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A new week dawns with no Speaker of the House and no ground invasion of Gazam. Welcome to the fastest show in politics, as we pick things up on this Monday, the House returning to the Capitol with a speaker's race that starts all over again today with now nine candidates vying for the gavel in the US meantime beefing up its presence in the Middle East on concerns of a
potentially widening conflict. We're joined this hour by Terry Haynes of Pangaea Policy on next steps in finding a speaker, and with new polling now showing Donald Trump feeling the pitch of r FK's independent run for president, We're going to get analysis from our signature panel on all these stories.
Bloomberg Politics contributors Rick Davis and Genie Shanzano are with us for the hour where it begins and new members of the House trickling back into town here as they are set to start the process all over again, of course, the process of finding a new speaker. Republicans holding a closed door candidates forum once again tonight, start six thirty
pm Washington time. If you're playing along on your home game, and we have the largest number of candidates we have seen yet now nine members of the House running for speaker. Nine So where's the count when you need him? Eight line time, Yes, nine, and most Americans have never heard of them. Congressman Tom Emmer, the majority whip, by the nature of his job, may be the best known, but none seem to have a path to two seventeen. And the man who last held the job put it this
way yesterday on Meet the Press. This is not a time to play games.
This is This is embarrassing for the Republican Party.
It's embarrassing for the nation. Embarrassing, says Kevin McCarthy. Michael McCall, who of course chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was with us last week here on Bloomberg, echoing the sentiment on ABC this week, I have.
To say it's my tenth tournament Congress. This is probably one of the most embarrassing things I've seen, because if we don't have a Speaker of the House. We can't govern, and every day goes by, we're essentially shut down as a government. We have very important issues right now, Warren peace, and we cannot deal with an aid package or my resolution condemning amass and supporting Israel.
We can't.
You can't even pass a resolution condemning AMAS.
A resolution, never mind a bill which brings us to Billy House Bloomberg, Congress reporter. He's back with us now with big question marks. At the start of this week, Billy gets, good to see you. You're with us from the House of Representatives where this is all about to tip off here, We've got nine candidates. How's it going to work here? When voting begins, they all kind of make their stump speech tonight and then each round will bring some level of progress tomorrow. Is that how you see it?
Exactly? Tonight, around six thirty they gather behind closed doors for what seems like it will be a little bit like Hollywood Squares. Nine candidates each giving brief opening remarks and then one and a half hour question and answer period followed by closing remarks. Then tomorrow morning they begin balloting behind closed doors and of course, there's no winner until somebody gets a majority of the two hundred and twenty one member conference. So that's one hundred and eleven votes,
and that could take several rounds. Each round the lowest boat getter drops out, and so it could go for a long time.
So this is kind of like a ranked choice thing. I guess maybe that's not what we call it. But to Billy's point, each each vote, the person who got the lease rolls off the back. So the idea here is that by the end of the day we've coalesced around someone and Tom Emmer keeps getting the talk. Here he's the majority whip. Billy, by the nature of his job, you'd think he might have the institutional wherewithal to get this done. But they said the same thing about Steve'scalise.
How does it play for Tom?
Ever, right exactly, He's probably at the top of the list. There's others that are very competitive, maybe Byron Donald's, maybe Kevin Hearn who headed an informal caucus of Conservatives.
But the problem.
With Scalise and Jordan both were that they got the hundred eleven, they just couldn't get the two hundred and seventeen on the House floor, and Emmer has had a long standing kind of tense relationship with former President Trump, So the big question would be if he landed on the floor, would Trump direct his supporters to block Emmer or are the negotiations said to be going on now.
Unbelievable. So now this Trump thing is all about the fact that Emmer voted to certify the election. Right He's publicly been a Trump supporter at every turn.
Otherwise pretty much so, although he's kind of it at times, suggested when he was head of the political arm for the Republicans that members should sometimes worry about their districts more than pacifying Trump. That's kind of set off some suggestions there's tension. But right, he and Austin Scott are the only two of the nine who did not go along with certifying both Arizona and Pennsylvania in the twenty twenty election.
And that's all it takes in this I guess modern Republican party here, So you're in for a long one I guess Billy nine speeches. They do they get a clock on these at the candidate's former thease get five or ten minutes or how does it work?
My understanding. They each open up with about a two minute statement, then they have the group question and answered, then a closing statement of about a minute.
Excellent. Great to have you back, Billy. If you're curious, by the way, to see the most authentic shot on Capitol Hill, join us on YouTube search Bloomberg Global News. You can watch this program now and you can see Billy House in the spot where it all happens in the House gallery. It's great to see you, Billy, the
most authentic Congress reporter in the appropriate setting. As we add Terry Haynes to the mix, I thought about you all weekend, Terry Haynes, Pangaea Policy Founder, because we've had such great conversations around all of this, and Terry is actually one of the only people in the Capitol who understands this, the way this works with a speaker a
pro tempt. He helped to write the language here after nine to eleven as a senior House staffer and has a different view than some folks do about all of this. And we'll probably get to that, Terry, because we still have two resolutions ready to go that would make Patrick McHenry an empowered speaker. But we're going to go through the motions here all over again. Hold the chain of command conversation, because we have nine people who think they should hold that gabble, yet none of them seem to
have a path to two seventeen. Is this a total waste of time exercise in futility this week? Or does someone emerge as a potential speaker?
You know, I think it's I think it's less likely rather than more likely that we get a speaker this week. But the because I think, frankly, people aren't exhausted enough. What you had in the first two rounds essentially were very known quantities that had a great deal of support from what i'll call the purest wing of the of the House Republican Conference. We don't have that this time.
What we have are a bunch of folks that can put themselves up is compromise candidates, including mister Emmer, who's by far the most well known of them. As you said and as Billy said, but you know, the essential problems the same, which is, you know, there's no obvious
path to two seventeen. Number one, number two, It's very unlikely that the vast majority of these people, other than mister Emmer have the ability to have the experience, I should say, with everybody in the House, to feel kind of trusted enough that there's actually a track record there that they you know, that would make folks on the centrist wing and the purest wing feel that they would
have a decent speaker. So I think we're going to go through this exercise, and what we're going to have is, after two rounds where the more conservative, well known candidates don't do well, you're going to have a group of folks that you know, frankly aren't senior enough or trust it enough. And then we'll get down to brass tax figure out what the who that is, who the next
speaker is for real. They may jump over that and end up with em or that's entirely possible, but it doesn't feel like that right now.
Yeah, fewer than seven of the nine have been in Congress fewer than ten years, which I find interesting. You write in your note to clients, Terry, there's no forcing event requiring House Republicans to act immediately, a newpoint to November seventeenth, which of course is the date of a
government shutdown. There are many in the Republican Conference who are not phased by that, And I wonder if it's a potential invasion of Gaza that actually lights the fire here and creates new urgency under this process when resources will be badly needed in Israel and that supplemental budget request the president's making has to be dealt with.
Well, I wouldn't say it's the let me answer it this way. I wouldn't say it's the Gaza invasion. I would say it's the prospect of expansion into a regional war. If you get some sort of serious pushback through the goal on heights or something, and it becomes clear that Israel's going to be in a two front war here, I think, you know, things get booted along pretty well.
Firstly.
Secondly, I think the president's request alone isn't enough to do it. As as of yesterday anyway, I haven't seen anything different. The formal request in its entirety still hasn't gone to the Senate or the Congress. It's gone part of it's gone to the Senate, the foreign aid part, but the border stuff is not. And so I think that the Senate is, by the way it is, intends to try to start dealing with the request. Not this week,
but next week. So and the Senate I think is far more likely to shape the final the final version of the aid requests for Israel and Ukraine than the House is. So you know, the House I think has got frankly, got another couple of weeks where they can be on the sidelines and things don't matter very much from from a policy perspective.
Frankly, Serry Punchbowl is reporting that Donald Trump and Tom Emmer spoke on Saturday. We know that Donald Trump's apparently not a fan because Emmer voted to certify the election. It's you can you can have a whole separate conversation about that. But to what extent, after the implosion we saw with the Jordan endorsement, to what extent does Donald Trump matter here?
I think Trump matters in the sense that that no matter who the nominee is, that he can't he can't go strong negative and that's probably on the nominee and
that's probably what Emmer is trying to foreclose. You know, I haven't said, you know, Billy, you and Billy talked about this and put it very well, but I haven't seen anything that indicates, like sort of hard evidence to indicate that that Emmer is, you know, sort of hard over negative on Trump, and you know a lot of people have been probing from a lot of different points of view, So you know, Trump and Emmer probably need to be generally good with each other to go forward.
You don't want the person who's the former president and the person leading in the polls for the next nomination to be negative on you. But at the same time, you know Emmer doesn't need to be captured by Trump either, So there's there's got to be a kind of an uneasy truce that goes forward.
Here well as we try to figure out points of influence. Then Terry Kevin McCarthy endorsed Tom Emmer. He talked about it yesterday I meet the press. Some folks thought that was like getting the cover of the front of the Whai's box here. Does that help or hurt Tom Emmer to have Kevin McCarthy's support.
I think that probably helps. Frankly, you have again, you know, everybody knows the math, but you've got ninety five percent of the conference who would have been fine with having McCarthy stay in the in the seat anyway. So to have McCarthy in your corner and is important. Number one. Number two two. By implication, McCarthy and others can also weigh in with Trump to just say, hey, look, you know,
just you know, back off the guy. He's all right in so many words, And I think that's very likely happening.
So what do you think of this process? They go back into eleven hundred long worth tonight. I believe that's the ways it means. Committee room, close the doors at six point thirty, everybody gets a couple of minutes. We've got nine to go through here, Terry, and the voting will leave someone off the island in each round. What do you make of the process here based on what we've seen not work already?
I think the process allows The process allows aggregation. Let me put it that way, to the extent that any of the other eight have support, no matter how small, they can help em or actually roll up a pretty large vote if they then say, Okay, if it's not me, it's going to be Emmer. Let's say and Emmer is. I think working on that assumption as well, that one way he can present himself very strongly is to make sure that the other candidates are available to endorse him.
And I think the vast majority of them will either explicitly or implicitly endorse him, So he got to be in a pretty good position going in. So we are back to, you know, unlike the last two rounds, where we're back where the Centrists essentially exercise some power to make sure that the speaker wasn't going to end up being too conservative and put the majority in them personally in some peril. I think we're in a position here where Emmer is going to try to be a little
bit more of a tabula rasa and appeal across the board. Lightly, but across the board. It's the best gambit he's got, so he might as well shoot.
It well, as you make in your note to clients. And as you just said, you don't think we're going to have this solved this week. And I only have thirty seconds left here, Terry. Does that mean Patrick McHenry drops a CR on the floor to avoid a shutdown if it comes to it.
If it comes to it, yeah, but we've still got three or four weeks left to go. And you know, as I've said before, and we'll say again, when there is an actual crisis, whether it's a CR or an invasion of Israel or whatever it is. You're going to see this whole. We can't act because there's no speaker. Thing get dropped like a hot potato.
You heard it again from Terry Haynes. He helped to write the rules and we appreciate that. Look at McCaw chat, he drops that gavel every time. Join us on YouTube so you can see Patrick McHenry and Terry Haynes. I'm Joe Matthew. This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Sound on podcast. Catch the program live weekdays at one Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, Tune in alf bloom dot com and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Should the Republican led House start taking cues? Maybe some direction from what happened in eighteen fifty five. We talked about this back in January when Kevin McCarthy went fifteen rounds. Remember they said how long could this go on?
For?
Try two months? That's what happened in eighteen fifty five. Libby Cantrell at PIMCO is writing about it. In her note to clients today, the deeply divided House took more than two months after twenty one candidates vied for the speakership. And get this, one hundred thirty three rounds might take us a minute to break that record. Ultimately, representative banks of Massachusetts be representative aken of South Carolina one ozh
three to one hundred. That was six years before the Civil War, and, as Libby writes Congress as the nation was deeply divided over slavery, immigration more broadly, the future of the Republic. Is that starting to sound familiar? Let's assemble our panel. Rick Davis and Jeanie Shanzano join Bloomberg Politics contributors with the view from both sides of the aisle. It's great to see you both here. We got through
another weekend, but we still have no speaker. And Rick, I'll start with you nine up here for the candidate's forum tonight. Will anything happen this week that didn't happen last week?
Yeah?
I think my bet would be you'd see kind of a reoccurrent the Groundhog Day effect where the somebody will win, you know, a plurality, you know of the Republican Caucus. Get the nomination probably Emmer first round up, you'll go down the floor and you'll get nowhere near two hundred and seventeen votes.
So you know, Nod needs in.
Front how long he wants to stay in so he'll he'll get as many votes as he wants until he realizes he can't get to two seventeen, and we'll do it all over again. I think the point Terry made earlier was that if you think we're going to have a speaker this week, you're probably much more optimistic than anybody else on Capitol Hill.
So it's shades of eighteen fifty five, Genie, do we go one hundred and thirty three rounds? I mean, I guess at a certain point here you just wonder how long we could go without a speaker. I know we've got a government shut down set for November seventeenth, but hey, we could roll right through that too.
Yeah, Joe, I like how you're saying, you know, on the bright side, we're not just you know, on the cusp of the civil war. That's pretty much the optimistic view of this. And you know the reality is is that unless they are prepared to lock the doors when they go into that caucus this week and keep them shut in there with no breaks until they get to two seventeen and promise not to violate their pledge when
they come out to the floor. We aren't going to see a speaker this week, and of course they're not going to do that. Nobody is close to getting two seventeen at this point as far as we can tell. So we are right back where we started from what twenty days ago now, and the reality is is that they are going to have to either agree to put party above self or they are going to have to go with a temporary, you know, speaker, you know, potentially
a McHenry, a speaker pro tempt more powers. Because of course we are what eight legislative days from November seventeenth when our government shuts down, amongst many other things that are looming very closely ahead.
So we've still got our eyes on Patrick McHenry. Then, Rick, and I wonder what you think about Terry's view on that. We know how Terry feels. He thinks that Patrick McHenry could just start acting like the speaker today, bring a bill to the floor. The language allows for it is that how this ends.
It could I mean, I think Terry's point about you need an action forcing event like the cr winding out or some other important event to.
Make things happen.
And by the way, that's always the case in the House of Representatives. They never get their work done early. And so I think that's one preregreisent too. It really does. It is kind of like a shame that Patrick McHenry is where he is, because he knows that if he starts acting like Speaker and starts taking on the role, that he's doomed with his own caucus. Right, he is one of these guys who's actually pretty well liked amongst everybody.
He gets a lot done.
He cut these deals with Biden on debt limits and things like that, and.
He's having the time of his life and his career.
And now he's in a job where everyone's going to hate him no matter what he does. And so I think he's just shocked that he's found himself in this position. You see his interviews, and he's forlorned as to what he's supposed to do. And by the way, nobody's given him advice.
Right.
The former Speaker McCarthy says, no, we want emmer now. Oh, but we wanted Jordan then, I mean like they want their own people. No one's saying, hey, why don't you do this? And the Democrats are just waiting to laugh about it. So I think it's he's stuck in a really intolerable position.
He's basically going to have to decide.
That, you know, it's more important to act like a speaker than to have a comfy relationship with his own caucus.
Well, we may find out how much of a grown up he really is if that's the case. We heard from Michael McCall over the weekend, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs. He was talking on ABC this week about the state of affairs around the world creating its own level of urgency. Unclear if it's enough your point, though, Rick, there could be some event that spawns action here on Capitol Hill. McCall thinks it's already happening.
I want a speaker in the chair so we can move forward and go my issues, my Committee of War and Peace. It's too dangerous right now. The world's on fire, and this is so dangerous what we're doing. And most importantly, it's embarrassing because it empowers and emboldens our adversaries like Chairman she who says, you know, democracy doesn't work.
The world is on fire right now, Rick, what's the approach if you're a candidate standing before the Republican Conference tonight, what do you have to say about Israel and Ukraine, never mind Taiwan and border security? As the President wants to put all these together into one Billy and Mitch McConnell out over the weekend supporting this, What do you have to say to get support in the House on this matter.
Yeah, Look, I think generally speaking, the House is willing to receive these kinds of offers. We heard from Terry that there's not a lot of clarity around the border situation. But that's like protecting the United States's democracy, right, I mean, like we talk about putting money into Taiwan, putting money into Ukraine, putting money into Israel to protect their democracies. The border money is to protect our democracy. So they have a lot of you know, sort of connective tissue
that exists there. And I think that's all these guys have to do is say, look, I don't really care which one of these that you care most about. You ought to care about our country most and our position in the world, and we're under assault by all these other pretenders and we've got to do something about it. And this is the time. The reality is, it doesn't matter how many of them tore sent. If you had an open vote, you have three hundred people vote for this,
you know, combined bill in the House of Representatives. It's just the crazy eights and others who don't want to see government act on anything. We're trying to hold up the process.
You've got sixty billion in there for Ukraine, though, Genie, would the message tonight not be break it up, Let's get standalone own votes on Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and yes, by god, border security. Wouldn't that be a standing out in the room Or is that just Matt Gates clapping?
Yeah, you'd have some, you'd probably have those eight clapping. The reality is is that they do not have the votes to pass this, and so they are going to have to struggle to move this forward. And you know, it's fascinating because you'd think, on the one hand, what happened last week, both sides tired each other out by voting down their favored skit candidates, and yet that doesn't
seem to happen. Terry just said, they're not exhausted. I don't know what it's going to take to get these folks exhausted, but we're all exhausted watching this, and so they need to look around the world and see. To McCall's point, what is going on and what struck me this weekend was over and over for the first time we heard the word from Republicans that they are embarrassed. We've been using that word, but they haven't. And so
maybe that's a sign exhaustion coming. But if it's not, we are in for more of this until they decide. And in the meantime, you've got Ukraine, you've got Israel, you've got the border, all of these issues, not to mention Taiwan, and we've got a government that is shutting down in you know, just about eight working days.
Incredible, that's incredible to think about. Patrick McHenry. Uh, he's just going to be swinging that gavel harder and harder and harder until this is resolved. Genie Shanzano and Rick Davis, great to have you both with us here as we turn to the campaign trail coming up. Israel is having an impact in the Republican primary, and we've got new numbers out today that for the first time codify what
Rick and Genie were talking about. RFK Junior splitting off from the Democrats to run an independent campaign appears to be having an impact on Donald Trump.
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The conflict in Israel is finally having an impact on the Republican campaign trail as candidates look for any opportunity to find daylight between them and a race that is still deadlocked here and we're going to look at new numbers coming up to show just how well Donald Trump is doing with regard to the rest of the field, though RFK Junior remains a bit of a question mark. Let's reassemble our panel. Jeanie Shanzo and Rick Davis are with us Bloomberg Politics contributors as we see a new
ad drop. I don't know if you guys saw this coming from the Never Back Down pack. This is the Ronda Santis pack. He's trying to go after Nicky Haley, remembering that she was the UN ambassador on the matter of Israel, and what he apparently sees is her history of supporting Palestini in causes. You can hear the ad it's called Nicky flip flops Covin Harley. If you believe that it advances US interests to provide food, jobs, homes to the people of the West Bank.
And Gossam, Yes, I mean I think that we need to do whatever we can't protect the region anytime that we can help mankind, regardless of where they are in what country they're in.
It's essentially a string of comments from her on video in that first instance, testifying as UN ambassador on Capitol hill Rick, What do you make of this among candidates who really probably don't have much difference when it comes to the issue of Israel. Will this get to be a louder element on the campaign trail?
You know, I don't think so. I think this is more representative of kind of a you know, flagging campaign by Ron de Santists to try and figure out who's next to him that he can try to run down in order to pick up some extra oxygen votes. In Iowa, he's having a hard time moving now past his sort of fifteen percent that we see in the polls a lot in Iowa, even less in New Hampshire. I think by and large Nicky Haley has over taking him in New Hampshire, and of course is considered one of the
two favorite sons for South Carolina. So he's in a tough spot. He's not running against Donald Trump anymore. He's trying to be now preserve his second place, which I think is pretty much over. So he's got a narrow focus here. I doubt if much is going to get picked up on this. Remember she's saying all these things, is she represented the Trump administration an attack on Nicky
Haley as an attack on Donald Trump. Most of these guys aren't got stomach for that, so she's got some protection in that regard.
Well, we've got new numbers out from USA today Suffolk University Genie Trump fifty eight, Desantus twelve forty six percent lead Haley eleven. So Desantas and Haley essentially tied here.
And it's the hypothetical that's getting all the talk. We've talked about the impact or not that RFK Junior could have on this race, and it seems to be bearing out here with the headline in US today today it's a tie with a year ago Joe Biden Donald Trump each command thirty seven percent of the vote in a hypothetical matchup as independent Robert F. Kennedy Junior Genie cost Donald Trump what would have been his narrow lead. So, if you were wondering the impact it plays out in
this poll. How much of a problem for Trump is RFK Junior?
You know, I think he is an enormous problem. And the fact is, and you know, the Clinton folks can tell you this from there, go at the presidential election in twenty sixteen, when the elections are going to be as tight as we expect this one will be. In twenty twenty four, an independent candidate like an RFK junior, or in the case of twenty sixteen for Hillary Clinton and Jill Stein, in one or two of these tight states can be the difference of a few thousand votes,
which cost you the electoral college. So I think critically important for these candidates is to watch the state by state polls on this, and that's where you can see this costing enough votes to move the electoral college and so I think this is an enormous concern for the Trump folks. What's fascinating is when RFK entered this race, it was the Biden folks who are terribly concerned. I By the way, they still need to be concerned, because again, a few thousand votes can cost him a state like
Pennsylvania or Arizona, or Minnesota or Michigan. But now it's the Trump folks feeling the same heat, and that has got to be a concern.
You predicted this, Rick Davis, when Arek Junior left the Democratic field to run as an independent. Is there going to be a race now between RFK and Trump to seize on the vaccine denier vote.
Yeah, no, it's it's a tricky calculus for Trump. Trump tends to run against everybody all the time, so this is kind of not unwelcome to him. I would say it comes at a bad time for Trump because he does seem to be making up some headway with independent voters, and now all of a sudden, you know, they've got an independent to vote for, and so they may certainly
the more conservative ones may gravitate that way. I think a lot of this, though, just has to be reminded constantly, we're in a deadlock in the country, right, Genie mentioned the twenty sixteen election almost dead, even twenty twenty election almost dead. Even this one is going to be almost dead even no matter who the nominees of the two parties are. So I think that one of the things that we're going to be talking about a lot is
the effect of these third party candidates. I would say Cornell West has as much potential impact in a state that's key to Joe Biden, like Michigan, than JFK would have against Donald Trump, even though it could it could manifest itself more nationally, and then we're all holding our breath to see what happens with those no label guys because they enter this race and you have more capacity for you know, third party candidates than you even have today.
That's right, Genie, talk to me about Cornell West. He's got four percent in this poll. Rick was very eloquent there, four percents, enough to tip a race in a state like Michigan or Georgia. How concerns should Joe Biden be about this?
Very concerned? It is the same argument, and the real concern with Cornell West, it is a concern that he is going to pull not just from Democrats overall, which he could in type states, but also young people who are very attracted to somebody like Cornell. Two people on the progressive left who are the activists in the party, the people who get out to vote, and young people. And anytime you're talking about Democrats, there's two constituencies you
cannot afford to lose, young people and African Americans. So those are the two you always want to watch in these polls, and Joe Biden has a huge problem in both of those areas, particularly young people, and so this is something they have been trying to combat. But how they do that is very, very challenging given the negatives Biden has, which is one he can't surmount, which is his age.
Unreal. I hope you're listening to Rick and Jeanie. If all this stuff happens, if everybody jumps in, we get an old label's candidate, it is going to be a circus next year.
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We are in the same place now we were on Friday. There are just more members looking for the gavel nine, as we told you, and we're joined in studio here ahead of our conversation with Mick mulvaney by Jack Fitzpatrick Bloomberg. Government eats and breathes this stuff. You're supposed to be reporting on the budgeting process, of course appropriations, but we can't do that because we can't do anything until this is solved. It's interesting, though, with your experience covering Capitol Hill,
you know all nine of these members. Tom Emmer seems to be the closest thing to a front runner. If you're the majority whip and you can't close this deal, can anyone.
Well, they've been having trouble counting votes lately, even before Emmer was running for Speakers, so that's there are plenty of difficulties.
Also say the same thing about Steve Scalice, right, But the point is these are the guys with the phone numbers and the relationships. Yeah, so if they can't do it, who can't.
It's an almost impossible task, especially for anybody with that much of a record. So Scalise was two establishment. Evidently Jim Jordan had made too many enemies. They are looking for a fresh face, but it's very difficult to get a fresh face with the relationships to build upon, with the established ability to count votes. Emmer's also a big
X factor. I don't know if he's a favorite or what, because you have to decide, well, former President Trump has to decide exactly what their relationship is, if he's going to help him or hurt him. You know, if he is seen if Emma is seen as the next face of the establishment, that's not a good thing for him.
So he really could swing either way. But he's a very big name.
Clearly, what do you make of this effort by his office to kind of show him as a Trump guy? Even got a picture framed photo of him in the office. But he voted to certify the election, and that's a mortal sin, right.
I think we're in the process of defining what is the mortal sin? What defines your relationship to Trump? Is it the vote on the twenty twenty certification? Is it other policy issues? Emmer was not somebody who was impossible to work with among Republicans in Congress. But Trump needs to decide which slights our deal breakers to him. And yeah, I mean Emmer is not quite as closely tied to
Trump as somebody like Byron Donald's. But Trump has to define what kills a relationship, what burns that bridge.
Didn't we learn last week that it doesn't matter or Jim Jordan would be speaker? All right? Trump endorsed him, supposedly worked for him. The lost.
The Trump endorsement is not everything. And as we learned with Jordan, you could be the closest to Trump, you could be Trump's favorite, but that does not necessarily ingratiate you with members of the Armed Services Committee, the Appropriations Committee, swing district members. So you you need to have a very, very wide reach. There's not one single king maker who picks somebody here.
All right. I have to have whenever you come and ask you one super wonky question because you're Jack and you can answer it. I love it. Spending bills supposed to originate in the House. Looks like the Senate is actually going to do this. When it comes to this one hundred billion dollar plus supplemental budget request that the President has. We've talked about it a lot on this broadcast. That includes a bunch of stuff, including Israel and Ukraine.
There's a way, though, for them to use a different vehicle to get this done Senate over the House while still playing by the rules.
They have not decided, to my knowledge, on a vehicle. But the Senate sometimes will take a House past bill they are supposed to, or at least traditionally, they have limited themselves to relevant appropriations bills. I'd point out that the Constitution itself specifically says it's tax bills that are supposed to originate in the House, and then there was a long tradition saying, well, that's any money bill. So really this is a matter of what traditions you set,
what traditions you follow. If the Senate says it's doing this, what really matters is do they have the support to move quickly. A lot of the time they rely on unanimous consent to get things moving quickly in the Senate. So it's more a matter of the politics of the Senate than a piece of the Constitution.
For our listeners and viewers to understand. Though they would take a House Past bill. Essentially do a big highlight, big copy, delete, put in their own language, pass it, send it back.
Yeah, tradition.
The tradition is it's an HR something House Bill one two, one hundred whatever. That is a matter of the Constitution and also tradition. And you know, is there a point of order raised by somebody in the Senate that they have to work through, But yes, they It is not that unusual for the Senate. It's unusual, but it's not un of for the Senate to say, you know what, we're actually going to act quickly.
Now, we're going to take the lead. That really is more a matter of right now.
There are a lot of Senators who say the House isn't able to do anything. They want to take control. There are a number of Republican senators who do want Ukraine funding to be attached in this next big spending bill.
It's the politics that drive it.
And if they decide, you know what, we can find something and copy and paste our bill into that House pass bill, that is in line with tradition.
Basically, great stuff. I love it. Good to see Jack Fitzpatrick. As always, we'd probably get fired if we had this conversation anywhere other than Bloomberg, which I love. We put our wonky hats on whenever Jack comes to join us here in the studio. Mick mulvaney must have a wonk hat hidden somewhere. Obviously, based on his resume, he knows all about it. It's good to see you, sir, back with us here on Bloomberg. He helped to found the
Freedom Caucus. He also helped to run the Trump White House as acting chief of staff, and he carried a lot of other business cards while he was at it. But Mick knows the players were talking about here nine more up to bat tonight here, Mick, I'm not even sure where to start with you, my goodness. You must you must look forward to these conversations on Mondays. What are they going to ask me to predict? Now? The fact is it seems to be getting more complicated, isn't it.
I do look forward to these conversations because you never know what you're going to get. Is it more complicated? Yeah, because your introduction is not entirely right. I don't know, Okay, guys, and that's why itself should tell you something. Okay, there's a couple of folks who you know. I know of them, but I didn't spend any time with them because a lot of them didn't get there to twenty seventeen, twenty nineteen, or I think, in the case of Byron Donald's might
have been sworn in in twenty twenty one. So these are brand new people vying to be Speaker of the House. Doesn't mean you can't do a good job. I think it makes it harder. But what it does mean is that you're really an unknown quantity. Look that the simple fact there's nine people running means that there is no perceived front runner. I like Tom Emmer. I think Tom be a great speaker. He's certainly a member of leadership.
But of his entry into the race cleared the field, it didn't, which means that not everybody sees him as the front runner.
Yeah, I guess we're going to do a candidate's forum here with all nine. They get a couple of minutes to speak to the room. Mick. This is not a very friendly crowd though, right we heard stories last week of people yelling, the F words being thrown around, people getting pretty feisty at eleven hundred long Worth. What's going to happen when the doors close.
Yeah, No, that's the Matt Gates thing. I don't think it's I don't think it's it's not broad yet. Is it's broader than it should be? Don't get me wrong. But a lot of the story you heard, and some of them came from McCarthy about how, you know a lot of folks want to shout at Matt Gates. I think that's probably fair. It's not just Matt, but that's sort of emblematic of that particular subgroup of the caucus.
My question is this, and we talked about Matt Gates really talking about the seven or eight people that voted against McCarthy. Can anybody that they support get elected? That's my question because you know, if I'm Don Bacon, and I know Donna Donald's a really good guy, and if I'm Don Bacon and my objection is that I don't want to reward Matt Yates for taking out Kevin McCarthy, Am I going to vote for anybody that Matt Yates
is okay with? This was what herd Jim Jordan. And conversely, does anybody that Matt Yates and his group doesn't like have the ability to get the votes because they seem to want to vote as a block. So it's a really bizarre kind of dynamic where I'm not sure they got two seventeen for anybody right now. In fact, I don't know if I told you this or not. I lose track away. I told the stories. So I talked to Mark Ammaday, one of the funniest members of Congress.
He's from Nevada, and I talked to him last week. He said, make we don't have two hundred and seventeen votes for Jesus, Mary and Joseph put together. So it's going to be an interesting Yeah, good luck this afternoon. Boys, have a great time.
Yeah, it's Libby Cantrell writes effective in her latest note to clients that I've been referring to a bit today, Mick is. The longer the house is without a speaker, the more the House becomes the price taker, not the price setter, talking about whatever the Senate might be about to send over in terms of a supplemental budget request that we know is going to top one hundred billion dollars.
Do you agree with this general conventional wisdom. The longer this goes, the more likely it is that's going to pass.
Yeah, and more like and I think, by the way, I hadn't thought of it in that terms. But that's that is the exact right way to look at If your markets, what do you think you're wondering, what's going to pass? Exactly what the President asks? That's it. Whatever one and two hundred and ten, pick a number at one point four trillion. It doesn't make any difference. Right now, it's going to pass because the Senate will pass it as is. There'll be enough Republican votes to go along
with this. Keep in mind the I think the lion's shareff not the majority of the money is actually Ukraine money, not is not Israel money. But it's going to pass sixty billion. And then the House is too chaotic. And it's not that it's just chaotic, Joe, it's that when you're spending all your time talking about the speakership, it's harder then switch gears and have substantive disagreements on policy with a bill. You lose the moral high ground when
you can't get your act together. So there's gonna be probably you know, enough Democrats Republicans who will vote with every Democrat that if it comes to the floor on the House, it'll pass. Now, that's going to be part of the discussion right tonight is the conservatives, biscal conservatives are going to want to know from each of the nine contenders, how do you propose to deal with a supplemental spending bill and how do you propose to deal
with the government funding bill. It's gonna be a big part of the conversation this evening.
So the only answer for that room is break them up. Right, You're gonna say, if I'm speaker, I will not I will vote individually on Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan on the border. Is that not the winning answer?
It's the winning answer. But then what happens when nothing passes? And listen, you could afford technically not to pass anything for Ukraine and Israel. It's a huge political price to pay. Don't get me wrong, and I'm not suggesting it, but the world doesn't really end in Washington, d C. If you don't fund Ukraine and Israel, at least for a short period of time. If you don't fund the government,
the government shuts down. And you and I have talked about how that's not nearly as big a deal in the real world as people think it is, but Washington's not the real world. They think it's the end of the world up there if the government shuts down. So yeah, you might be able to play checkers and say, look, we're going to make sure that every approached bill comes to the floor individually. We're going to make sure we separate the vote, separate out the voting for Ukraine and
for Israel. But at the end of the day, it's coming back married up from the Senate. What are you going to do then? But you're not going to do anything. You're going to shut the government down. Are you going to take what the Senate sends you.
If the government's set the shut down. We've been talking about this, and you've heard the conversation. Will Patrick McHenry be the one to come the rescue? Terry Haynes at Pangaea says they wrote the rules in the wake of nine to eleven. He could bring a bill to the floor right now if he wanted to, and this whole conversation about powers of pro ten will be quickly forgotten if we have to act immediately. Do you agree with that?
I have certainly heard that. Okay, let me just give you the other side, and I don't have a strong feeling in one way or the other. I don't think anybody's got a strong feeling because we're in such unsharded waters. But the other side of the argument is this, and the better example is the funding bill as opposed to say,
the Ukraine and the Ukraine AD bill. So let's say the funding Bill goes through under this temporary authority of Patrick and Henry, and let's say that included is a CR But included is there's a policy that treats Bloomberg Corporation very poorly, cost you guys hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars, thousands of jobs. There's a policy change. I don't know what it might be, but you can imagine the situation. Are you going to sit back and
take it or are you going to sue? Are you going to file a lawsuit saying that Congress was not properly constituted and that this law is null and void that negatively impacts me. Regardless of whether or not that's a meritorious claim. In the long run, it's going to add added uncertainty to what comes out of that building.
And that is not good right now. So I think everybody prefers that not go the pro tem way because it is so murky, and while your other commentator may be absolutely right, it may take us six months or a year to courts to figure out if that were the case or not.
Isn't that something just what we need now? A court challenge? Spending time with Mick mulvaney, I have to ask you, Mick, before you go about the Trump effect. There's concern that he's going to, I guess, somehow work against Tom Emmer because Emmer voted to certify the election. Do you believe that would it even matter? Wouldn't Jim Jordan be speaker if it did?
Well? You know Trump, it's always easier to create than it is excuse me to destroy that it is create. And Trump is much better at making sure telling you who's not going to be elected than he is telling you who's going to be elected. He can prevent somebody from winning in an election, but he's shown a spotty record on getting people across the finish line. Go look at a Georgia Senate races for evidence of that. So I think he wasn't able to get the votes for
Jim Jordan. That shows Trump's limitations inside the building. Keep in mind this is a very personal vote. This is not a policy vote. This is who you want to be your leader. And people are a lot more willing to push back on Donald Trump on this, and they might be on immigration or taxes. So I don't think Trump has the ability to get anybody across the finish line, but he might have the Jews to prevent it from
from going to mister Emmer. Now that being said, you asked a question to be previous guests, how long are you on the outs with Trump? You're only on the outs with Trump as so long as you want to be. You can always get back.
On the island. Nick mulvaney knows firsthand. By the way, this is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Sound on podcast Catch us Law I have weekdays at one Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen non demand wherever you get your podcasts.
It was the first televised interview of the Five Eyes. Did you see this on sixty minutes last evening? They're all sitting around the same table with Scott Pelley. The Five eyes. This is the Intelligence Alliance. Intelligence leaders from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, and
they got together to issue a warning on China. First person I thought of was Craig Singleton at the Foundation for Defensive Democracies, who talked to us just a couple of weeks ago about his op ed in the Washington Post about the activities that China has been up to here opening civilian installations, ports, different operations in different countries that are being morphed into military installations and in some
cases used for spying from the get go. Scott Pelly asked all five if they see this happening in their countries. Christopher Ray, the head of the FBI, gave him an answer. About the US.
We've seen a variety of efforts by.
Chinese businesses, some cases state or in enterprises, some cases ostensibly private companies attempting to acquire businesses, land, infrastructure. What have you in the United States in a way that presents national security concerns.
Craig Singleton is with us now, senior fellow at the Foundation. It's good to see you, Craig, Thanks for coming back in. I want to ask you about new research that you have on evs that very much play into what we're
talking about here. But I wonder, with regard to your recent op ed what you've already submitted and talked to us about here, what it means to have the Five Eyes acknowledge that together in an interview like that for mainstream Americans to watch while they're sitting at home on a Sunday night.
Thanks Joe. I mean, I think the takeaway from me was that the issue is so serious and so ubiquitous that these intelligence officials who spend their whole careers largely in the shadows, felt the need to talk and communicate directly with the American people and with people around the world about the scope of this threat and how China is using all levers of its national power to undermine Western influence, not just the United States, but it's partners
around the world, and it's doing so by exploiting these legal and regulatory cleavages that exist largely from the Cold War that just haven't kept up with the new ways that our adversaries like China and Russia even Iran are going about trying to steal our secrets or intellectual property.
Well, and what you're learning now through this new research by the Foundation would suggest that evs are part of that Beijing's power play. Is the headline on your report Safeguarding US National Security in the Electric vehicle and battery industries. Craig, talk to us about this. The US is trying to catch up with China, but our lack of progress here, I guess, with relation to Beijing, is becoming a national
security issue. Considering the goals that the Biden deministration has put out for EV adoption, how does this play against the US in your view?
Absolutely? I mean, just as Huawei soop control in the telecommunications sector, a Chinese company called Cattle or CAATL is strategically positioning itself to dominate our electric future. And it's a playbook we have seen before. And in the case of Cattle, this is a company with deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. The alarm bells are really already ringing today. Cattle and another Chinese battery behemoth called BYD,
they dominate the global EV market. Cattle, which is linked to forced labor, produces one in three global EV batteries. BYD is set to overtake Tesla here soon as the largest producer of EV's in the world. And if that wasn't bad enough, these Chinese companies are expanding into our critical infrastructure, building out EV charging networks and also this
new cutting edge technology called energy storage solutions. These are massive Chinese batteries that are connected to our electrical grid, even though they are not subject to any stringent federal reviewer scrutiny, and nor are the US firms that are
collaborating with them required to disclose those partnerships. And we already have seen these projects connected into our mainline infrastructure in Florida and Virginia, Texas and Nevada, and even at the Marine Corps base at Camp La June, which is home to a special unit, special military Operations unit that is designed to evacuate noncombatants from Taiwan in the case of a potential Beijing invasion of Taiwan. And so it's
just really madness. We've seen this movie before and we're sort of letting it play out again.
Well, this is incredible. So you're you're talking about a lot more than an economic advantage here, Craig. This could in fact be a cyber threat and a threat on a national defense level that most people don't think about when we're talking evs totally.
I mean, behind the allure of evs and green energy lies this potential trojan horse.
Right.
It's unvetted Chinese technology, it's highly vulnerable to cyber attacks, and it could even result in potential sabotage against our electrical grid. And just like with Huawei, all of these risks are just immediate and undeniable. So numerous studies show that Internet connected EV batteries and chargers have the same sort of cybersecurity weaknesses that we see with large scale
data breaches. You can even malicious employ malware onto your EV during charging and then monitor that EV user and even turn off their vehicle for months or even years after that initial infection, And those Chinese battery systems I mentioned are hardly safer. The potential malware could bring down
entire electrical grids, studies show. And the reality is that we are already started deploying these systems across critical infrastructure without properly vetting them and without really thinking through some of the negative sort of ramifications here.
It's pretty remarkable how much we how much time we spend on TikTok For instance, Craig, but not this. I'll
point you to something that Donald Trump said. I never thought i'd be pointing Chraig Singleton to Donald Trump, but he made a post, a video post on truth social talking about the UAW contract negotiations, the auto workers strike, and he had a message for the workers in his own special way of speaking that gets a bit to what we're talking about here, remembering that one of the real sticking points in the UAW negotiations actually comes down to evs, the government's policy and the way these car
companies are handling them. Here he is, you.
Should not pay your dues because they're selling you to hell.
You're going to be going to hell. You're not gonna have any jobs.
All those cars are going to be made in China, every one of them.
You can forget it.
Michigan, you can forget it. South Carolina, you can forget it.
Everybody.
All of those cars are going to be made in China.
Is there an element of truth to that, Craig, that our lack of progress in catching up with China will mean that many of these are in fact made in China, the cars and the batteries.
I think the lessons from Huawei's deployment are really applicable here. Back then, mostly GOP led states deployed Huahwei gear as a means to address world connectivity on the cheap Huawei's products for the cheapest they were ready to deploy, and so as opposed to going with Ericson or Nokia or
Siemens or a US provider, we went with China. There are many sort of analogous examples with the EV battle, where the Chinese many years ago, going back to twenty fifteen, said in their strategic planning documents that if we control the EV and battery markets, we'll have leverage over the United States and it will help us become an economic superpower.
And I think now we're starting to see that play out where once again the West was behind and the Chinese central planners in this case, we're sort of ahead of themselves. Here.
The question is.
Whether we want to rush into this green revolution and sort of embrace these untested Chinese technologies, or whether it's time to strategically hit pause and say, if we're going to deploy these things, can we do it safely? If not, what are some potential alternatives, whether they're Korean, whether they're American made, whether they're Japanese, that we can have confidence in that we're not sort of sacrificing our future national security for these term energy goals.
Well, this is important. I've got less than a minute left, Craig. Time goes by when you're learning stuff. Is the administration open to this conversation?
I think a little bit. You know, they've been very slow to acknowledge the massive cybersecurity vulnerabilities that are associated with this EV build out, But the Department of Energy and particularly the National Labs have put out some really interesting, sort of scary research that shows just how easy this is. The question that we haven't sort of grappled with here is do you have to hit pause on some of these current systems and deployments to assess their safety and
security before you proceed? And here I think the administration has been slowly sort of dragging its feet while staying very wetted to its broader EV goals. The question is do we have an actual intelligent intelligence and technical assessment of this infrastructure, the cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and whether China can exploit them. The answer is no. This is an area where policymakers can really start to, I think, like make some serious moves and real fast.
He's worked in national security all over the world, and he's ours today, Craig Singleton. It's great to see you. Craig. Many thanks, senior fellow Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an important conversation that we need to have here even with all the madness and the chaos in Washington. Thanks
for listening to The Sound On podcast. Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already, at Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts, and you can find us live every weekday from Washington, DC at one pm Eastern Time at Bloomberg dot com.