Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds. And Kevin McCarthy has already said he
Speaker 1: won't allow Representatives Swallwell, Schiff or Omar to have committee assignments.
Speaker 1: We have a thrilling show today. Former Congressman Mondar Jones
Speaker 1: stops by to tell us all about the funeray. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to Semaphores political reporter Dave Weigel about more
Speaker 1: funeray in Congress. But first we have Washington Post columnist,
Speaker 1: the one, the only, the Great, George Conway. Welcome too,
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, my friend and yours George Conway, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me again. Molly. I don't think you're a
Speaker 1: going to have me on again, really, because after you
Speaker 1: went down to Washington for your secret project that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't tell me about, don't tell anybody when I clean
Speaker 1: down to Washington why I can't tell you, and then
Speaker 1: be interviewed the Vice President, I figured out that I'm
Speaker 1: off the list forever and you just go back to
Speaker 1: your liberal roots and no, are you kidding me? You
Speaker 1: know we had to have you back. So George Man,
Speaker 1: what the fund has happened to your Republican Party. They
Speaker 1: were like a little better and then they got worse again. Oh,
Speaker 1: they're getting worse. They're going to continue to get worse.
Speaker 1: And they hand help themselves. Why are they getting worse?
Speaker 1: I mean they had this mid term, they had their
Speaker 1: asses handed to them. They barely performed because you're not
Speaker 1: focusing on the incentive structure for these people. The people
Speaker 1: who are running the show now are essentially threatening to
Speaker 1: blow everything up if they don't get their way, and
Speaker 1: they don't care. They don't care what happens in these
Speaker 1: other districts. They don't care if they get anything passed.
Speaker 1: They just want to create a ruckus and to get
Speaker 1: on TV and solicit money, and no normal incentives apply
Speaker 1: to them. And as the Republican Party becomes more beholden
Speaker 1: to these people, it chases off for reasonable people, you know,
Speaker 1: really and including with some real conservatives, and you get
Speaker 1: more of the same. And it's basically it's like they're
Speaker 1: distilling the party down to the you know, the Marjorie
Speaker 1: Tailor Greens in the world. And that's you know, you've
Speaker 1: seen this has been happening for a number of years.
Speaker 1: You see it in all of these congressmen who are
Speaker 1: pretty good, who don't run anymore, or who get turned
Speaker 1: on by the right. You're boiling the Republican Party down
Speaker 1: to the bare men. Was what's gonna happen? And they're
Speaker 1: not gonna you know, it's re later, they're not gonna
Speaker 1: get a majority, and then they're they're going to dirt.
Speaker 1: Incentives are going to get even worse because if they
Speaker 1: can't govern, who I bother even trying to appeal to
Speaker 1: the people who aren't voting for It's this weird downward spiral.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Donald J. Trump. He's still you know,
Speaker 1: what I saw with this leadership contest was whether or
Speaker 1: not he was involved. He was presented as having mt
Speaker 1: G called him on the phone, held the phone up
Speaker 1: so they could take the picture, and everybody waved them off. Again,
Speaker 1: that was probably performative. Who wants to talk to the
Speaker 1: president and you know, no one, no good thing to
Speaker 1: come from it. I don't think there's much to be
Speaker 1: drawn from that. I don't think really in his standing.
Speaker 1: He is who he is, and they're just you know,
Speaker 1: they genuinelect to him, but they don't really take him
Speaker 1: that seriously. He has some legal problems. Can you talk
Speaker 1: to us about these legal problems? Yes, apparently. Again, well,
Speaker 1: his legal problems are the same legal problems we've talked
Speaker 1: about before. They're just getting closer and closer to their culmination,
Speaker 1: although it's you know, it's gonna be another year or
Speaker 1: two before a lot of this stuff works itself out.
Speaker 1: The Georgia grand jury, the Fulton County grand jury, the
Speaker 1: special grand jury that was convened at the request of
Speaker 1: Fulton County d A. Fannie Willis has apparently prepared a
Speaker 1: report and submitted it to the court, and then the
Speaker 1: only question is when and how it gets released, and
Speaker 1: then whether Fannie Willis takes that report and brings it
Speaker 1: to a regular grand jury, which would have the power
Speaker 1: to indict people, including Donald J. Trump. So that's you know,
Speaker 1: that's something that we can look forward to happening in
Speaker 1: the next few weeks to see see how that plays out.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got the special counsel, Jack Smith, who's busy, busy,
Speaker 1: busy apparently, and he's hired a bunch of new people.
Speaker 1: He's hired a bunch of new people. He seems to
Speaker 1: be on the job, on on the ball, and Andrew
Speaker 1: Weisman has called him aggressive. And Andrew Wisman was himself
Speaker 1: an aggressive prosecutor. So you know, we'll see what comes
Speaker 1: of that too. I think that, you know, the documents
Speaker 1: of Marilago documents case is pretty strong, and the other cases,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens with the January six cases that
Speaker 1: he's got that there. He's gonna work his way through
Speaker 1: that too. So what about the people who say, well,
Speaker 1: Trump had all these documents, but Biden also had documents
Speaker 1: twelve documents in a Biden foundation. There's the volume of
Speaker 1: the documents, there's the location of the documents, but the
Speaker 1: most important distinguishing factor is what these men did with
Speaker 1: their documents. When Biden's lawyers found these documents, apparently in
Speaker 1: the beginning of November, they called up the White House
Speaker 1: Council's office and the next day they were delivered to
Speaker 1: the National Archives where they belonged. And you know, that's
Speaker 1: in stark contrast to the behavior of the former president,
Speaker 1: who was he was told that he was believed by
Speaker 1: the Archives that he had documents, He stole all them
Speaker 1: for a period of time, gave them some documents back,
Speaker 1: was told again that they thought he had some documents.
Speaker 1: He gave some more back, but not all of them.
Speaker 1: He moved someone around in the basement of his golf
Speaker 1: club in golf club, but his little resort in Florida,
Speaker 1: and had people moved the boxes around and went through
Speaker 1: the boxes himself. Then he was subpoenaed and just a
Speaker 1: few more documents, and then had somebody issue a false
Speaker 1: certification that he produced all the documents, which turned out
Speaker 1: to be a lie, which we found out when the
Speaker 1: Justice Department, after showing a federal magistrate judge, probably cause
Speaker 1: that a crime was committed by someone, got a search warrant,
Speaker 1: and that's how we found out about that. And that's
Speaker 1: a that's you know, that was a long I mean,
Speaker 1: if Donald Trump had done what Biden had done, or
Speaker 1: what Biden's people did for him, you know when when
Speaker 1: he was told, hey, we think you've got some stuff,
Speaker 1: he says, oh, well, let me go look and give
Speaker 1: it all back, even though the volume was much greater,
Speaker 1: we would be talking about any of this right now.
Speaker 1: It's a much more serious situation with with Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 1: And you know, on top of that, who do we
Speaker 1: trust on this? You've got one guy who makes a
Speaker 1: few mistakes here and there, and then you've got one
Speaker 1: guy another another guy who, with all due respect to
Speaker 1: Congressman Santos, is the biggest pathological liar we've ever seen
Speaker 1: in this nation's politics and can't be trusted on anything.
Speaker 1: It is a big difference. And then look, but that's fine,
Speaker 1: it's fine. I think it's appropriate that the Justice Department
Speaker 1: investigate the circumstances behind the finding of these Biden vice
Speaker 1: presidency documents, see who had them, how they try to
Speaker 1: figure out, if they can, how these limited number of
Speaker 1: documents found their way into this storage closet in Washington,
Speaker 1: and see what people knew about it, if anything, but
Speaker 1: chances are it was, you know, inadvertent. And if you
Speaker 1: say oops, you know, it's like anything else. If you
Speaker 1: find something in your house that doesn't belong to you,
Speaker 1: either because you picked it up somewhere or somebody left it,
Speaker 1: you know, you call them up and you return it
Speaker 1: to them. And that's what seems to have happened in
Speaker 1: the Biden situation. You don't go and sit and hide it.
Speaker 1: And when somebody comes up to your door and said, hey,
Speaker 1: we think we might have left our wallet here, say, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, here's a credit card and slammed the
Speaker 1: door and then went from the bang on the door again,
Speaker 1: said what there was some other there's money in there, Oh,
Speaker 1: here's a dollar and then and say there isn't anything
Speaker 1: more when the cops come, and then you know have
Speaker 1: the issue of search warrant to get into your house.
Speaker 1: That's a lot different, I think, right right, But you
Speaker 1: know you're not going to hear that on Fox News.
Speaker 1: And Trump is he does still have other you know,
Speaker 1: there's the fake electors he's got, well, the fake electors,
Speaker 1: the whole January sixth thing, the January sixth investigation is
Speaker 1: a is a number of fake electors. The pressure on
Speaker 1: like Pants, which was, you know, an attempt to get
Speaker 1: him to commit fraud. The call to Rathlnsburger is a
Speaker 1: potential federal offense as well as a state offense. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many aspects of that that can lead to charges.
Speaker 1: He's got a big problem there. You ignore Trump at
Speaker 1: your own peril. Yeah, you shouldn't ignore Trump. Do you
Speaker 1: think he ends up being the candidate? Possibly? I mean
Speaker 1: you've got people like Asa Hutchinson talking about running for president.
Speaker 1: You've got Mike Pompeo. I know you're excited for this.
Speaker 1: I think we need to have a special podcast. His
Speaker 1: book is coming out on January. I'm sure it's going
Speaker 1: to be a best seller. You know we're gonna end
Speaker 1: up talking about that nothing NonStop for a month than
Speaker 1: you know. You've got him gonna run, you've got to
Speaker 1: talk about the santis. I don't know he's actually gonna run.
Speaker 1: But you've got a lot of people who think they
Speaker 1: should be president, and they're sensing weakness. But the problem
Speaker 1: is they're all going to split the vote, you know,
Speaker 1: so you can win. It's quite possible to win with
Speaker 1: I don't know the vote. The thing is, I mean
Speaker 1: we all sort of know that probably Trump won't get
Speaker 1: re elected, but he still could. No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the Democrats would have to. I
Speaker 1: think they'd have to nominate someone so horrible that people
Speaker 1: will just stay home. And I don't think they're going
Speaker 1: to do that. I don't. I think people would take
Speaker 1: their shot chances with any number of people over Donald
Speaker 1: Trump before they would go back over Donald Trump. People
Speaker 1: will still crawl on broken glass to vote against Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: which is what happened in two thousand, notwithstanding the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And I think also that in four he's going to
Speaker 1: be much more insane than he's ever been. So say
Speaker 1: more about that, Well, you could just see, I mean,
Speaker 1: you see his statements. He's more detached from reality, he's
Speaker 1: got fewer people around him to check his impulses, and
Speaker 1: he's you know, he's more and more obsessed with the
Speaker 1: stolen election, and he's he's going to get worse. These
Speaker 1: people who have this, these personality traits, these malignant narcissists,
Speaker 1: these psychopaths, they get worse over time, and they don't
Speaker 1: get better, and he's continuing to get worse. I know,
Speaker 1: it's sorry, it's hard to fathom how he could possibly
Speaker 1: get worse, But I mean, the one thing that we
Speaker 1: have consistently seen what Donald J. Trump is but he
Speaker 1: does get worse. There is always a lower depth to
Speaker 1: which he can sink, and he will do that. The
Speaker 1: problem is it's still not going to be enough to
Speaker 1: turn away the last thirty of the Republican Party that
Speaker 1: still is going to support him no matter what. So
Speaker 1: you know, he can get he can he could probably
Speaker 1: get the nomination. Are you still a Republican? No? Like
Speaker 1: we've done thing. I left the Republican Party in March
Speaker 1: of when I concluded that the Republican Party had become
Speaker 1: a personality called and boy was I right. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it wasn't even it wasn't even a third of
Speaker 1: what it is today. It seems like every time Republicans lose, right,
Speaker 1: I mean they lost the mid terms, they lost, every
Speaker 1: time they lose, they just they won the House. You have,
Speaker 1: we have Speaker McCarthy. But I mean every time they lose,
Speaker 1: they kind of they don't ever learn a lesson. They
Speaker 1: just want to do it again again. But that's the
Speaker 1: dynamic I'm talking about, is that the people, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got these districts where this stuff flies in their
Speaker 1: safe districts, and you you know, those people are ready
Speaker 1: to blow up the party, blow up the House if
Speaker 1: they don't get their way. So they have an inordinate
Speaker 1: amount of power. I mean, you know the Democrats were
Speaker 1: complaining for two years about Senators Cinema and Mansion. Well there,
Speaker 1: you know, they have a lot. They had a lot
Speaker 1: of power because they made the difference between you know
Speaker 1: and fifty and you needed Kala Harris to make it. Well,
Speaker 1: these people, you know, just just a few of them.
Speaker 1: As we saw with the fifteen speakers votes um basically
Speaker 1: shut down the House's ability to function at any time,
Speaker 1: and one of them can at any point can make
Speaker 1: a motion under the new rules of the House to
Speaker 1: vacate the chair and throughout the speaker. The speaker is
Speaker 1: completely beholden to them. I mean, the more moderate Republicans
Speaker 1: could also do that. They could, but there are not
Speaker 1: that many of them left, but some of them, I mean,
Speaker 1: the only way they could they could make a difference
Speaker 1: is they got to vote with the Democrats. That would
Speaker 1: be fatal for them. I mean, it might be fatal
Speaker 1: in a primary, you know, in one of those tight districts.
Speaker 1: It's fatal in a primary. Then that's it. Primaries are
Speaker 1: huge threats to them, right Their object is to not
Speaker 1: get burned from the right and try to get by,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't work. So who do you think this
Speaker 1: sort of of the of the House caucuses right now?
Speaker 1: I don't think there is a head, but you can
Speaker 1: see that some people have. Matt Gates has come out
Speaker 1: of this states he clearly lost a lot of friends,
Speaker 1: but you know he's got his He's got his younger friends, elsewhere.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't say anything on tour, and i'n't
Speaker 1: saying what he did with him. He hangs out with him, right,
Speaker 1: certainly not. We haven't heard anything more about any of
Speaker 1: that either. No, No, No, I think I think that
Speaker 1: I think they're not. I mean, I think the last
Speaker 1: I heard is that they're not going in that direction
Speaker 1: of Justice Department. But even though they did a plea
Speaker 1: deal with his wingman. Yeah, but you know that, you know,
Speaker 1: they may be that the witnesses aren't all that great.
Speaker 1: Who knows right on the particular things that they were
Speaker 1: investigating him about, which I don't really want to talk
Speaker 1: about it. You see Marjorie Taylor Green walking around like
Speaker 1: she owns the place. Yeah, because she does. She sort
Speaker 1: of does. It's unbelievable. So you think they shut down
Speaker 1: the government, it's only going to get worse. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: only going to get worse. It's only gonna get worse.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you've got the deat ceiling issues,
Speaker 1: You've got the next budget that they have to put
Speaker 1: through next. With these appropriations bills, there's so many trigger points,
Speaker 1: so many places where things can go off the rails,
Speaker 1: and a lot of it's going to be performative, So
Speaker 1: don't plan any National Park vacations. No, I would not
Speaker 1: do that. George Conway, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: Mandara Jones is a former congressman from New York seventeenth District.
Speaker 1: Welcome too Fast Politics, Mandara Jones, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1: I feel like a regular at this point. Well, I
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know, but I tweeted earlier
Speaker 1: today that you have to become a regular until you're
Speaker 1: back in Congress. In fact, I almost liked that tweet,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want people to think that by virtue
Speaker 1: of liking it that I was announcing my intention to
Speaker 1: run in four I've still not made a decision on that.
Speaker 1: What the hell is going on over there? You were
Speaker 1: in Congress? Yeah, in and what you're referring to happened
Speaker 1: in the one seventeenth Congress in January of two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty one, as shortly as you'll recalled. Before January six
Speaker 1: really opened a new chapter for us in Congress. But
Speaker 1: you know, prior to that point, prior to January six,
Speaker 1: we were going through the process of the first order
Speaker 1: of business electing a speaker. It was something that was
Speaker 1: not controversial. There were a few people who had expressed misgivings.
Speaker 1: Some people had, you know, previously run on not intending
Speaker 1: to support Nancy Pelosi, but she was able to cobble
Speaker 1: together a true majority in the House. And contrast that
Speaker 1: with Republicans having to go to a fifteenth ballot, which
Speaker 1: broke all records except for those set in the eighteen
Speaker 1: fifties in this country, to simply name the next Speaker
Speaker 1: of the House. And I think it was really an
Speaker 1: invitation into what we're going to be seeing for the
Speaker 1: next two years. Unfortunate and in utter incompetence and utter
Speaker 1: inability to get things done. On vote, he did win.
Speaker 1: No one knows what he's promised. I think some people
Speaker 1: know what he's promised discussed. I think the most powerful
Speaker 1: people in the House, GOP Caucus no what Kevin McCarthy promised.
Speaker 1: And by most powerful people, I certainly mean Matt Gates,
Speaker 1: Lauren Bobert, Matt Rosendale and others who were part of
Speaker 1: that twenty to twenty one that became a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of people who voted present at the end, who couldn't
Speaker 1: vote for him, but who also didn't want to vote
Speaker 1: against him so that they could finally get on with
Speaker 1: that process. I have been a little uncomfortable on behalf
Speaker 1: of some of my former Republican colleagues, because just today
Speaker 1: I've heard a number of Republicans new interviews with the
Speaker 1: networks in which they said that Kevin McCarthy did not
Speaker 1: make promises to put people on specific committees. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: you should only say things that you have actual knowledge of,
Speaker 1: and and other things you may just want to hedge,
Speaker 1: because frankly, it's common to make promises to appoint people
Speaker 1: to specific committees, and I feel quite confident that Speaker
Speaker 1: Pelosi did that in the past, and she's a much
Speaker 1: better county than Kevin McCarthy is um. I think the
Speaker 1: issue is that this rules package really gives the keys
Speaker 1: to the extremists in the party. And you will not
Speaker 1: hear me use the word moderate on this podcast. As
Speaker 1: someone said on Twitter a few days ago, there are
Speaker 1: no moderates in the House. Gopcock is there. There are lunatics,
Speaker 1: and there are cowards, even the members from from Biden
Speaker 1: districts congressional districts that Biden one of which there are
Speaker 1: many on the Republican side. This cycle. They all voted
Speaker 1: for a rules package that would allow just one of
Speaker 1: them to make a motion to replace the Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House too. In this rules package gut the Office
Speaker 1: of Congressional Ethics, which is a deep concern to me
Speaker 1: as someone who cares about ethics and who recently completed
Speaker 1: a term on the Ethics Committee, and who knows that
Speaker 1: fifty of the case work that the Ethics Committee deals
Speaker 1: with is casework that was initially referred by the Office
Speaker 1: of Congressional Ethics, which does the preliminary legwork on those cases.
Speaker 1: So I am deeply concerned by by those provisions and
Speaker 1: other provisions like putting members of the Freedom Caucus on
Speaker 1: key committees like the Rules Committee. But this is a
Speaker 1: recipe for dysfunction and disaster these next two years. And
Speaker 1: all of these Republicans, the so called moderates, they all
Speaker 1: voted for it, with the exception of Tony Gonzalez. And
Speaker 1: get this, Tony gonzalez Is objection isn't even a good one.
Speaker 1: Like I'm glad he voted against it, but like his
Speaker 1: objection is that they're going to cut the defense budget
Speaker 1: by seventy billion dollars, which he alleges will make us
Speaker 1: weaker as a country. Not true at all, because the
Speaker 1: defense budget is, you know, it's full of lobbyists giveaways, right.
Speaker 1: The one thing that any of us would agree with
Speaker 1: is the reason why he you now, it's the it's
Speaker 1: that meme of the worst person, you know, right, having
Speaker 1: a good idea like cut the you know, cut the
Speaker 1: defense budget. Don't threaten me with a good time. So
Speaker 1: it does seem like it's just they are in there.
Speaker 1: They are going to go full Benghazi all then I
Speaker 1: think that's right. You'll see investigations into Hunter Biden's private parts.
Speaker 1: You will see a false inquiry into the various federal
Speaker 1: agencies that happened to be investigating people like Jim Jordan's
Speaker 1: and Scott Perry. I did not believe that that is
Speaker 1: a coincidence. I don't believe that they're trying to get
Speaker 1: the Office of Congressional Ethics after the January six committee
Speaker 1: just refer people like Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan's to
Speaker 1: the Ethics Committee. I don't believe that they're trying to
Speaker 1: embarrass the FBI and the Department of Justice. But after
Speaker 1: the FBI seized Scott Perry's cell, phone last August pursuing
Speaker 1: to a warrant and is investigating him for trying to
Speaker 1: overturn the election. This is all part of a plan
Speaker 1: to keep bad actors from being investigated and from causing
Speaker 1: further embarrassment to the Republican Party. And we haven't even
Speaker 1: said the name George Santos. Talk to me about the fabulous,
Speaker 1: the talented Mr Santos. I first met George in November
Speaker 1: of two thousand. If that's his real name, right, he
Speaker 1: does not seem to answer to it, which makes me
Speaker 1: think it might not be. I first met George in
Speaker 1: November because we were an orientation and at the time,
Speaker 1: because of the delay with which New York State was
Speaker 1: counting votes by mail. Uh, he hadn't been elected. He was.
Speaker 1: It could have been right, the race had not yet
Speaker 1: been called for Thomas Wiser. We all knew that Tom
Speaker 1: was going to win that race. But in the meantime,
Speaker 1: George Sandos went down to Washington and he was part
Speaker 1: of our freshman orienta. Well, why, I mean he does
Speaker 1: that's kind of how he rolls. I mean, he might
Speaker 1: have just stayed in Congress if he could have, I think,
Speaker 1: until they told him he had to leave. He would
Speaker 1: have absolutely stayed for the full extent of orientation. He
Speaker 1: was ironically one of the people, if not I think,
Speaker 1: the person who asked the most questions, who stood up
Speaker 1: and until the microphone the most, and we're all like, dude,
Speaker 1: you're not even gonna be part of At some point
Speaker 1: he approached me to tell me that he is a
Speaker 1: gay Republican, which I imagine is something that he did
Speaker 1: because he knows that I'm gay. I'm sure he loved it.
Speaker 1: Many of these people are pleasant. They will say how
Speaker 1: do you in the hallway? I mean, Mary Kayla Green
Speaker 1: was in my all in the basement of long Worth
Speaker 1: last term. And you know, people are friendly, but you
Speaker 1: just gotta remember how terrible they are in terms of
Speaker 1: in terms of their policies. So and I remember, you know,
Speaker 1: after George said that to me, speaking of my colleagues
Speaker 1: and asking did you know that there was a gay
Speaker 1: Republican and the caucus and and everyone was surprised. And
Speaker 1: so I have to believe that George is actually Gary
Speaker 1: or something, even though I don't want to. And now
Speaker 1: he is in Congress. I thought that that what school
Speaker 1: he said where he said he's going to sit down
Speaker 1: and talk to him was pretty good. I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: what are they going to say to him, like, don't
Speaker 1: be a sociopath. I'm really looking forward to seeing what
Speaker 1: the federal agencies do with respect to these really troubling things. Right, UM,
Speaker 1: I will tell you, I am and have been increasingly
Speaker 1: concern learned with the politicization of the Ethics Committee. UM
Speaker 1: specifically concerned by the behavior of my Republican colleagues on
Speaker 1: that committee. But the Department of Justice, specifically the U. S.
Speaker 1: Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of New York is probing,
Speaker 1: uh several of the allegations against Mr Santos, and I
Speaker 1: think it's untenable that that he would remain in office
Speaker 1: for these next two years. But Kevin McCarthy would love
Speaker 1: to have him for as long as he can because
Speaker 1: it's a district that you know should be represented by
Speaker 1: a Democrat when you look at Bliden's marginal victory and
Speaker 1: you know it's a district frankly that I believe Tom
Speaker 1: Swazie could win all over again. I think they were
Speaker 1: a special election well, and also Republicans have decided or
Speaker 1: at least they made the macin nations that they are
Speaker 1: going to try to kick from committees, kick out Eric
Speaker 1: Swall while Adam Schiff and Johan Omar as a sort
Speaker 1: of payback for Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean that says
Speaker 1: everything you need to say when you talk about this
Speaker 1: one Congress. When you look at the criticism of Adam Schiff,
Speaker 1: for example, who has been one of the democracy champions
Speaker 1: that we've had, someone who has been taking Donald Trump
Speaker 1: won and Maga extremism, it really reveals that a number
Speaker 1: of the objections don't have met I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the stuff about Ilhan Omar is rooted in Islamophobia and racism.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, you can absolutely take people to the
Speaker 1: mat when it comes to disagreeing with their policy positions,
Speaker 1: but the idea that you know, some of these people
Speaker 1: should not be allowed to serve on their committees is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: And again, this is about partisanship. This is not about
Speaker 1: concern for anything, but to be able to say, look,
Speaker 1: you took Marjorie Tyler Green off something, we took Adam
Speaker 1: Cheff up something. That's right. You know, some of us,
Speaker 1: myself included, thought that people would be taken off of
Speaker 1: all committees. So this is actually more of a modest
Speaker 1: reprisal than I than I expected from the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: Will you explain Margae Taylor Green was taken off all
Speaker 1: of her committees, same thing for Paul Gosar. I have
Speaker 1: not heard Kevin McCarthy say that Adam Ship cannot serve
Speaker 1: on any committees in the Congress. I've heard him say
Speaker 1: he'll be taking out the Intelligence Committee. I've heard him
Speaker 1: say that Ohani will be taken off the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Speaker 1: Do you have any sort of thoughts on how the
Speaker 1: Biden administration should handle this continual Benghazi I mean, do
Speaker 1: you think they should fight back? Do you think they
Speaker 1: should ignore it? Do you think I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: what's the calculus in your mind? I think they have
Speaker 1: to fight back. I think that not taking the Benghazi
Speaker 1: investigation seriously a few years ago did great harm to
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton in the general election, and it wasn't fair
Speaker 1: and it was not based in any merit. But you know,
Speaker 1: you have to make that case to the American people
Speaker 1: because increasingly we have a splintering in our media such
Speaker 1: that a large segment of the American population will believe
Speaker 1: that somehow Joe Biden is responsible for the conduct of
Speaker 1: his son and potentially, you know, hold that against him
Speaker 1: when when voting in in two thousand twenty four. It's
Speaker 1: such an insane, insane and and also incredibly stupid time
Speaker 1: to be alive. Yeah, the House is pretty raggedy these days.
Speaker 1: Do you think that McCarthy will be speaker? Do you
Speaker 1: think he'll last the whole hundred No? I do not. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that Kevin McCarthy will be lucky to get
Speaker 1: through the year of two thousand twenty three as Speaker
Speaker 1: of the House, because what's going to happen been is
Speaker 1: that because any person can create a you know, can
Speaker 1: can require a vote to replace Kevin McCarthy, you're going
Speaker 1: to have a bunch of Democrats waiting to vote with you,
Speaker 1: with five or so other Republicans on the other side
Speaker 1: of the eye, to replace Kevin McCarthy. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a very fraud straight jacket to use a word that
Speaker 1: Macates and others have have you used with respect to
Speaker 1: Kevin McCarthy, You heard it here first. Thank you, mon
Speaker 1: dare I hope you will come back to cover this
Speaker 1: before you start running again. No pressure, Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Still have to make a decision. I
Speaker 1: know you, our dear listeners are very busy and you
Speaker 1: don't have time to sort through the hundreds of pieces
Speaker 1: of punnentry each week. This is why every week I
Speaker 1: put together and use of my five favorite articles on politics.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed the podcast, you will love having this
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Speaker 1: Politics pod dot com and click the tab to join
Speaker 1: our mailing list. That's fast politics pod dot com. Dave
Speaker 1: Wigal is a political reporter at Semaphore. Dave, welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. Thanks for having me. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: I don't even know where to start here. This gop
Speaker 1: house seems kind of incredible to me. I mean, you've
Speaker 1: been doing this a long time. What is your take
Speaker 1: here as this starts? Well, it was both odd to
Speaker 1: cover and inevitable. And Michael, last weeks with Semaphore was
Speaker 1: really the first time a bunch of us who joined
Speaker 1: the publication were out in the house giving people, grabbing them,
Speaker 1: interviewing them, irritating them. I was not pulling my hair
Speaker 1: out over what a crazy thing was happening. Was interesting
Speaker 1: that this had not happened in a hundred years but
Speaker 1: it was exactly the thing that conservative media had been
Speaker 1: mitigating towards for a long time. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: paid attention to Turning Point usas sort of parallel conservative
Speaker 1: conferences they've been having. I mean I've watched them in
Speaker 1: December when Carry Lake was the special guest and getting
Speaker 1: most the attention. And you've been to a lot of
Speaker 1: these too. Well, that one I was just watching remotely.
Speaker 1: So that's that's if somebody. If somebody is going to
Speaker 1: put the whole thing up on a stream, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: watch the stream and then get something else done. But
Speaker 1: I've been to a lot of it too. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: heard a lot of this. This happening in things got
Speaker 1: less less coverage in this. I think what got ignored
Speaker 1: was Gates and other incumbents who showed up. We're talking
Speaker 1: about challenging Kevin McCarthy, talking about not just the demands
Speaker 1: that make but really in personal terms, saying that this
Speaker 1: guy was was a schmuck who couldn't be trusted and
Speaker 1: was never gonna do what conservatives sent Republicans to Washington
Speaker 1: to do. Like this was very hard hardened. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just because I've seen a lot of comparison by people
Speaker 1: on the left to what they wanted their representatives to
Speaker 1: do when there was a similar narrowed ever credit majority
Speaker 1: in one like why didn't you guys get in there
Speaker 1: and protest her? And a big reason is that even
Speaker 1: left wing Democrats who were left to Congress respect Nancy
Speaker 1: Pelosi and thinks she thinks she I a should say
Speaker 1: it was good at the job you You did to
Speaker 1: hear this drumbeat for years and Republicans saying, one, we
Speaker 1: don't think this guy is very good at this, and
Speaker 1: two in the in the last few weeks, there's a
Speaker 1: lot we want. We want that we think the guy
Speaker 1: is so weak he can't deliver on. So I I
Speaker 1: was looking at it saying, Okay, what are they going
Speaker 1: to pull out of this? Like the chaos of having
Speaker 1: to wait a couple of days to figure out who's
Speaker 1: the speaker, that's not really affecting most people. And it's
Speaker 1: not like the debt limit where you're you're really worried. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm getting advice from my broker about what Congress is doing.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say no one cared, but this did not
Speaker 1: have a huge impact on people's lives. It was kind
Speaker 1: of a free game to play for for right wing
Speaker 1: members of Congress who said so much on the record
Speaker 1: you can barely read it all about why they why
Speaker 1: they wanted to do this. So it was inevitable, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't inevitable. It was inevitable. I didn't treat it
Speaker 1: like a crazy event that was gonna impact the Republic
Speaker 1: for generations that to come. It was just they saw
Speaker 1: a bargaining tactic and they used it. And unlike people
Speaker 1: on the left were pretty happy with Nancy Pelosi respected her,
Speaker 1: people on the right, we're pretty blatant about how little
Speaker 1: they respected to Ket McCarthy and didn't think he was
Speaker 1: gonna gonna be worth worth it in the job. So
Speaker 1: I was interested in what they're going to extract from
Speaker 1: the guy, which which we're only now learning about and
Speaker 1: we still don't really know. Right yesterday, I saw reporting
Speaker 1: Nancy May saying she didn't know. I saw a Democratic
Speaker 1: compress people saying they don't know. They don't really know
Speaker 1: because it's not in the rules package. Right, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: I mean the stuff that is most important in terms
Speaker 1: of an effect to a normal person who don't care
Speaker 1: about politics, was okay, what are they going to demand
Speaker 1: exchange for the debt limit? What are they going to
Speaker 1: demand exchange for passing normal appropriations bills? And that's still
Speaker 1: kind of opaque. I mean, we've seen some some screenshots
Speaker 1: of things that they've told members, we don't have something
Speaker 1: on paper the rest of this and the rest of
Speaker 1: the rest of the rules that they were passing who
Speaker 1: served on committee. I don't think that that materially changed
Speaker 1: a lot. They were saying before the election they were
Speaker 1: going to use this email. Yeah, so it sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of these people think that Kevin McCarthy is
Speaker 1: a moron. And and actually, I'd love to go into this.
Speaker 1: I know there was a really interesting piece in political
Speaker 1: last year about how Kevin McCarthy is a moron, but
Speaker 1: people don't really reporters don't really report that, even though
Speaker 1: it is sort of a baked in in the Kevin
Speaker 1: McCarthy experience. Yes, and that was another strange externality with
Speaker 1: this whole fight last week is if you polygraphed one
Speaker 1: of reporters covering and asked them, did you think if
Speaker 1: somebody told you a couple of years ago, Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 1: will be the Republican leader at a time they have
Speaker 1: a narrow majority. Do you think it will go well,
Speaker 1: they would say no. And it's it's not I don't
Speaker 1: like to get into like i Q testing because I
Speaker 1: don't think I would. I would beat a lot of
Speaker 1: people I cover. Um. It's more that he's a very
Speaker 1: glib and friendly leader who who never says no to
Speaker 1: anyone and has been very blatant in the past to
Speaker 1: his to his detriment about what his strategy is. And
Speaker 1: he just has never shown the ability took her al
Speaker 1: a difficult conference the way that Nancy Pelosi did, the
Speaker 1: freak of the way that Pelosi, like alone among recent
Speaker 1: Republican leaders, been able to Paul Ryan could do it
Speaker 1: for a little while. Remember Paul Ryan become speaker because
Speaker 1: McCarthy bumbled those way out of contention. Doesn't have the votes,
Speaker 1: right there was the second time that McCarthy did that,
Speaker 1: right this, and and so that experience lasted for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. But but a lot of I mean,
Speaker 1: I think any Republican leader, and you saw this with
Speaker 1: some of the members. We were all grabbing in the halls,
Speaker 1: like Dan Bishop and Matt Gates. A lot of these
Speaker 1: guys just said, even a different candidate, if they were
Speaker 1: part of their public Republican leadership, if they were Steve Scalise,
Speaker 1: there at least offended. If they've been part of the
Speaker 1: leadership over the last few years, they thought that leadership
Speaker 1: was so weak and incompetent that they didn't want any
Speaker 1: of them to take charge. Because I think Gates would
Speaker 1: say this, can you imagine Kevin McCarthy going into negotiations
Speaker 1: with the White House and trying to get anything done.
Speaker 1: I think that that is compelling to a lot of
Speaker 1: people who cover Congress, and that was compelling to a
Speaker 1: lot of Republicans. They just said, Okay, we this guy
Speaker 1: is going to be the leader. We're going to extract
Speaker 1: whatever we can from him because we know how weak
Speaker 1: he is. That was their approach, and I think, again,
Speaker 1: we're waiting for the rules. We're not sure exactly what
Speaker 1: they got, but that was the strategy, and it was
Speaker 1: a smart strategy. It's interesting I'm thinking about this reporting
Speaker 1: we saw come out of Congress at the end of
Speaker 1: the week from the Washington Post that talked about the
Speaker 1: idea that actually Mark Meadows was whipping votes against Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 1: that seemed pretty incredible. Yeah, he just does not somebody
Speaker 1: who has accrued a ton of I wouldn't say good will.
Speaker 1: I would just save respect in the conservative movement. I
Speaker 1: was looking at, you know, CBS is pulling that came
Speaker 1: out over the weekend with their with their Sunday shows.
Speaker 1: Like one of the questions they asked people was what
Speaker 1: did you think of this House leadership fight? Obviously most
Speaker 1: maybe not obviously, but maybe you can guess most Americans said, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't like it. I think fifty forty five No, No,
Speaker 1: didn't approve most Republicans. And and like this, a huge
Speaker 1: minority of Trump voters did approve of it. They really
Speaker 1: did like the process there of the mind that there
Speaker 1: is a existential threat to America really every day that
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is in office, that Republicans should be using
Speaker 1: every tool they have to stop what Biden is doing,
Speaker 1: and that McCarthy is going to give up, give up
Speaker 1: on stuff. And when I was talking about the members
Speaker 1: who had no faith in the leadership, every time a
Speaker 1: deal is cut, they would blame the Republican leadership for
Speaker 1: cutting that deal. So Brian mass from Florida, who put
Speaker 1: this to me first, I think he was kind of
Speaker 1: repeated when he want on some some TV shows was
Speaker 1: the base did not like the leadership in either house,
Speaker 1: and not because they had a plan in mind that
Speaker 1: those guys should have executed. They just didn't like to
Speaker 1: watch them lose. They had I think a substantive disagreement
Speaker 1: with how Mitch McConnell handled the last year. I mean
Speaker 1: McConnell's approach to the Senate was to block the big
Speaker 1: things at the left wanted, which you could do that
Speaker 1: because the filibuster exists. That wasn't that hard, and to
Speaker 1: had a few things through to help his members lower
Speaker 1: the salience of some of these fights. Right so here,
Speaker 1: the infrastructure bill passes because in McConnell's mind, if you
Speaker 1: could pass infrastructure bill, there's not going to be another
Speaker 1: spending bill. He looks like a genius for a couple
Speaker 1: of months, then he doesn't. And what Mass is saying
Speaker 1: is our base is angry with Mitch McConnell. Paul Ryan,
Speaker 1: it's not angry with Ken McCarthy. Just blumps him in
Speaker 1: with those people. And the opponents knew that they knew
Speaker 1: who Ket McCarthy is, and they knew that who did
Speaker 1: what they just said, this guy is a nonentity who's
Speaker 1: going to get rolled the same way as the other
Speaker 1: guys we don't like. And so that's McCarthy is speaker.
Speaker 1: So far, I think has he put this down by
Speaker 1: giving Rebels a lot of stuff that we don't know
Speaker 1: all the details of, but also by promising to be
Speaker 1: just a conservative speaker. He's not doing I mean, he's
Speaker 1: not introducing himself the way that Baynard did, the way
Speaker 1: that that Ryan to an extent did, the way that
Speaker 1: something he he came in said. He came in basically
Speaker 1: as the leader in tandem with a caucus that's as
Speaker 1: much power as he did, just of of saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: we didn't have very good twent twent two elections, but
Speaker 1: we see see a mandate for what we're running on.
Speaker 1: So we're going to pass House versions of all the
Speaker 1: conservative stuff that wasn't that popular in the mid term. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that actually gets to our next question. We're gonna
Speaker 1: pass House versions of the stuff that wasn't that popular
Speaker 1: in the mid term. They barely eked out when he
Speaker 1: has a four seat majority. The mid terms obviously are
Speaker 1: not the presidentials, but we saw, you know, the general
Speaker 1: feeling was that none of Trump's swing state candidates one.
Speaker 1: They only one in these very red states where you know,
Speaker 1: it was kind of baked in that they were going
Speaker 1: to go red. So I think it's interesting that the
Speaker 1: Republicans didn't have a moment of like, well, it seems
Speaker 1: like some of this isn't so popular. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think about the House, like someone like Nancy Mace,
Speaker 1: you send a Nancy Mace to the suburbs, she can
Speaker 1: sell this Republican party too in a way that Trump couldn't.
Speaker 1: But they don't seem to be interested in that. Not
Speaker 1: that I'm a fan of anyone in this, but just
Speaker 1: more that they're just going full Trump Agan. What is
Speaker 1: it that people say they want? I mean, the Democrats
Speaker 1: did lose the House by not as many votes, not
Speaker 1: as many votes as they thought. I mean, they really
Speaker 1: came within like eight thousand votes of holding onto the thing.
Speaker 1: So what did voters say that they they were voting
Speaker 1: Republican for. It was concerns about the economy, it was
Speaker 1: concerns about inflation. There's a lot of issues where Biden
Speaker 1: is not popular, where most people think he's not doing
Speaker 1: a good job. They're most economic, the immigration it has
Speaker 1: been weak. So they have a few areas where not
Speaker 1: just the Republican pub position, but where the where the
Speaker 1: incumbent Democratic position is unpopular and voters say they're they're
Speaker 1: willing to see a difference there. What what the they
Speaker 1: attack first though, is the stuff that like Fox News
Speaker 1: talks the most but most about, which is I R. S. Agents. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a dead letter. That's so that's this
Speaker 1: bill that pastor House they allowed to celebrate. They passed it.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna get picked up by the Senate. They're
Speaker 1: they're in the same position that House Democrats were in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, where you can pass the bill, it will
Speaker 1: get laughed out of the Senate. You have no no show,
Speaker 1: no shot. They're gonna do that a lot of that,
Speaker 1: and so they're not coming in as they could have
Speaker 1: come in with some ideas that answer would voters say
Speaker 1: they're worried about and Democrats kind of do do this.
Speaker 1: Like Democrats had a very weird twy n t because
Speaker 1: they came in with a shutdown underway, and their position
Speaker 1: was would like to shut down to be over and
Speaker 1: get back to normal government without the border wall. They
Speaker 1: usually come in with an agenda of positive stuff they
Speaker 1: want to pass. Republicans didn't put this that together even
Speaker 1: and I'm not trying to be too pupijorative to smug
Speaker 1: about what they what they ran on to get McCarthy
Speaker 1: liked it. But they had mentioned we're gonna with the
Speaker 1: party of the commitment to America. I read the Commitment
Speaker 1: to America. There's not just there's not details in it.
Speaker 1: There are a few things that the party has has
Speaker 1: included bills before, but it is not like a as
Speaker 1: an alternative agenda that they can deliver on. They're not
Speaker 1: really even attacking that. Like the It's these big, big,
Speaker 1: big themes about economic recovery, the first one being I
Speaker 1: R S agents. They're obsessed, as I talked to you,
Speaker 1: about what they can investigate from Biden in the Biden Zone,
Speaker 1: whether it whether they can investigate something related to the
Speaker 1: vice president having some classified documents in a in a
Speaker 1: file where they shouldn't be. They're just behaving as as
Speaker 1: a normal opposition party that that believes if you drag
Speaker 1: down the president and his party, then there'll be a
Speaker 1: presidential election and you can win that. Because the weekend,
Speaker 1: which is the one the one strategy that McCarthy has
Speaker 1: talked about executing. Remember, this is the reason how he
Speaker 1: wasn't speaker years ago is because he he said blatantly
Speaker 1: the Big Gasi Committee was great because it was hurting
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton and making her easier to beat. Like, that's
Speaker 1: kind of like they're not really doing much to contradict
Speaker 1: this idea that that is what they're going to do
Speaker 1: with the majority right now. I mean that I think
Speaker 1: that's what they're gonna do with the majority. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty clear. Any rising stars you're seeing
Speaker 1: come out of this, well, Yeah, the the way that
Speaker 1: the McCarthy team ended up closing out its floor speeches,
Speaker 1: lose mandatory floor speeches that clue you into the people
Speaker 1: they would like everyone to pay attention to is the
Speaker 1: future of the party. And and as as it went on,
Speaker 1: it was most Lee non white members who were elected
Speaker 1: fairly recently, Juancascamani from South Phoenix like the old guy
Speaker 1: to Gifford's district which has been recovery drawn, uh, Mike
Speaker 1: Garcia from from l A County, John James from Macomb County, Michigan.
Speaker 1: That was who the party was promoting and saying they're
Speaker 1: there are people who are you know, they're under fifty,
Speaker 1: they they have had real careers, they're they're not like
Speaker 1: born white guys. And you had this with Byron Donald's
Speaker 1: who I think also fits in that zone although he
Speaker 1: was on he was on the conservative side. That's who
Speaker 1: they wanted to introduce. And a theme there was we
Speaker 1: know that we are as Republicans, this is going for years,
Speaker 1: that we are varnerable, if not vulnerable, at least irritated
Speaker 1: by Democrats like saying that we're all doing the bidding
Speaker 1: of rich white guys. Look at us. We're obviously not
Speaker 1: you guys. Are you guys would be worried about how
Speaker 1: much you're getting. So those are the most immediate stars
Speaker 1: who got elevated. I think within every one of the
Speaker 1: twenty not everyone. So the twenty one Republicans who kept
Speaker 1: causing problems I think victorious parts who who end the
Speaker 1: voting present. I'm not sure what where she goes with that.
Speaker 1: She encouraged the Gates faction without really doing much to
Speaker 1: win over the McCarthy faction, or maybe I mean her
Speaker 1: her point was that it looked like McCarthy had lost
Speaker 1: the confidence of the caucus. So she wasn't going to
Speaker 1: vote him. Not much there. She's Ukrainian too, right, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's Ukrainian American. She has been uh first a supporter
Speaker 1: of whatever it takes support Ukraine, a little more recently critical.
Speaker 1: But I don't think her her stock rose because of this.
Speaker 1: I think I do think most of the conservatives UH
Speaker 1: working on on this, their their stock within the movement increase.
Speaker 1: Remember I was pointing that poll. Both conservatives looked at
Speaker 1: this and said, great, I think you can you can
Speaker 1: draw a line from there to say, if you're a conservative,
Speaker 1: your opinion of Matt met Gates is higher now than
Speaker 1: it was a month ago because he actually went to
Speaker 1: the mat and did something delivered on And these guys
Speaker 1: are also using conservative media very effectively to talk directly
Speaker 1: to those people and make fun of how the media
Speaker 1: covers this. I think that helped them a lot. So
Speaker 1: you think the winners here are like a Matt Gates
Speaker 1: and a Lauren Bow. Yeah. I think the stars were
Speaker 1: some people elevated by the leadership to to say, okay,
Speaker 1: the media is paying attention to the house floor. These
Speaker 1: new young, diverse stars are are are in the forefront
Speaker 1: of our party stands for UH and the people who
Speaker 1: want more immediately are are are the holdouts, not all
Speaker 1: of them, I mean, but like Paul Gossar being somebody
Speaker 1: that McCarthy has to deal with, that's new for Paul Gossar.
Speaker 1: He went from somebody that um Bayner and Ryan just
Speaker 1: kind of were annoyed by and didn't didn't have to
Speaker 1: genuflect too, to somebody who can go into a room
Speaker 1: and they can peel off his vote. He's more relevant now,
Speaker 1: who just objected more more relevant. Marjorie Taylor Green is
Speaker 1: more relevant in the process. I think has not a
Speaker 1: ton yet. I mean, just in my monitoring conservative media,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing people full fully rebelling against her for dealing
Speaker 1: with leadership. But she she now has the selfies with
Speaker 1: her and McCarthy and lots of coverage of how she's
Speaker 1: responsible for settling this in this fight with inside the party.
Speaker 1: That is an enhancement of her role which McCarthy signed on,
Speaker 1: signed off on. So I think they were enhanced a
Speaker 1: lot by this. A lot of the new members who
Speaker 1: I think were the Republicans were happier to deal with
Speaker 1: and talk about. A lot of these guys got elected
Speaker 1: in you know, the New York New York City suburbs, etcetera,
Speaker 1: were just annoyed. I mean, they spent the whole week
Speaker 1: just giving quotes to people like me about how irritating
Speaker 1: this all was. I don't think they have gained much
Speaker 1: from it yet. So McCarthy has tacked real maga. Right,
Speaker 1: he was already maga whatever with whatever spinelessness he believes,
Speaker 1: but he tacked even more maga. But here's a question
Speaker 1: for you. Now, some of these are more middle of
Speaker 1: the road congressmen who are Republicans, but you know, one
Speaker 1: in the New York City stuff suburbs and in California
Speaker 1: those guys. Is this, you know, a kind of West
Speaker 1: wing witch casting? Or do you think that there's a
Speaker 1: world in which McCarthy gets out there enough that these
Speaker 1: more centrist Republicans decide on a unity candidate or do
Speaker 1: you think that will never happen. Are you talking about
Speaker 1: in the future, In the future, yeah, or if that
Speaker 1: just if it sets up, or if there's some if
Speaker 1: you feel like there's some, or if that's just complete
Speaker 1: witch casting. I think it's possible because the numbers are
Speaker 1: so tight and you'd only need I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: to give the math, not of the psychic psychology. The
Speaker 1: members were tight, you had in twenty two. You you
Speaker 1: had no change in special elections for us the year,
Speaker 1: but you did have vacancies and things that made the
Speaker 1: margins closer. I feel like you need you need an
Speaker 1: insighting event for this. You need some sort of some
Speaker 1: sort of absolute stasis over the debt limit for that
Speaker 1: conversation to start again. But what happened is there is
Speaker 1: a vote and the chair is vacated, vote to vacate
Speaker 1: the chair and McCarthy doesn't have the support because of
Speaker 1: some crisis going on. That's much easier for to imagine
Speaker 1: for McCarthy right now it is for any recent modern speaker.
Speaker 1: I mean this. There was a motion to vacate the
Speaker 1: chair when Bayner was Speaker over over much less over
Speaker 1: some of these issues over we don't trust this guy
Speaker 1: is going as hard as we would preventing deal from
Speaker 1: being cut to raise raise spending. We know what tools
Speaker 1: exist and these and everyone in the House now knows
Speaker 1: what tools exist to drag this out. And that's not crazy.
Speaker 1: I don't think it would be McCarthy. The problem is
Speaker 1: in a in a presidential cycle, Republicans who were will
Speaker 1: be willing to vote for some compromise speaker who's not McCarthy.
Speaker 1: They'd have to look back at their districts and think
Speaker 1: about what's coming to them in primaries. If they ditched
Speaker 1: this speaker in favor of one who's going to deal
Speaker 1: with Democrats and let's say, for example, raise the debt
Speaker 1: limit without a ton of concessions, I feel like that
Speaker 1: would be a huge crisis for the party. But I
Speaker 1: wouldn't rule it out because there are I mean we identified,
Speaker 1: not not just me and my colleagues, but everyone around
Speaker 1: the Hill identified. You know, a couple dozen Republicans who
Speaker 1: are so exhausted by the holdouts that they were at
Speaker 1: least open to this, Like guys like Don Bacon Omaha,
Speaker 1: who keep winning their elections and running well ahead of Trump.
Speaker 1: They don't have people on a short leag but they've
Speaker 1: they've they've said, here are here's what I would love
Speaker 1: for this majority, for the speakership that are ageda to
Speaker 1: look like. I think some of this is can be mollified.
Speaker 1: The committee investigations, the things of the party actually is
Speaker 1: delivering on. I think they're they're feeling better because it
Speaker 1: was so embarrassing last week for them to go through this.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the conditions are there for some crisis to unfold.
Speaker 1: People say, what about these tools we put down when
Speaker 1: we let McCarthy become a speaker. Let le's pick them
Speaker 1: up and do it again, right exactly, Dave, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. I hope you'll come back. I think there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a lot of ship going down every day.
Speaker 1: I think so. Yeah, And I really, I really think
Speaker 1: it's good to not like hyperventilate about this and say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: actually are in disarray, like what is the disarrayed driving
Speaker 1: towards Because the reason this happened is because Gates had
Speaker 1: all understood you could you could create a problem for
Speaker 1: the leadership and get a lot of what you wanted.
Speaker 1: So I think the question is all right now that
Speaker 1: everyone knows that what happens next so with they will
Speaker 1: be stuff for us to talk about in this zone.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Yes, thank you very much. Molly,
Speaker 1: Junk Jesse Cat and in so Molly, as you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't had a moment of fuckery on this podcast
Speaker 1: for the last two weeks, and some people may have
Speaker 1: suspected this is because there was a vacation, but I
Speaker 1: really like to think of this as we were sitting
Speaker 1: shiv up. Since we lost a reoccurring character on our
Speaker 1: podcast together, your favorite Congressman, Louie Gomert, sometimes known as
Speaker 1: my Louis by you, is no longer with us. How
Speaker 1: are you feeling. I've been meaning to do a wellness check.
Speaker 1: I'm very conflicted because there are a lot of very
Speaker 1: stupid new members of Congress. There are some very stupid
Speaker 1: returning members of Congress, like Lauren Boebert and MTG. There
Speaker 1: are some very stupid people who are now committee chairs.
Speaker 1: So I'm very conflicted because I do feel that the
Speaker 1: moron quotation has not dropped in that way. I'm relieved,
Speaker 1: but I also feel a little bit sad because my
Speaker 1: incredibly racist Texas judge, who is a fucking moron, is
Speaker 1: no longer in Congress. Well, I'm glad you're handling it okay,
Speaker 1: But I thought it was nice since the Republicans are
Speaker 1: so napt you've got a few extra days with them,
Speaker 1: since none of the new Congress can get sworn in.
Speaker 1: But since this is our first moment of fuckory since
Speaker 1: the swearing d and of officially being gone I prepared
Speaker 1: for you today A twelve gun salute to Louise dumbest moments.
Speaker 1: Are you ready? I was born ready for this. Okay, First,
Speaker 1: I'd like to start with when he thought the Obama
Speaker 1: administration was staffed by the Muslim Brotherhood. I mean, who
Speaker 1: among us? Who among us didn't think that, Yes, this
Speaker 1: administration has so many Muslim Brotherhood members uh that have
Speaker 1: influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, if only. How about the time he
Speaker 1: very accurately predicted that socialized healthcare would make kill less
Speaker 1: for seniors. Been battling the social healthcare, the nationalization of healthcare.
Speaker 1: It is gonna absolutely kill seniors, said as soon as
Speaker 1: they'll put him on a list and and force them
Speaker 1: to die early. We call that death panels for cuney. Now,
Speaker 1: this is what I can't play a clip. But my
Speaker 1: lovely girlfriend Lord would never forgive me if I didn't
Speaker 1: mention her favorite luism when his two spell out mid
Speaker 1: press conference shortly after the election. But next we have
Speaker 1: the time he said bestiality and necrophilia. So I'd like,
Speaker 1: among us, if you're oriented toward animals beastiality, Uh, then
Speaker 1: you know that that's not something that could be used
Speaker 1: held against you, or any bias be held against you
Speaker 1: for that, which means you have to strike any laws
Speaker 1: against beast reality. If you're oriented toward corpses towards children,
Speaker 1: you know they are all kinds of perversions what most
Speaker 1: of us would call perversions. Some would say it sounds
Speaker 1: like fun, nice, nice. I mean, it's it's good because
Speaker 1: you never think of Congress. You you really want your
Speaker 1: local congressman to weigh in on necrophilia. That's one of
Speaker 1: the mean things you want Congress working on. How about
Speaker 1: what he told us all how he used to handle
Speaker 1: outbursts at his court when he was a judge. I
Speaker 1: had one guy that was particularly out of line and
Speaker 1: warning three times, and then we du taped his head
Speaker 1: and we didn't hear from him till it was his
Speaker 1: turn to talk. And when that was when I was
Speaker 1: a judge and fell in the court. I'm sorry. Imagine
Speaker 1: having Louis Gohmert to decide your future and duct tape
Speaker 1: you up to shut you up. Stuff doesn't sound fun.
Speaker 1: But who could forget what He wouldn't stop banging on
Speaker 1: the desk because he didn't like a witness sing bild
Speaker 1: bar lies and they had to ask to remove him
Speaker 1: from the committee. Either we have rules or we don't.
Speaker 1: This chairman, there's not order in the room. There's a
Speaker 1: a Mr Carvin, would you have Jane Cooper removed? The gentleman?
Speaker 1: The gentleman, the witness will conclude. Then there was the
Speaker 1: time that he harasked Peter Struck while he was on
Speaker 1: the witness stand. How many times did you look so
Speaker 1: innocent into your wife's eye and lied to her about
Speaker 1: Mr Sherman. It is outragebility of a witness. Shame how
Speaker 1: Mrs Inspowerable harass me the way that you need your
Speaker 1: medication that many Congressmen have been told they need their
Speaker 1: medication while in the middle of a hearing. You know,
Speaker 1: I want to as we say goodbye to this incredible
Speaker 1: racist idiot who never should have gotten as far as
Speaker 1: he did, a testament really truly to a culture that
Speaker 1: honors white man above all else. I would like to
Speaker 1: say goodbye, sweet more on, goodbye. Well, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: did that, because we have one last one that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna get four shots too, because it was so dumb
Speaker 1: when he asked Eric Holder to not cast aspersions on
Speaker 1: his asparagus. The best, the the Gentlemans. If the chair
Speaker 1: Ms supposition I'm on my asparagus, that's the chair Ms supposition,
Speaker 1: I'm on my asparagus. Well, I think what's important about
Speaker 1: that is Louie Gomer got the laughs, just not intentionally.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to her the best minds
Speaker 1: and politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.