Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of these spicy stories going on
Speaker 1: right now with David Drucker, senior writer at The Dispatch.
Speaker 1: Prior to that, of course, he was senior correspondent for
Speaker 1: The Washington Examiner, and David's also the author of the
Speaker 1: book In Trump's Shadow, The Battle for twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: in the Future of the GOP.
Speaker 2: David, welcome, How are you hey?
Speaker 3: Good to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2: How are you liking working at the Dispatch so far?
Speaker 3: I really like it, no sarcasm. It's a great gig.
Speaker 3: I think we do a lot of really good work
Speaker 3: and they free me up to just pursue and report
Speaker 3: really good stories.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you're awesome on there, and one of the
Speaker 4: reasons I want to have you on today, in addition
Speaker 4: to the fact that you're probably the best at reporting
Speaker 4: on stuff like the Republican House Speaker fight. You seem
Speaker 4: pretty fired up as I was about the failure of
Speaker 4: the prestige US media on Tuesday, going ahead and announcing
Speaker 4: that Israeli Israel had bombed a hospital before they knew
Speaker 4: what was going on, which really pisses me off.
Speaker 3: Well, because this is pretty typical. I'm not even the
Speaker 3: biggest look, I'm in the media, so rather than criticize
Speaker 3: the media, I just try to do my job. But
Speaker 3: I will say, as an observer of American and Middle
Speaker 3: East politics for decades, I'm just old enough that now
Speaker 3: I've been able to observe this for decades. This is
Speaker 3: par for the course. This might be new to some people,
Speaker 3: but this always happens. People jump to conclusions what it
Speaker 3: has to do with Israel, conclusions. They don't jump to
Speaker 3: what it has to do with other countries and other
Speaker 3: nonstate actors. And you know, in this case, it's just
Speaker 3: in the middle of a very volatile situation that has
Speaker 3: the potential to have a real damaging impact in the
Speaker 3: region and domestically. But I wasn't surprised because this is again,
Speaker 3: it's just what.
Speaker 4: Happens well there. As a number of people have pointed out,
Speaker 4: one of the problems with that is the media, which
Speaker 4: usually leans left and supports democratic policies, hurt the president's
Speaker 4: owned policies as he had to cancel some meetings, hurt
Speaker 4: the prospect for peace which would help Palestinians. I mean, who,
Speaker 4: I don't even understand their motivation other than hating on
Speaker 4: israel I guess.
Speaker 3: I think, well, I think, look, I think you're some
Speaker 3: people might be over thinking this. You know, even though
Speaker 3: the media can and has demonstrated over the years to
Speaker 3: have a left leaning bias, they're not. There's not some
Speaker 3: place where they all go meet and decide with the
Speaker 3: with the party's messages for the day. And so I
Speaker 3: think this has to do with a worldview, not a
Speaker 3: political bias necessarily, but just a worldview about how they
Speaker 3: viewed the Israeli government. And the point I was trying
Speaker 3: to make, not that anybody cares, was that it's our
Speaker 3: job as journalists to be skeptical of everything and everyone.
Speaker 3: But but skepticism doesn't deserve to be dished out equally.
Speaker 3: In the case of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization
Speaker 3: that purposely targets civilians. Just stepping back from whatever you
Speaker 3: opinions of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and dispute, his are.
Speaker 3: This group is not a normal army that operates according
Speaker 3: to the law, the international laws of war. They never
Speaker 3: have and they've even shown a willingness to put their
Speaker 3: own people in danger just to get Israel to get
Speaker 3: blamed for one of the misfortunate that then befalls their
Speaker 3: own people or the death, and that's how they operate.
Speaker 3: So my response to this isn't you should believe the
Speaker 3: Israeli government. No, you shouldn't believe the Israeli government, but
Speaker 3: you should show Hamas more skepticism than you do the
Speaker 3: Israeli government and just say you don't know and wait
Speaker 3: until you know and have enough information.
Speaker 1: Well, my final thought on the topic is if you're
Speaker 1: going to be completely credulous and print somebody's claims about something,
Speaker 1: the fact that that somebody was Hamas and they printed
Speaker 1: those claims as just.
Speaker 2: Astounding to me.
Speaker 1: But moving along with David Drucker of The Dispatch, David,
Speaker 1: I've been referring to the contest to elect a House
Speaker 1: speaker as a clown show.
Speaker 2: Is that unnecessarily harsh in your opinion?
Speaker 3: No, I think you're being disrespectful to clowns. That's an
Speaker 3: honorable question because you actually make people laugh and do
Speaker 3: a service.
Speaker 4: Right, beautiful, somebody will get a balloon animal at the end.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's benefits to it. So where are we currently.
Speaker 3: Nowhere? Republicans can't agree amongst themselves on anybody when it
Speaker 3: comes to delivering two hundred and eighteen votes for the gabble,
Speaker 3: and so there's a lot of discussion now about elevating
Speaker 3: or I should say empowering Speaker pro Tem path Patrick McHenry,
Speaker 3: a North Carolina Republican with a lot of the authority
Speaker 3: that goes along with being the actual Speaker of the House.
Speaker 3: Isn't allow the Chamber to get back to work move legislation.
Speaker 3: We're about a month away from the government running out
Speaker 3: of money again, or the President this evening is going
Speaker 3: to pitch a big aid package or Israel, Ukraine and
Speaker 3: we think Taiwan and possibly some domestic border security money,
Speaker 3: although it's unclear, but we know that Israel, ad for Israel,
Speaker 3: and Ukraine are going to be packaged together. At least
Speaker 3: that's what the President is going to propose, and that's
Speaker 3: what I think the Senate is going to move on.
Speaker 3: And so in order to pass this legislation is going
Speaker 3: to need to be operable, and so Republicans are going
Speaker 3: to have to figure out what they want to do.
Speaker 3: I don't know that we're near this McHenry solution, but
Speaker 3: it's what's being discussed because nobody wants to look I do.
Speaker 3: I'm talking long here, but The reason Republicans are in
Speaker 3: this mess is because there are not enough of them.
Speaker 3: They want to follow their own rules. Their rules say
Speaker 3: that in an internal conference election, whoever gets the most
Speaker 3: votes above a certain number is the speaker designate when
Speaker 3: they're in the and they're all supposed to vote for
Speaker 3: that person on the floor. It's not that it's binding constitutionally,
Speaker 3: that that's the rules they have for themselves. They wouldn't
Speaker 3: honor it with Kevin McCarthy, they wouldn't honor it with
Speaker 3: Steve's falife, and so now members that always go along
Speaker 3: because they want to govern and be pragmatic finally said
Speaker 3: I've had enough. If you don't have to follow the.
Speaker 1: Rules and needed a lot, well you're a fine psychic,
Speaker 1: is I was just going to say. The crazy part
Speaker 1: to me is that you know they can't arrive at
Speaker 1: a result is too bad, But they can't even arrive
Speaker 1: at a process. Apparently all of the rules and customers
Speaker 1: are out the window. So let's move on to what's
Speaker 1: it look like behind the scenes. I understand there's some
Speaker 1: serious arm twisting to vote for Jordan, backlash, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Look, Jordan has been trying to bring his opponents along,
Speaker 3: but I don't think he can. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: ill will in the conference right now. We talked about
Speaker 3: it as being a dysfunctional conference, but it's now also factionalized.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of ill will. There are a lot
Speaker 3: of hurt feelings. There's a lot of frustration, and whether
Speaker 3: or not Jordan is responsible for this or look the
Speaker 3: other way, or even whether or not he told his
Speaker 3: allies off of Capitol Hill please stop and they just
Speaker 3: didn't listen. One of the problems that the Republicans who
Speaker 3: oppose him have is that they feel like Jordan and
Speaker 3: his allies were bringing outside pressure to bear and threatening them,
Speaker 3: threatening them with primary challengers, that they're that these these
Speaker 3: pro Jordan activists were even sending in death threats and wow,
Speaker 3: and and it gets to the fact that that's what
Speaker 3: some members have alleged and and they've really statements for
Speaker 3: that effect.
Speaker 4: Well, if I got a death threat, and I thought
Speaker 4: if I got a death threat, and I thought it
Speaker 4: came from Jordan's people, especially with his knowledge, yeah I
Speaker 4: wouldn't be real likely.
Speaker 2: To vote for him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well. I think the other thing though, too, is
Speaker 3: so when conservative activists and somehow Republicans who support Jordan
Speaker 3: make the case that this is what the voters want.
Speaker 3: What a lot of House Republicans pier is, Oh, so
Speaker 3: I'm supposed to do whatever Jordan wants because your voters,
Speaker 3: my voters like him better than me, and he's going
Speaker 3: to use that against me. And and members of Congress
Speaker 3: want to be the stars in their own district. They
Speaker 3: understand that when there's a president that their voters like,
Speaker 3: they're under pressure to work with that president or even
Speaker 3: just support that president without you know, too much, you know,
Speaker 3: without without too much trouble. But when another when a
Speaker 3: congressional leader says, do what I say, or your voters
Speaker 3: are going to be angry. It's as opposed to I'm
Speaker 3: going to help you succeed in your district. It's just
Speaker 3: it's not the way you win a congressional leadership race,
Speaker 3: which was is different than running for office where voters
Speaker 3: of the constituency versus members of Congress.
Speaker 1: So how certain are you that the Patrick McHenry move
Speaker 1: is the next step?
Speaker 2: Is there just no other road to take at this point?
Speaker 3: It appears that there's no other road to take at
Speaker 3: this point, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily the
Speaker 3: next step versus no step, And it sort of depends
Speaker 3: on how many House Republicans are willing to go along
Speaker 3: and do this, because you're going to have a you know,
Speaker 3: some significant member of the conference, even though it maybe
Speaker 3: a minority, that's going to oppose doing this, And so
Speaker 3: the thinking would be that Democrats would join in with this,
Speaker 3: and you know, mckenry sort of has to be willing,
Speaker 3: Like I guess he could say forget it, I'm not
Speaker 3: going to serve. But I think we just kind of
Speaker 3: need to see whether Jordan calls another vote today. My
Speaker 3: sources tell me that he's likely likely to lose more votes,
Speaker 3: that there are more members than we saw in the
Speaker 3: first two votes that are opposing him, but they want
Speaker 3: to stagger their vote so that it's clear if that
Speaker 3: it's like it's going backwards wow, versus even staying the same.
Speaker 3: But you know, this has been such a volatile, uncertain process.
Speaker 3: I'm hesitant to make predictions versus just kind of tell
Speaker 3: you what I'm hearing.
Speaker 1: So clown show an appropriate poop show, I suppose more appropriate.
Speaker 1: I'll be going with that in the future. Final question, David,
Speaker 1: we're chatting about this earlier. Have you heard whether the
Speaker 1: president's address eight o'clock eastern tonight is going to be
Speaker 1: live or not.
Speaker 2: He's an old man, you see.
Speaker 3: No, it's going to be live. Yeah, No, you don't
Speaker 3: do it. Office of Dress. It's not live. Yeah. And
Speaker 3: it's eight eastern five o'clock Pacific, which means, you know,
Speaker 3: people are you know, theoretically off work or on their
Speaker 3: way home. It's not home yet. That's why you wait
Speaker 3: until late o'clock.
Speaker 2: Well that's pretty late in the day after.
Speaker 4: That's pretty late in the day after a long trip
Speaker 4: and a lot of time zones and all that sort
Speaker 4: of stuff. For him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well look, I mean, you know, I understand how
Speaker 3: people feel about his age, but he'd been able to
Speaker 3: do this before and and so, you know, be interesting
Speaker 3: to see what's in the speech. The speech just about
Speaker 3: Israel and Ukraine. He had been planning an address about
Speaker 3: Ukraine before Hamas attack Israel in October seventh. So now
Speaker 3: we've got the sort of combined address. I wonder if
Speaker 3: it's his first Oval address. I have to check. But obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, presidents use the Old Office for these addresses
Speaker 3: very sparingly, not to dilute the significance of it and
Speaker 3: the power of it, and we'll see you know what
Speaker 3: he says and how Americans react with.
Speaker 1: David Drucker, Senior writer at The Dispatch. His latest book
Speaker 1: is In Trump's Shadow, The Battle for twenty twenty four
Speaker 1: in the Future of the GOP. Good to talk to you, David,
Speaker 1: Thanks a bunch anytime.
Speaker 3: Guys, Thank you, Armstrong and Getty.