Speaker 1: Good morning, peeps, and welcome to WOKF Daily with Meet
Speaker 1: your Girl Danielle Moody from the Home Bunker. Folks. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I find it difficult to turn my attention back
Speaker 1: domestically to the fuckery that is the Republican Party when
Speaker 1: there seem to be so many more pressing and serious,
Speaker 1: serious society altering, cultural altering, globally destabilizing things that are happening.
Speaker 1: To pay attention to the fact that House Republicans don't
Speaker 1: care about America. They don't care about government, they don't
Speaker 1: care about stability, they don't care about how we look
Speaker 1: in the world world, they don't care about America continuing
Speaker 1: to hold its its standing, and so on today's show,
Speaker 1: I bring on our friend Kurt Bardella, you know, former
Speaker 1: Republican Democratic now Democratic strategists, columnist and analysts, to talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the the disaster over the battle for the
Speaker 1: speakership that took three weeks to then anoint a basic misogynist,
Speaker 1: white supremacist, anti Islam, anti LGBTQ, I mean, anti anti
Speaker 1: anti you know, and just apparently wants America to live
Speaker 1: in some type of biblical puritanical bullshit that they make
Speaker 1: up right, that they make up for themselves to to
Speaker 1: say that it's through the domin of toxic masculinity and
Speaker 1: the suppression of women and people of color and black
Speaker 1: folks that you know that we will be great again.
Speaker 1: Mike Johnson, So I do. I find it hard And
Speaker 1: most of the time I kind of just want to
Speaker 1: ignore the fucking Republican Party as a whole. But I can't.
Speaker 1: We can't because ignoring them is dangerous, right. That is
Speaker 1: what happened with Donald Trump and just pretending that he was,
Speaker 1: you know, going to go away, that it was just
Speaker 1: a clown show, that it was just a side show,
Speaker 1: and that there was no real need to take seriously
Speaker 1: what this man was espousing in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: and so here we are. It's just that everything feels
Speaker 1: so fucking serious and so consequential and so damaging, right
Speaker 1: that you just kind of want to look at where
Speaker 1: there is possibility, And I'm I'm not quite sure in
Speaker 1: this moment, I'll be honest with you what possibility looks like.
Speaker 1: Because the anger that I have for this administration while
Speaker 1: is continuing to rise over their global stance on dehumanization.
Speaker 1: I know that I don't want this country to fall
Speaker 1: into the hands of the Mike Johnson's, the Marjorie Taylor Greens,
Speaker 1: the Donald Trumps of this country. I do not want that.
Speaker 1: And it just seems as if you know, it is
Speaker 1: very much midnight in America, and that we are closer
Speaker 1: to our demise, to the end of what we've understood
Speaker 1: as the American project, than we've ever been before. That
Speaker 1: we are closer to World War three than we have
Speaker 1: ever been before. And I do not say that lightly, right,
Speaker 1: I'm just telling you what I see and what I
Speaker 1: feel and what I know based on patterns of history.
Speaker 1: So on today's show, I get into conversation with our
Speaker 1: friend Kurt Bardella about what he thinks about the Republican Party,
Speaker 1: what he offers that Democrats should be doing in this moment,
Speaker 1: and kind of looking in his crystal ball to look
Speaker 1: ahead to a year from now, right when we will
Speaker 1: be just weeks away from the most consequential election of
Speaker 1: our time, and what do we even think that America
Speaker 1: will look like a year from now. That conversation with
Speaker 1: Kurt is coming up next, folks. You know that whenever
Speaker 1: I have the opportunity to bring my friends on to
Speaker 1: wok F daily. I am always thrilled, particularly when one
Speaker 1: of those friends is a former Republican who has come
Speaker 1: to the light side and left the dark side many
Speaker 1: many moons ago. At this point, now, Kurt Bardella, you know,
Speaker 1: oh you read is writing at USA Today La Times,
Speaker 1: and Kurt, let's just start with this. It took three weeks,
Speaker 1: three different people to finally get the Republicans to actually
Speaker 1: come together with a vote for the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: After multiple failed attempts, the booting of Kevin McCarthy, the
Speaker 1: failure of Jim Jordan after three cycles of votes, the
Speaker 1: failure of Steve Scalise. They have presented to the American people.
Speaker 1: Let me pull out his repertoire that I wrote down.
Speaker 1: Representative Mike Johnson out of Louisiana, who was elected on
Speaker 1: the Trump train in twenty sixteen. This is a man
Speaker 1: who has voted to steal the twenty twenty election, who
Speaker 1: believes in a national abortion ban, who opposes same sex marriage,
Speaker 1: who supported Trump's Muslim ban, who was one of the
Speaker 1: architects to help overthrow the twenty twenty election, and the
Speaker 1: list goes on, believes that divorce should be illegal is
Speaker 1: a white evangelical Christian to his core. This is who
Speaker 1: the Republican Party has put up. You tell me what
Speaker 1: people should take from that.
Speaker 2: This guy, Maga Mike as he's been already nicknamed, is
Speaker 2: really the Maga extremists we dream come true. This is
Speaker 2: exactly the type of figurehead that they have wanted to
Speaker 2: ascend to the speakership. And really it has been a
Speaker 2: journey for Republicans that began with the Tea Party revolution
Speaker 2: in twenty ten, that started with the initial overthrow of
Speaker 2: the traditional Republican established like John Bayner, like Paul Ryan,
Speaker 2: like Eric Cantor, and has now mowed over Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 2: and Steve Scalise, and has now given us this speaker
Speaker 2: who is the embodiment of what the architects of January
Speaker 2: sixth we're trying to achieve in the first place, trying
Speaker 2: to install into the positions of power people predominantly white men,
Speaker 2: with this radical viewpoint of extremism, that anyone who differs
Speaker 2: from this white evangelical casting is a threat. Yep, should
Speaker 2: be outlawed, should be made illegal. Someone who believes that
Speaker 2: the fact that we are headed towards becoming a majority
Speaker 2: minority country in the near future, that that needs to stop,
Speaker 2: that that's dangerous. These are people who espouse it with
Speaker 2: one hand, we need to be a nation under God,
Speaker 2: and in the other use the instruments of power to
Speaker 2: inflict damage and injury upon those who have less power,
Speaker 2: who are less fortunate, who have less resources. These are
Speaker 2: the same people who talk about God but have no
Speaker 2: problem human trafficking migrants from one part of this country
Speaker 2: to the other to make a political point. These are
Speaker 2: people who believe in quote unquote being pro life, but
Speaker 2: can't seem to muster the courage to pass laws that
Speaker 2: would stop innocent Americans from being mowed down by weapons
Speaker 2: of war everywhere that we look. This is exactly the
Speaker 2: type of country that people like Mike Johnson want, And
Speaker 2: it's not an accident that he is now the figurehead
Speaker 2: that's presiding over one of the branches of government. And
Speaker 2: it's incredibly disturbing that someone who played such a central
Speaker 2: role in trying to overthrow the twenty twenty election is
Speaker 2: now going to be in a position where he could
Speaker 2: refuse even bring up for a vote certification of the
Speaker 2: next presidential election.
Speaker 1: So this man is now two heartbeats away from the presidency.
Speaker 1: He is in the succession line of succession for the presidency.
Speaker 1: And while some people seem to have been taken off
Speaker 1: guard because he was not vetted, he's not a known
Speaker 1: quantity and name in the way that we have come
Speaker 1: to understand Matt Gates and a Lauren Bobert and a
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green and so on and so forth. That
Speaker 1: the bottom and sewer for which the Republican Party will
Speaker 1: go to pull out their leadership still seems to be
Speaker 1: a shock to people. And I'm just curious as to
Speaker 1: why you think that that is that mainstream media will
Speaker 1: turn this man into a normal, normal politician, which by
Speaker 1: virtue of the list that I read and that you
Speaker 1: just espoused is not is anything, but they will normalize him.
Speaker 1: And so I wonder while mainstream media chases its tail
Speaker 1: to try and both sides the hell out of this.
Speaker 1: Now that Republicans have installed maga mic, what's the goal here? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: what's what's what's the endgame? What's the win for them?
Speaker 1: Because this they wanted to cheer, right this they cheered,
Speaker 1: Where does it? Where does it go?
Speaker 2: I think that the endgame is what's started on January sixth.
Speaker 2: I think that their goal is to try to ensure
Speaker 2: that at no point in time will anyone who looks
Speaker 2: or things stiffly than them is allowed to achieve the
Speaker 2: rains of power ever again. And if that means throwing
Speaker 2: out democracy, so be it. If that means violence, so
Speaker 2: be it. If that means getting rid of all the
Speaker 2: democratic norms that have upheld this country for two centuries,
Speaker 2: so be it. They don't care about those things. They
Speaker 2: are willing to do and say and perpetrate any act
Speaker 2: of harm and injury against this country because they have
Speaker 2: convinced themselves that the ends justified the means, that it
Speaker 2: is a righteous war, righteous civil war that they are
Speaker 2: inflicting on the rest of us. And even though there
Speaker 2: are more of us than there are of them, they're
Speaker 2: going to do everything they can to silence us. You know,
Speaker 2: we see it all the time in the partisan Jerry
Speaker 2: Mandarin in states like Georgia, where they try to make
Speaker 2: sure that all the people who look like you and
Speaker 2: I do are grouped in one little area, have little representation,
Speaker 2: access to fewer resources, so that they can suppress and
Speaker 2: silence our voices. Mike, you know Maga. Mike is just
Speaker 2: the living embodiment of that ideology, you know, in a
Speaker 2: Brooks of Brothers suit, if you will, he will get
Speaker 2: the past from media because he appears more presentable than
Speaker 2: some of the other Mada like figure, some of the
Speaker 2: other Moguli cultists. But he's not. I mean, it's it's
Speaker 2: like there's people who try to convince us somehow that
Speaker 2: Glenn Youngkin isn't dangerous because he wears a little fleece
Speaker 2: vest once in a while. Yeah, it's like this is
Speaker 2: the trap that media falls into and sets for themselves
Speaker 2: over and over and over again. And now they're so
Speaker 2: busy trying to curry favor and access because that's what
Speaker 2: matters more to them, the inside baseball game of it all,
Speaker 2: that they will look past all of these other very
Speaker 2: public and aren't right to range statements that he has
Speaker 2: made about women's right to choose, about linking being gay
Speaker 2: to somehow being a pedophile, and yet he has nothing
Speaker 2: to say about people like Matt Gates, who you know
Speaker 2: allegedly sleep in traffic with underage women, be that as
Speaker 2: man like. It is mind blowing that the this far
Speaker 2: into Trump is and we're seven eight years now into
Speaker 2: this whole cycle of hell that the media continues to
Speaker 2: just fail. You know, there's that that Washington Post slogan,
Speaker 2: democracy dies in darkness. Now democracy died on your watch? Yeh,
Speaker 2: Like that's the slogan, because that's what's happened. And the
Speaker 2: normalization and the both sides and isms, the utter bullshit
Speaker 2: that we see day in and day out contributes to
Speaker 2: that and and and legitimizes these insane figures. I saw
Speaker 2: all week long the media toss around phrases like moderate
Speaker 2: to talk about Republicans who may not be willing to
Speaker 2: vote for an election denier, and yet at the end
Speaker 2: of the day they all did there is no moderate
Speaker 2: Republican part Like, what are you? Who are you talking about?
Speaker 2: And if the definition of a moderate is someone who
Speaker 2: just believes in democracy, then you better call an AOC
Speaker 2: a moderate. You better start calling the squad a moderate
Speaker 2: because they believe in democracy. And if that's the only
Speaker 2: criteria we're going to use, not for Republicans, and you
Speaker 2: better damn well apply that to democrats Otherwise, what the
Speaker 2: fuck are you talking about?
Speaker 1: What really worries me? As we are eight years deep
Speaker 1: into trump Ism, eight years deep into magaism. Is that
Speaker 1: there seems to be nothing that deters the Trump train,
Speaker 1: right that we thought that if you get rid of
Speaker 1: the person. The person is now saddled with foreign indictments
Speaker 1: ninety one charges, they will leave. If you show that
Speaker 1: all of these election deniers, these people who walked into
Speaker 1: courtrooms and lied right about the twenty twenty election, are
Speaker 1: now facing their own indictments. Oh, that will deter people, Right,
Speaker 1: it hasn't. It has incurred, and we are just months
Speaker 1: away from the calendar year changing to twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: to it being, yes, the most consequential election of our time,
Speaker 1: and Joe Biden's poll numbers right now, and everybody who
Speaker 1: listens to this show knows that I don't believe them,
Speaker 1: But I got to say something. I hadn't seen the
Speaker 1: poll numbers drop below forty and they are good and
Speaker 1: well below forty percent, and I think that is not
Speaker 1: the bottom. What do you make of how the conversation,
Speaker 1: the narrative needs to shift because everything is important. We
Speaker 1: just had another mass shooting. We are facing two wars
Speaker 1: right in two different regions of the world. You are
Speaker 1: seeing the alliances develop between different axes, right different from
Speaker 1: World War Two. So I'm just curious as to what
Speaker 1: does the case look like to make because there are
Speaker 1: so many cases and so many issues that are unfolding
Speaker 1: at one time.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the question that I would like people
Speaker 2: to be asked and polls isn't do you like Joe Biden?
Speaker 2: Do you approve of Joe Biden? Are you excited about
Speaker 2: Joe Biden? Because we already know what those answers are.
Speaker 2: In general, the question I care most about is are
Speaker 2: you willing to surrender our country to Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: MAGA extremists instead of voting for Joe Biden? Because that's
Speaker 2: really the choice. That's the only choice that we have
Speaker 2: right now heading in to twenty twenty four. It's either
Speaker 2: Joe Biden or it's giving the country to Donald Trump
Speaker 2: and Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson and all of these
Speaker 2: extremists that are dangerous. That's the pulling question I would
Speaker 2: like to see someone actually ask, because that's the only
Speaker 2: one that really matters, because that's the only choice we're
Speaker 2: going to have. I don't give a shit if you're
Speaker 2: excited about Joe Biden. Does your lack of enthusiasm mean
Speaker 2: you're willing to give the country to Donald Trump and
Speaker 2: the Republican Party because that's the only choice that we're facing.
Speaker 2: It is binary. It is one or the other. And
Speaker 2: I don't know about you, but it's not a hard
Speaker 2: choice for me to make to say, yeah, I'm fine
Speaker 2: staying the course with Joe Biden rather than turning our
Speaker 2: country and the range of power and a nuclear arsenal
Speaker 2: and the ability to declare war over to Putin's up
Speaker 2: at Donald Trump. Like this should not be a hard
Speaker 2: choice to make, frankly, and I think that's somewhat the
Speaker 2: case that we're going to have to make in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. It's not that Joe Biden is so great,
Speaker 2: that he's so awesome, that he's so inspirational and generational. No,
Speaker 2: it's very simple. The other side wants to wipe people
Speaker 2: like us off the face of this earth. The other
Speaker 2: side believes that you and I should be discriminated against
Speaker 2: and targeted and profiled because we look like what we
Speaker 2: look like, and we speak the truth about what's going
Speaker 2: on in this country. The other side believes that because
Speaker 2: you are a woman, you are less than a man,
Speaker 2: and that you shouldn't even be able to use the
Speaker 2: highways if you might be pursuing an abortion. The other
Speaker 2: side believes that it's totally acceptable for you to go
Speaker 2: to school, to a grocery store, to a place of worship,
Speaker 2: to a bullying alley, to a concert, and you may
Speaker 2: not come out of that alive because you were shot
Speaker 2: with the weapon of war that they say is the
Speaker 2: constitutional right for everybody to have. I don't know why
Speaker 2: it's such a hard choice for people when you look
Speaker 2: at that way to make Yeah, I think there's an
Speaker 2: obvious choice, and it's the complete opposite of the one
Speaker 2: that the modern Republicans are presenting to us. I think
Speaker 2: that they have made a huge political error and elevating
Speaker 2: Mike Johnson to the speakership. I think that this is
Speaker 2: someone who is the living, breathing illustration of everything that
Speaker 2: we have seen voters reject time and again in recent years.
Speaker 2: If Republicans think that doubling down on a national abortion
Speaker 2: ban is going to somehow work for them politically, I
Speaker 2: have seen no evidence of that. They think that relitigating
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election is going to work for them,
Speaker 2: I have seen no evidence of why that would be.
Speaker 2: So it's the old adage of be careful what you
Speaker 2: wish for, you might get it. Maggia, extreme is wanted
Speaker 2: when they're onn of the Speaker's chair, they wanted to
Speaker 2: elevate that person to become a national figure. Now you
Speaker 2: have it, Let's see how this really goes.
Speaker 1: You know, Kurt, everything that you just laid out is
Speaker 1: absolutely right, and it's the case that I feel like
Speaker 1: that needs to be made. I'm wondering, though, with the
Speaker 1: elevation of a Mike Johnson to the speakership, are we
Speaker 1: missing something here? Right? Because these people they're not looking
Speaker 1: to gain constituents, they're not looking to gain your vote.
Speaker 1: So I'm just curious, like, do you think that we
Speaker 1: are missing something like is there a game behind the
Speaker 1: game that is being played that we need to be
Speaker 1: aware of? Right? Because what I find is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we always joke, we say, oh, they're playing chess and
Speaker 1: they're playing checkers. They're they're playing chess and they're playing Yazi,
Speaker 1: like whatever it is is there. Do you foresee that
Speaker 1: there is another game, another pull that they are playing
Speaker 1: and banking on and we're not aware of right now?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think so, because if you were
Speaker 2: to ask seven days ago, Mike Johnson, if you think
Speaker 2: you're going to be the Speaker of the House, he
Speaker 2: would have said, what the hell are you talking about.
Speaker 2: Mike Johnson is a speaker that nobody wanted. This was
Speaker 2: not someone that people were pining for talking about leading
Speaker 2: up to this. I think that he is so in
Speaker 2: over his head that this is just going to be
Speaker 2: one blunder after another. It's just going to be amateur hour,
Speaker 2: and it's going to cost him their congressional majority in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. I don't think that Mike Johnson or
Speaker 2: anyone in his orbit have the slightest clue what to
Speaker 2: actually do next. Now. The level of scrutiny, the colonoscopy
Speaker 2: that he's about to experience, he has never seen anything
Speaker 2: like it before. He is unprepared for that. And while
Speaker 2: there might be a moment in time where the Republicans
Speaker 2: kind of rally around their speaker to try to wash
Speaker 2: away the embarrassment of the last three weeks, when pushed
Speaker 2: come the shove, it's the same dynamics that were impossible
Speaker 2: for Kevin McCarthy to navigate. They still exist right now.
Speaker 2: They just may not hate this guy as much as
Speaker 2: they hated Kevin McCarthy. Give it time, like someone is
Speaker 2: going to shoot their mouth up. Someone's gonna say, oh,
Speaker 2: this guy's in overhead. We may have made a mistake.
Speaker 2: Someone's gonna float. We might have to do this again. Like,
Speaker 2: I don't think this guy can get us to November
Speaker 2: of next year. It is a certainty that that is
Speaker 2: going to happen, and we will be reliving The Republicans
Speaker 2: certainly would be reliving this Night Mirror at least one
Speaker 2: more time between now and next year.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you real quick before I let you go.
Speaker 1: The government shut down is still looming. Right. All they
Speaker 1: did was kick the can down the road until November seventeenth, right,
Speaker 1: which is just a handful of weeks away. You now
Speaker 1: have somebody that is in the Speakership that is still
Speaker 1: a fractured caucus. You still have to work with Democrats
Speaker 1: in order to to actually get these twelve bills passed.
Speaker 1: Is this shutdown just inevitable?
Speaker 2: I think that they're gonna punt one more time and
Speaker 2: come up with a way to kind of give the
Speaker 2: speaker a few more weeks or months. I don't think
Speaker 2: that they're going to hold him accountable for whatever happens
Speaker 2: in the next twenty days, because they're just gonna say, listen,
Speaker 2: this is the hand he was dealt. He just became speaker.
Speaker 2: He doesn't know anything. Let's just get through this immediate
Speaker 2: thing and then focus on the bigger budgetary picture heading
Speaker 2: into next year. So I would not be surprised if
Speaker 2: they punt on this. Also, this is a situation where
Speaker 2: I think we'll see the elevation again of Mitch McConnell
Speaker 2: and the Senate Republicans starting to take a little bit
Speaker 2: more of a hands on approach since they are obviously
Speaker 2: more seasoned that they have been in the game more.
Speaker 2: This is a guy in Speaker Johnson who's never been
Speaker 2: at the negotiating table with the President the United States,
Speaker 2: with the Senate Republican leader, with the Democrat leaders, like
Speaker 2: he has no track record, no experience doing any of this.
Speaker 2: It's one thing the mouth off to talk radio about
Speaker 2: what you don't like is going on. I think to
Speaker 2: be in the room, to be in the room where
Speaker 2: the decisions are happening, to be at the negotiating table.
Speaker 2: And that's why I say he's in over his head.
Speaker 2: He's going to get a little honeymoon grace period. They will,
Speaker 2: they will give him a pass on whatever happens in
Speaker 2: the next three weeks. But after that that honeymoon is
Speaker 2: going to be over and they're just going to be
Speaker 2: right back to where they have happen, which is dysfunction junction.
Speaker 1: Do you think that we get Do you think that
Speaker 1: he gets booted?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Do you think that eventually a full of like the
Speaker 1: year in twenty twenty four, like, does he make it?
Speaker 2: No? No, I think that he'll get booted. I think
Speaker 2: that they'll say he's in over his head. He's an amateur,
Speaker 2: he's just not up for the job. Nothing personal against them,
Speaker 2: but but they're going to say we need we need
Speaker 2: a professional heading into twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Unreal? All right, Kurt, Well we will. We will hold
Speaker 1: it there and he'll come, but we will come back
Speaker 1: to you. We will put the lettuce out and see
Speaker 1: which turns for Earth, because that is the fiasco that
Speaker 1: we are in with Republicans holding the gavel, which I
Speaker 1: pray they will not hold in twenty twenty four. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, because God, I only wish I had
Speaker 1: a crystal ball. Kurt Bardella always appreciate you and your
Speaker 1: analysis on woke f Oh can.
Speaker 2: You see you? My friend?
Speaker 1: That is it for me today. Dear friends on woke
Speaker 1: f as always power to the people and to all
Speaker 1: the people. Power, get woke and stay woke as fun.