Mara Liasson
Appearances
NPR News Now
NPR News: 12-22-2024 11PM EST
Trump's plans, including tariffs, tax cuts, and deportations, are estimated to add as much as $7 trillion to the national debt, and Trump didn't want the debt ceiling in his way.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 12-22-2024 11PM EST
But even if Trump doesn't care about deficits, there are still about three dozen Republicans in the House that do, and that means Trump may have difficulty convincing Congress to approve all the expensive things he wants to do next year. Mara Liason, NPR News.
NPR News Now
NPR News: 12-22-2024 11PM EST
Before Republicans finally came up with a bill that could pass, 34 Republicans helped defeat the bill Trump wanted, a bill that would have, among other things, raised the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is the amount of money Congress allows the government to borrow to pay for spending Congress has already approved.
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
Some of this is the normal anticipation and enthusiasm that the business community has billionaires, Wall Street would have to any new Republican president who's going to cut their taxes and limit regulation. Some of it's because Trump's takeover of the Republican Party is now complete. There are no more Romneys and Flakes and Cheneys around.
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
And some of it is that he's seen as a more legitimate president this time because he won the popular vote. But a lot of it is just a change in the approach of foreign leaders and business leaders and Democrats to they are using a different way to resist Trump compared to his first term. They're choosing their battles instead of across-the-board resistance.
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
They believe his mind can be changed on things like TikTok, which now he sees as useful to him, or cryptocurrency because his family is now in the crypto business. So I think it's a different kind of resistance.
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
Well, you know, he described the dinner he had with two big pharma CEOs and that industry's lobbying group. They're concerned about his pick for Health and Human Services Department, Robert F. Kennedy, who is an anti-vaccine activist. Here's how Trump described RFK Jr.
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
So he was asked about his own views on vaccines, and he gave full support to the polio vaccine. He said it's not going anywhere. But Trump did leave the door open to those who believe that vaccines are linked to autism, something that has been widely debunked. He said, quote, we're going to find out. He also wasn't clear about his position on vaccine mandates.
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
He was asked if schools should mandate vaccines, and he said, I'm not a big mandate person. But he also gave the pharma executives something they wanted. He was very hard on pharmacy benefit managers who pharmaceutical companies blame for price hikes. He scornfully referred to them as middlemen.
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
Well, it was a bit like all of his rallies in the campaign condensed into an hour and 10 minutes. He covered a lot of the same ground. He said that everything was pretty much perfect when he was president. There were no wars, no inflation. Now that he's going to be president again, he said things will be great again.
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
There were a lot of exaggeration and that he won the youth vote by 34 percent or that he brought down the price of insulin to $35, which although he did something on that, it was Biden who brought it down to $35. And there were still a lot of grievances. He talked about how he was going to sue the board of the Pulitzer Prizes and the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll
Up First from NPR
Trump Meets CEOs At Mar-A-Lago, School Shooting In Wisconsin, Pig Kidney Transplant
that showed him losing. So very similar to the old Trump.