the washington post. he s got this great new book called the big break, where you look at how washington changed during the trump years and much, much more. one of the segments you write, trump s arrival in washington represented a big break in how the city operated. he surrounded himself with outsiders, power structures reorganized around those who knew him or his family and those who could flatter and influence his base. he changed the way the game was played, only it wasn t actually a game at all. you say trump changed the game. do you think any of his primary rivals, desantis, haley, christie, pence, et cetera, et cetera, do you think any of them have any idea how to play the game as trump does? yeah, i mean, almost definitely not. right? you look at