Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Governor Greg Abbott has rejected three hundred and fifty million dollars in child food assistance from the federal government. He doesn't need it. Those kids don't need to eat. We have such a great show for you. Today, Congressman Jared Moskowitz talks to us about his battles on
the Oversight Committee with some very indebt House Republicans. Then we will talk to the Daily Beast Sam Brody about what is happening in Congress and the Senate. But first we have the co host of MSNBC's The Weekend, Alicia Menendez. Welcome to Fast Politics, my friend Alicia Menendez.
My friend Mollie Jane. Thanks for having I'm.
So excited that I get to have you. Because you may not remember this, but we did have a conversation while where you're like, I will never go on your podcast because you will get me to say something bad.
I stand by that this is going to be a bumpy ride.
Folks.
Bookle up.
We sold this idea that we were going to have you on to talk about your new show, which starts tomorrow. So let's talk about that for two seconds, and then we are going to get really into politics, and we're just gonna give the listeners what they want. So what is the new show? And tell me how this came about.
I love that you have lured me here under false pretenses, Mollie. So I'm launching a new show alongside Simone Sanders Townsend and Michael Steel, my compatriots at MSNBC. We will be on every Saturday and Sunday, eight am to ten am Eastern. The news doesn't stop on Fridays, not in this news cycle. Very often when I've been on air on Saturdays or Sundays,
there is news that has broken overnight. There are things that are happening in real time, and you want people that you can turn too, familiar faces who can give you the news and contacts that you need to get your day started. I think of it, Molly, as the beginning of a conversation. That's the beauty of being on at am wete eight a m. We start a conversation that not just the other hosts and guest on MSNBC will have, but that folks who watch will have with
their friends and family throughout the day. And that part, to me is really exciting.
And it's a little mourning Joe format a little bit.
How dare you we invented this format, Molly. It is in the sense that it is a bunch of smart, informed folks around a table.
I think it will have a very different flavor and different feel.
Okay, that's a really good point. And you all have worked in, especially Simone and Michael both have worked in and Michael was actually Lieutenant governor.
Yeah, and Michael in his role as RN Future back in two thousand and nine, recruited a lot of the people who continue to emerge as Republican leaders and presidential hopefuls to this day. I mean a fewer a collegues sort of put together that Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, I believe, Raoul Labrador, Chrissy all of those folks emerged during Michael Steele's I'm at Thorncy.
That's so interesting. Let's talk about what happened yesterday. I was on your show when Chris Christy came out and gave his speech. You give us your take and then I will rail on Chris Christy. I mean just kidding.
He came out.
He gave what to me sounded like a little bit of tenants for his past role in promoting Donald Trump, which I think you can debate the authenticity of that penance.
I thought laid out the stakes.
The dangers of a second Trump term, the dangers of having people who are running for president, and I'm paraphrasing here, but who He said, If you're not willing to say that Donald Trump is unfit to be president, they knew yourself for unfit to be president, which I think is a bar worth setting. Yeah. And here's the thing, which is the reason I am interested in Christy as a messenger is because there are so few Republican messengers who
can break through. Not with the MAGA crowd, that's not who he is going to connect with and persuade, but perhaps some type of persuadable Republican who maybe could cast another vote for Donald Trump, but also has reservations, even some independence and more conservative Democrats who for whatever reason might be thinking of sitting on the sidelines on this election. I do think he has the power now or later
to connect with them. And so that was why I was listening so carefully, because I do think he is very strategic, and so I thought he had cultivated a message that was intended to connect. I also think it was intended to shake things up in advance of last night's debate and then the Trump town hall. I don't
think it succeeded in doing that. It's not as though the question of the stakes all of a sudden was pushed front and center, but it seemed to me as I was listening to it, that that was at least part of the intent.
Now your turn to relegave.
Well, no, and I think you have a really good point. And we were just talking about this before we started recording, which it's always the danger of ever talking before your recording, especially with this, is that you said this thing which I think Jesse and I Bows were like, oh, yeah, that's totally right, was that yesterday was the first day of the general thoughts.
Yes, I thought, I thought we're supposed to pretend like that didn't happen. I'm like, wow, what a new and novel thought. I'm like, yes, it was interesting to me. That's like he didn't even really he being Chris Christy, didn't really even want to reckon on the record, though, of course he had that hot mic moment where he was criticizing both Haley and DeSantis. He's basically was saying, this thing's baked, right, like this thing is sparring some
lightning bolts from the heavens. This is going to Donald Trump. It's going to be Trump ros Biden. I'm curious down the road if he's willing to engage with the possibility of endorsing or supporting Biden, given that his parameter is you are unfit to be president. If you're not willing to say that Donald Trump is unfit to be president, and Donald Trump will certainly not be saying that about himself, the concourse changed last night.
I thought the fact that you saw Haley.
And DeSantis having what seemed like a really out of place, not here on Earth one debate where they were each trying to tear down the other, as though the dynamic would be a normal dynamic where if there were only one person running against Trump in this primary, somehow there would be enough folks to coalesce around that single opponent in favor of diminishing him in a state like New Hampshire, and it just seemed offbeat, especially when you had Trump
doing this counter programming on Fox, where he was also treating himself as a general election candidate, which, as you and I know from following a lot of these historians and experts on authoritarianism, is from the authoritarian playbook, right, acting as though you are inevitable, acting as though, of course it is going to be. I don't want to give into that narrative. At the same time, I can read pull numbers and it does seem that Republican primary voters are lining up behind it.
Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And I also think that watching Chris Christy, my problems with him are that I find him super self congratulatory and also he was never pulling, you know, more than the single digits. But in a world where there are no messengers, right, because there was really no one except Asa Hutchinson, and each of the Hutchinson really did not have the stomach
for it. There was no one else who was willing to go out there and be like the Emperor has no clothes, and so for that that was good, and actually I thought it was interesting. There was some reporting I read about the Haley DeSantis death spiral that we watched, which, by the way, I'm always shocked by what a bad retail politician ron De Santis is like. Even when he wins, he's still read so smug to may Well, and the fact that.
He points to Florida as some sort of beacon of success is always interesting to me too, right. I mean, I often lament the fact that this is not in any way a normal election, and they're not on stage talking about policies by and large that are going to impact people's lives should they ever become president. But I suppose part of the truth with Ronda Santis is he doesn't need to tell us because he has already shown us.
You just need to look at what he has done in Florida, whether that is around reproductive rights, whether that is around bullying corporations, whether or that is these radical changes to education in the state, whether it's his election police force, which has succeeded in nothing other than catching Floridians in the act of trying to participate in their democracy. He doesn't need to get on stage and tell us
what it is he's going to do. He's shown up, so in that way, it's like, I don't know what he could do on the debate stage that would change.
That, Yeah, we're in this pivot to the general election. Now Trump also pivoted. Pivoted Trump. You know you can't use those two words in a sentence talking about Trump. What you have to say is like, he seemed less crazy, specifically so he could go after Joe Biden, Right, I mean that's really what it is.
I just want to be clear. We're saying totally he seemed less crazy. His per tonally is less crazy. But if you actually look at the content of it, right, he.
Was shopping a less of an authoritarian bent. I mean again, what Trump shops and what Trump does are not the same, right, I mean, we can agree, but he's sort of trying to walk back some of the real high crazy.
Yeah, it made me wonder.
I'm sure I wonder if it made you wonder too, if they are seeing in some of their pulling that there are folks that are pulling away from them over some of the the a dictator on day one. I also thought his language around abortion was really interesting.
Right.
He wanted credit with an anti choice voter for having overturn rows I did for you what they were never able to do, but then also caution that it was politically not viable for him to win if he went too far out there on it and didn't include exceptions.
Yeah, that was really interesting. And he also like hit DeSantis on his six week ban, which when you've put three anti choice justices on the court. I'm not defending DeSantis, but there was a sense in which Florida he was just trying to keep up with everybody else's crazy abortion bands. So you know, everything's a hammer when everything looks like a nail. I mean that I thought was really insane.
But we also just talk Molly. Sorry, I just I do need to talk about how like I keep calling it a town hall because then I'm a good girl and I want to like follow protocol. But it was not a town hall. It was a pep rally with some questions. And of course he did well because he was surrounded by adoring fingunce that like that is a premise for him to have success and to behave normally. Right, the number of exchanges where the Fox host would ask, well,
who are you supporting? They like Donald Trump, and then he'd be like, thank you, you're beautiful, Like it.
Just this is not normal.
Like there's even even the folks who are like I'm I'm you know, gonna caucus for Desandis.
We're like, but you are amazing.
It's just like, you need to have some tough skin to be president of the United States. You can't constantly be surrounded. We always talk about how he wants to be surrounded by yes men. He also just wants to be surrounded by sickophants.
Yeah, I mean that's the whole Donald trump ethos, is that you bully people into being sick evans around you. But there has been an intentional pullback of his autocratic talk. Donald Trump despite the fact that he is an autocrat. We know he's an autocrat. We saw he's an autocrat. I truly believe this is the if you do want to have elections any more election. But he's clear decided that the general has started and he's not running again.
Remember Trump is not running against Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. He's running against another very very centrist white guy. There's this sort of pivot to like trying to be a little bit more general and see most crazy, I am seeing the pundance that you and I both know some who we like, some who we don't, who are like buying this. Haven't we been doing this for a decade.
Oh my, I must be in my own level because I have not seen that send you. It's performance art. I think we all know that at this point you said something, and I think there's a duality here, and I feel like you were like heady enough for me to in set this concept with you, which I remember reading this article years ago where Lady Gaga was describing her art and like what she loves about art, and
she was saying it was all about slipping. I forget if it was a lie in among two truths or truth in among two lies, but that that was what made are interesting and compelling. And I do think that there is some corollary. Sorry, g guy, don't do a venge you do for for what Donald Trump does, which is you said something which is true, which is he says things and they're not always true and you can't
believe him. Conversely, he also says things that are very true and you should believe him, like I want to be a dictator on day one lol, right, And he wants to be like, well, you're so dramatic. You are taking me way too seriously, and it's like, well, there were people who didn't take you seriously. In the lead up to January sixth, there were people who didn't take you seriously. When that call with Raffensberger was released, there were people who this entire time have doubted you.
So is it is both things, Molly right.
There are times when he says things that you absolutely cannot take him at his word for, and then there are times where you need to accept that he is deadly serious. And we're asking people to do something that is pretty high level and complex, which is to sift through witches which to know when he is saying I am actually committed to this, and when he is saying
what he needs to say because it's politically expedient. And I think one of the things I felt I was watching his pundhall slash pep rally last night with James Tacrala, one of the producers on the weekend, and he and James noted to me that one of the challenges is Trump says so many things, but yet is most often sparse on details so that you can transpose on to him whatever you want, especially if you are someone who is in the window of being willing to support him.
Right that there's a lot where you can be like, he doesn't mean that, he doesn't mean that. Oh, he's kind of.
Being vague about this.
So I'm going to take what I want and what I believe is right on this specific policy position and transpose it on to him. And he leaves a lot of room to do that. He's not like, you know, filling out the surveys for advocacy groups about will you support SB nine nine nine.
It's like he's keeping options open.
That's a really good point. And it's funny. You do really see that, You really do see. He gets the benefit of the doubt endlessly. It feels like people fellow Republicans are addicted to giving him the benefit of doubt. And I even think about, like the world's most famous just he's playing golf. He's not like, what's the harm of humoring him? Right, that's unnamed Republican senator who says, what's the harm of humoring him? He's just playing some golf.
It's not like he's going to overturn the twenty twenty election. That was like, how we got here, that's the Batman origin story, right of how we got to not half the country, but a large percentage of the Republican Party believes that Donald Trump won the twenty twenty election and that in fact he is righting wrong done to them, which of course is absolute bullshit. But he is going to be a central tenant of this election.
Daniel Mali gonna fast for the Batman reference because now I'm going to have kissing by a Rose on the grave by sealed Bot is like playing in I a head from the best Batman movie of all time. I share your alarm that we are here at this meeting, at this moment, after all these years of covering him, and there is still a subset of the pundiclass that's willing to just focus on tone over substance.
The man's a performer.
I think there are core questions about which you and I just violently agree, like the idea that because this isn't a normal election, you have to focus on the stakes and not the odds. I think there are also these questions that I have heard compelling arguments for in both directions, which is, do you share enough of what he is saying and doing to keep people aware of the depths of his depravity, or in doing it and showing him, are you simply platforming him, and where is
the line between those two things? And I think because he is such a performance artists, and because he knows how to capture attention, and he knows how to you know, jiu jitsu things in a million ways, whether it is taking all of these legal cases and somehow fundraising off of them and seeming to use them to his political advantage, whether it is taking something like, you know, the fact that he has proven himself to be a danger to democracy, and yet he is trying to take that attack and
actually launch it against President Biden without fact and without proof points. And I think part of what he understands is it doesn't matter whether or not people believe that. It just matters that there is chaos in the ether.
No.
And I think that's a really good point. I actually believe that we have to cover him. We can't because otherwise if we don't cover how crazy he is, we are going And you know, it's it's funny, but it's like he wrote all this free media. So you have to cover him as a truth sandwich, right, you have to say this is a lie, and this is a lie. So you can't give him a microphone. But if you
don't cover him. I mean, people want to give him the benefit of the doubt, even people, And I wonder how much of the media is actually baked in that way, right, Like, if you think about it, there is a predisposition that many of us have and I'm not even sure that I don't have it to some degree of normalcy bias which we can absolutely talk about more. But now we are out of town.
Well that's good because there's somehow also a helicopter overhead for me right now, So it's like our audio queue to the part.
Your show starts tomorrow. It will be eight to ten Saturdays and Sundays. Very exciting, very excited for you. Congratulations, Thanks, thank you for Congressman Jared Moskowitz represents Florida's twenty third district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Congressman Jared Moskoodz.
Well, thanks Molly, thanks for having me.
I wanted to have you on to talk about his incredible daring yesterday set the stage for us. What was this here hearing? What committee is this? What committee are you on? This is your first term in Congress. Just give us a little background.
So this is the Oversight Committee, which is chaired by Chairman Comer and all year we have had hearings just like we had yesterday. You know, these are not the same hearings that I have in my other committee, which is Foreign Affairs, which are bipartisan and fact finding and really wanting to do the business of the committee. Here. This is an government oversight committee. Obviously, we have a giant government. There's all sorts of oversight. Not everyone's crushing it.
I'm sure there's all sorts of legitimate things we could be looking at in the executive branch to further the lives of Americans. But no, that's not what this committee has been used for. This is literally the election mailer Committee. It's literally the police Donald Trump Committee. It's literally do
whatever the Donald Trump campaign tells us committee. And all year long they have been going after, you know, Joe Biden and pretending like he's the head of the Biden crime family, which you know, turning Joe Biden to Tony Soprano, by the way, is a tall order, and they talk out of both sides of their mouth, right, Joe Biden's sleepy,
he's sleepy, he doesn't know where he's going. But he's also Tony Soprano running the Biden crime family, and that's what has been going on all year in this committee, but it's not been going well. The impeachment hearing was a total disaster for them a couple of months ago when their own witness said there wasn't any evidence to impeach Joe Biden on And yesterday was the Hunter Biden
contempt hearing. And the reason why this is interesting is because normally, if you get a subpoena from Congress and you don't comply, you should be held in contempt. And I agree with that. You can't blow off a congressional subpoena. But that's not what's happened here. What's happened here is the chairman. And one of my Republican colleagues said, this is why we shouldn't pick our chairman based on how much money they raise. We should pick our chairman on ability.
But the chairman, chairman comer on multiple programs told Hunter Biden on National TV he can choose, he can choose whether he wants a public hearing or a deposition. Well, Hunter Biden took the Chairman's invitation and said, I'll do a public hearing because what we've seen in these private depositions. Is they hold the deposition, they do selective leaks, they never released the full transcript, and the American people never hear the full story. It's one sided. That's what they
want to do with Hunter. And so yesterday was the contempt hearing because Hunter didn't show up for the private deposition but instead has taken the chairman up on his public invitation, which the chairman is now pretending as if it never happened.
This Oversay Committee, which is become the weaponization of the federal government against the Democratic president in the hopes of pleasing Donald Trump. This Oversay Committee is desperate to get Hunter Biden to testify, but only privately can you explain why that is?
If the cameras are on and the American people are watching, they'll hear both sides, they'll hear the questions, and then they'll hear the answers, and they'll hear the whole thing, whether it's ten hours or twelve hours.
Right.
We all remember, like Hillary's sitting in the hearing during BEng Ghazi, right, and that was like a deposition. She took eleven hours of questions, but the American people got to see it. They got to hear the whole conversation. The reason why the Republicans don't want to do that is they don't want the American people to hear all
of what Hunter Biden has to say. They only want to release maybe the one or two or three things that they think fits their narrative and then not release the other ninety five percent of the information because they control the transcript. When you're in the majority, you control what you release when you release it, and you can control the transcript. And these other depositions that they've had all year, they have not released the transcripts from these depositions.
In fact, they've never released his laptop. Molly, We've heard the fact that they have Hunter Biden's laptop. We've asked to see it so that we can verify the information on it, and they've not let us look at the information.
Because they know it won't help them.
They don't want to bring sunlight into the process. They don't want to bring transparency into the process. They want to talk, you know, the couple of talking points that fit their narrative, you know, to try to paint this in the worst way, to try to try to you know,
selectively choose facts rather than hearing. Like, think about it, right, if you took anyone's deposition, anybody's, and you sat with anyone's deposition for five hours, and you cherry picked two or three things from that deposition, right, and you only released that, everyone would think the whole deposition was like that. They would think, oh my god, Like, that's that's clearly
the picture of this deposition. If you're holding back ninety five percent of the rest of the deposition, you're giving it. You're giving it no context, you're giving it no clarity. That's why they want to do this, because what I think they're doing at the moment is, you know, this is all about trying to hurt Joe Biden's poll numbers. They've admitted that.
Well, ben Ghazi worked really well for.
Them, ben Gazi worked really well from them, and this is the ben Gazi strategy. We'll see if they ever decide to impeach the president. But in the meantime, they've said, since we've started our investigation, Joe Biden's poll numbers have gone down. So they don't want the American people to hear the full story. They want to tell the story they want to tell mostly to their echo chamber. But some of that leaks out, some of that leaks over because the problem is if you have a hearing, everyone's
going to cover the hearing. They're going to cover the deposition, and they're going to cover the three or four things that they leak out, and then that will become national news. That will become the headline. And then six months from now, when the transcript comes out that disproves everything they said, it's gone. It's too late to get the truth back. In the way information flows today in the media and online, this.
Is really interesting as we're looking at this over Say committee led by James Comer. James Comer yesterday said you are just like George Santos Maria Bartaroma.
That's just because we're both Jewish.
Molly, No, he said, I'm.
Sorry, not Maria Bartaroma. He said to Laura.
Ingram, right, I have to invite her to my next passover. Got to develop that relationship.
You won't run into her in shule as at jew myself. Laura Ingram has also been very negative about me. I feel like we're not her people, she said. Comer said, mosk, So it says less credibility than George Santos. So is he just decided that if he says your name with George Santos, is that people will think you're both crimey.
I think, quite frankly, what happened isn't in very slow motion. I'm gonna slow motion exactly what you what you saw to Laura Ingram and asked a question, yes, right, a quarter of James's brain try to figure out what the answer was. And then the only thing that popped into his mind, right, because we didn't want to use all the brain cells, but the only that popped in his mind was George Santos. And he was like, he's got
less credibility than George Santos. And then after the interview, you know, he like patted himself on the back after that one. He was like, that was good, that was really good. I did. I did, George Santos, you know whatever. I mean. He's called me little Mosquoitz. He's called me a smurf.
Oh that's right, he called you a spur.
Yeah, he called me a smurf. He called me little Moskowitz, and now he's calling me George Santos. I mean, listen, I guess I'm gonna have to Claire on my financial form the real estate I now taken in his brain, I have to list that on my form as real estate I now own because he just can't stop thinking about me.
Marjorie Taylor Green yet again put up nudes of Hunter Biden. This is the second time, and I think that was why he left the hearing, right.
Yes, he knew that was going to happen, just because it's Marjorie.
Yes, so this is a second time that she's done that, is put up nudes of him, and you as a response, you put up this giant poster of Ebstein and Trump, which is, by the way, like the thing that Republicans hate most. I shouldn't even say Republicans, and they're not Republicans there Trump is they hate most is the reminder that Donald Trump, well Bill Clinton was good friends with Jeff App so was Donald Trump.
The Republicans are out there every day and they're talking about kids and kids in school and what they're reading and grooming and pedophiles. They're talking about that every day, and then all of a sudden, you know, more and more news continues to leak that their guy, the guy you know that they just can't get enough of you know is on the playing with Jeffrey Epstein. He's been to Epstein Island and he even knows like you know, I mean, the pictures are endless with him in Epstein.
They literally like put their head into hole like an Ostrich. They pretend like that didn't happen, like those photos don't exist. And so every hearing I print out some stuff. Sometimes I use it, sometimes I don't.
And the staffers love it when you do that.
No that staffords hate it. My staff hates when I print things that are probably slightly over the edge. I'm trying to keep as much decorum as i can, Molly, it's just kind of hard.
This is really important. What I want to ask you about is like there is this idea that Democrats are supposed to behave like it's nineteen ninety eight, despite the fact that Republicans are behaving like they work at Fox News. So I actually think what you're doing is I don't want to encourage you, and I don't want your staffers to be mad at me, but I'm going to encourage you because I actually think that this is really the only way we're going to survive.
Well, that is actually the intent the intent is to be ready when they do that, but the intent is to fight fire with fire. I don't want to play those games. It's actually not who I am. I'm actually, quite frankly, more of a middle of the ground, moderate guy make bipartisan deals because I want to help the American people. This is actually not who I am. But I'm not gonna sit in these hearings while they lie
to the American people and play these games. And if that's what they're going to do, then I'm going to show them that we can play these games, and we can play it better than they can.
Because they're ultimately pretty dumb.
Not all of them, but yes, some of them mail it in and they're What they're not used to is they're not used to a Democrat pushing back with such aggressive strategy. They're used to us being slightly more passive. And so, yeah, if she's going to show nudes up Hunter Biden, I'm going to show pictures of their guy,
you know, DJT and Jeffrey Epstein. And I was prepared to do that, hoping by the way that she wasn't going to show those photos, but having little faith in her that she was absolutely going to do that, and.
You had just about the right amount of faith. I think it's fair to say.
We always be prepared.
I have an emergency man background, as a former emergency management director who had to deal with all sorts of disasters. You always want to be ready for different contingencies.
So one of the things that I think is interesting about this Oversight committee is that the people on it really are the sort of very Lauren Bopert, Marjorie Taylor Green, Anna, Paulina Luna. I mean, it really is a rogues gallery of just the MAGA caucus.
Well, they built a TV committee in fairness to what I think their strategy was. I think their strategy was they knew they were going to put on a Broadway show for two years, and so what they did is they put their performers on there. You know, they put their TV people on there, and I think bigs. Yeah. And I think Kim Jeffries, by the way, saw what they did because they released their committee first, and he's
when he saw what they did. I think he looked around at the pieces that he had that weren't on other committees. And if you look at what ha Kim Jeffries assembled, I mean Jamie Raskin has crushed it as the ranking member soon to be chairman of that committee. You know he You've got Dan Goldman, you got you know, Jerry Connolly, he's been fantastic. Jasmine Crockett, who's been amazing. You know Maxwell Frost on the committee. You know, you have AOC as the rank is the vice ranking member.
She's been great. Katie Porter has been amazing. I mean, so Akin took these other pieces and said, if that's what they're gonna do, we're gonna be ready for a battle. And this committee has become kind of like a WWE Royal Rumble Battle Royale. And so yeah, I'm slightly more aggressive in that committee than I want to be, and I'm definitely more aggressive in that committee than I am
in Foreign Affairs. But we can't just sit there while they do this one sided nonsense and pretend like all of the problems in America never existed until Joseph Biden became the president. Right Like, we never had any problem in this country. It was wonderful. There weren't things to fix, there weren't things to make better. Everything was great. But then Joe Biden became president. And that's when we started to ruin the country.
That's their messaging on immigration, right that if the border was fine under Trump, which was not right. I mean again, I actually believe that immigration is good in that our country is all built on it. But even if you were to say that the immigration is a problem, which I don't think it is, you would still have to say that this has been a continual quote unquote problem under and Trump. And Trump built a wall, but he still couldn't figure out how to deal with this the border.
Look, there's a push pull effect going on. And look, I do think there are problems at the border, Molly, but these problems have existed for twenty years, right, Okay, because we've refused to address immigration. Remember George W. Bush tried to get it done, We got close, and it didn't happen.
But you know, I just had Barbara Boxer on this podcast and she said, the reality is Republicans they want this to be a problem because otherwise they have nothing to run on.
Yes, you literally have I'm not going to name them because there's too many to name, but you literally have Congress people coming out even yesterday literally saying this is a direct quote. I'm not going to vote for any deal that fixes the situation of the border, because I'm not helping Joe Biden's re election. That's a direct vote.
Yeah, they don't want a solution.
Yeah, And that, unfortunately is not indicative of this issue that unfortunately is pervasive in Washington, especially when we're an election year, solving problems if it helps the other side, you know, we don't want to solve the problem for the American people.
But what's interesting here is you have a situation right now where you have a Republican party in the House that is having a lot of trouble getting along with each other.
Molly, what are you talking about. This has been the most productive Congress that we have ever seen.
That's right, except for any legislation.
Except for the fact that the average bills passed in a Congress are three hundred, We've only done thirty. So we are the least productive Congress in three decades. The largest things we've accomplished is we've removed this speaker and expelled a member. We're threatening to shut the government down every seventy five days. We can't help our friends in Israel or Ukraine. We can't even pass like commemorative dog points bills for like working dogs out there. There are
bills that have like two hundred and fifty sponsors. Like, there's a bill out there that would for all those working dogs out there that help people in their daily lives. There's a bill to create a commemorative coin.
There's like two.
Hundred and fifty sponsors of that bill. Democrats are Republicans. That bill's not moving. You can't even move that bill. Nancy Pelosi, I think, said this morning on Morning Joe, this is the worst she's seen it in thirty five years.
Right, right, we got Mike Johnson in there. Do you think that Mike Johnson ends up? You know, there's still a one person motion to vacate. You know, he's got this tiered cr you know. I mean, do you think this ends in shutdown? Do you think this ends in him getting kicked out again? I mean you are there on the ground. What do you think?
I don't know. I mean, Mike Johnson has compared himself to Moses, So.
Yeah, he's just like Moses. Yeah.
Is he going to be the Moses that wandered in the desert for forty years? Or is he going to be the Moses that led us through the red Sea. It's unclear. I don't think they will make a motion to vacate and actually go through the vote and remove him again. I mean, look, they're already doing everything they can do to get back into the minority. It's clear they want back in the minority in the House. That's
where they feel comfortable. They're not interested in governing, they're not interested in helping the American people do anything positive or moving the country forward, so they're doing everything they can to get back there. They may there are some that may use those mechanisms maybe to force him to resign.
But by the way, who's gonna want this job. Nobody's gonna want this job with a two vote majority and an ungovernable you know, amount of members twelve of them at any given time that you know can't listen to anything and just want to burn the country to the ground. Part of me has no sympathy for Mike Johnson. But the other part of me, which is like the part that cares about someone's mental health, I have no idea how he's even doing this. Quite frankly, it is just
unbelievable what that party is going through right now. And you know, what it is. Let's just be honest. Donald Trump broke them. He broke them. They're still broken, okay, and they're gonna be this year leading up to the election to see whether or not they're gonna have to live with Donald Trump for four more years or whether Donald Trump will you go to the pages of a history book before we remove him? Just kidding, you know,
this is my first year here. I mean, if this is what Congress is now, the American people, if this is what Congress is now going forward, the American people and US government are being trouble. If this is a blip on the radar, it's one thing. But this is just an unbelievable moment in history in which the largest branch of government, because we're four nan and thirty five members, right, there's one hundred senators born in thirty luck, we cannot function and we're showing that to the world.
Thank you, Congressman.
Appreciate it.
Molly, thanks for the opportunity.
Sam Brody is a deputy politics editor at The Daily Beast. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Sam Brody, thanks for having me.
So United States House of Representatives sacred ground filled with serious people. Talk to me about yesterday.
So yesterday was one of the crazier days we've seen on full in the House of Representatives in at least two weeks. No, I mean by the standards that this House has set. Obviously, you know, folks will recall what happened last year and just seams of drama that are really unprecedented. Even by those standards, what happened yesterday was pretty notable, So let's just rewind. Congress began the day with an Oversight Committee hearing in which Cornor Biden unexpectedly
showed up. Nancy Mace began yelling uncontrollably about that he had no balls and that he had white privilege in showing up. It completely devolved into bedroom and on the House floor we got a just really really stark illustration of how completely paralyzed this House Republican majority is and really how unable Speaker Mike Johnson is to do almost anything.
So we'll get into the weeds. I guess here briefly, but before you do anything on the House floor, like literally anything, they need to pass a rule and that's just like jargon for that sets the parameters for debate and sets you have to pass ultimately or vote on whatever bill that you're considering that day. And historically, rule votes do not fail. The entire majority party votes are the rule. It's pro forma. Nancy Pelosi in twenty years
of being a speaker not once lost a vote. And now this is happening on a.
Rules because it's not something you're supposed to lose.
Exactly, even if you vote against the bill, ultimately you just vote for the rule. If your party's in charge, that's just what happens. And so now this has happened all the time, and it happened a lot at the end of McCarthy's tenure. But now what's happening is people who backed getting rid of McCarthy are doing the same thing to Mike Johnson. So there was a rule just to get started. I mean, it wasn't even a rule
to pass in appropriations bills. Let's also keep in mind that a partial government shut down is just a few days away. This was a rule to pass a symbolic resolution disapproving of a Biden administration policy on electric cars. That rule was defeated and the House was paralyzed. Nothing
could happen. And the reason that happened is that conservatives remain angry that Mike Johnson really has no choice but to stick to his spending deal that McCarthy, Biden, and Chuck Schumer agreed to you last year for top line budget numbers for the coming year. They have had a temper tantrum about this for months. It helped result in mccarshey's departure. Nothing magically changed when Mike Johnson took the speakership.
Instead of trying to work with him to get a better deal, these conservatives are just holding the House for hostage until something happens. We'll see if anything ends up happening today.
So one of the things that we noticed is that yesterday there started to be whispering about a motion to vacate for Mike Johnson. That would be because you'll remember, Mike Johnson never changed the rules, so there still is a one person motion to vacate in the House and there was some whispering about it yesterday. That's the first time that's happened because he did have originally some goodwill, right.
So we has this cr This continuing resolution to finance the government expires I think in two weeks.
So what they did was they split it in half, which was a bizarre thing to do, so some of the programs.
It's a tier to cr the first.
Time ever, Yes, the first time ever. You got to wonder why no one's on that before. I believe it's in a week that the first shut down partial STUTO would happen, and then the other round is in about a month on the motion to vacate. Yeah, you know, to this point, Johnson has enjoyed a little bit of a honeymoon period where people are you going to let him work and build his you know, operation, and just
sort of see what happened. And yesterday there was a really pivotal moment I think that heightened the drama of everything that happened, which is there was this private House Republican conference meeting in which Johnson was briefing members on the kind of renewed agreement that they came to, and people just stormed out, even people incline to support Johnson saying, you know, this is a joke. This guy, Warren Davidson from Ohio said, you know, we never should have hired
Johnson in the first place. The more establishment a line people are just throwing up their hands and remarking about how they literally can't do anything. I mean, you're seeing members say on the record like that it is a complete disaster, which is just shocking.
What I think is interesting, though, is that what happened here is that you have a pretty large section in this House Republican Party that their entire ethos is burning down the federal government. So those people continually are furious whenever their speaker has to do something that is about funding the federal government. I mean, that's really where we are. That's why they keep ending up in physticoffs.
Right, Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, like this is the story of the modern Republican Party, which is there is a critical mass of members of the House who have no incentive really to govern, to compromise, to put forward spending, because their constituents will view anything that has any democratic support, any part of the process as a capitulation, and it's going to get you a primary challenger, and
your life is going to be made more difficult. There's just enough of these people who are willing to just say screw it, whatever, We're going to say no to everything. They are not going to get punished really for it by their voters at least, And so you know, we've seen that that dynamic just completely turbocharged in this House Republican majority. But here's where it gets interesting a little bit with the motion to vacate, because you're right in
that it's starting to get mentioned. The sort of Damocles is always hanging there over Mike Johnson. Sometimes it's like you don't really need to say it's there. Everyone knows it's there. But Chip Roy has talked about it, and so I remain skeptical that anything will come of this. I'll talk a little bit about why. I think. For one, the McCarthy situation was e me and I think the revolt over McCarthy was really personal in vibe space as much as it was anything else.
Yeah, it was Matt Gates, right, Matt Gate's mad at macarthy.
Exactly, mac Gates, Hayden McCarthy, And it's sort of known on Capitol Hill in large part because of the ongoing ethics investigation into Matt Gates, which mcarthy couldn't do anything about, and the others wanted publicity and all that kind of thing, so it wasn't about policy, and so they got the trophy. McCarthy went down. Mcates will take many victory laps, and
I think it's been telling. I mean, Matt Gates himself dismissed talk of the motion to day hate their support for Johnson, and I think even the most delusional of this crew probably understand that what good is it going to do them to get rid of Mike Johnson and go through this process again. I mean, it broke the party last time. If it happened again, it would be a nuclear level event from which the party probably could
not recover. And that's probably a scenario where you'd see a moderate speaker or compromise speaker or something like that that was talked about last time.
There is no one right, this guy is number four. We had McCarthy was out. Then they was talk of Steve Scale. Steve Scalice is not even in Congress right now. He's getting treatment, right.
No, Johnson was number seven, Oh.
Okay, so perfect seven. So then Emmers who tried and Trump was like, no, little buddy, And then I thought Johnson was four in the in.
The leadership that honor is is a least of phonic oh.
A least upon right, I guess the least upon it who did not run for anything, because she's running for a vice president.
Well but yeah, but your point is right. There was no one. And I remember covering the speaker drama and members would say, you know, when they when they landed on Johnson, I had a remember, tell me, like Johnson is one of the two or three people who could get this that seeing a lot, and so you know, they all know who like they are all structural problems.
These are all problems with their party. Johnson is inheriting this and he's attempting to govern, and so this is always going to be the conflict, is that no matter how conservative the person is that gets the position, no matter how much they ally themselves with the hardliners, if you're in that post, you're going to be expected to keep the place moving. And so that's the contact we're seeing play out.
And these Republicans whole goeshtald is to not keep the place moving.
That's right. And I mean I think it should be said too that there is a pretty large wing of the party that does want to pass these appropriations bills. They are very, very mad at the state of affairs. I mean, these are the guys who are coming out of the conference meeting and sort of just lamenting their inability to govern and talking about how they don't deserve the majority and things like that. They're watching the party
lose their majority in real time. I mean, you have members on the record talking about their failure to pass appropriations bills, to do the literal most basic thing that Congress is supposed to do. How that's going to affect their chances in November. Steve Warmackle of Arkansas, he's a very establishment, governing wing aligned Republican, made this yesterday and so they all know that this is probably where it's heading.
So while it's important to talk about how much power these hardliners have to just grind everything to a halt, and how the intensives for them are just to do that, Johnson is under a lot of pressure from important members of his party, including the people who are going to make or break the majority in November, to get something done. And so that's the position you find himself in.
But one of the big problems that Johnson has is that his majority is keep shrinking. So talk to us about that.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's pretty crazy. But last Kevin in December, there's a couple other members who actually are retiring and can't seemingly get out of there fast enough and are even filling the rest of their terms but are leaving.
Yes, isn't that unusual.
It's pretty unusual. Sometimes you'll see a member of lead early for like a time sensitive job or something else, but it's unusual this level.
They lost santa I mean, I think, like, in my mind, like one of the most evocative moments in this Congress was Republicans decided to do this vote on Santos and then at the last minute, the entire leadership team changed from kick him out to keep them because it was like all of a sudden, they were like with a napkin doing math.
Yeah, it was that. And I'm sure they wanted him to stay, but they were wary of being seen as working too hard to keep him, and so I think they tried to slip the baby there in a way that just totally didn't work out at all. But yeah, I mean, there's a reason McCarthy didn't do anything about Santos would use in charge. You knew what was going to happen, and so that's where they are.
So now they have a special election coming in New York three, and then they have a majority that is like, what are the numbers. It's a bunch of non voting seats, right, and then one or two voting seats, right.
So there's two vacancies right now, and there's two hundred and twenty many Republicans and two hundred and thirteen Democrats. So the vacancies are the Santo seat and the McCarthey seat, and they will not be filled. This special election for New York three is in February, I guess, and then I think the election for mccarthury seat is in a few more months. But then they're going to have another vacancy because some guy in Ohio is leaving to become
a university president. So you're going to just kind of continually have these problems. Also, you know, we're seeing members since coming back from the break, more coming out to announce they're not running for reelection. State filing deadlines are coming up. I expect we'll see more members announce their plans to retire, and some of those may also include people who leave before the term is up. You just don't know. The margins could not possibly be higher. It
really is. Underscore is just how impossible Mike Johnson's situation is. He has no breathing room whatsoever. Even if he did, he has a crew of about a dozen Republicans in his own cow friends who basically have the power to make or break anything that happens on the poor and there doesn't seem to be a and he has no experience. That's really the thing to underscore is he's been around in Congress since twenty seventeen. He had a minor position
in the leadership. He was a conservative guy from the sidelines, a committee guy, no leadership like true experience on like how do you run the place, didn't sit on appropriations or any of the big governing committee, and he has had to build his operation as all of this has been going on. I think that's what makes the motion to vacate stuff really empty from somebody like chip Roy
who does know how the place works. I imagine that Chip Roy understands that if you vacate Johnson, okay, get somebody else in there, and then they're going to have to build an organization from the ground up. Again, how is that going to help? I think something that was telling of the whole situation with Thomas Massey, who is a very right wing conservative from Kentucky, once.
A libertarian, now just a person who wants to destroy the federal government.
Yeah. Yeah, and you know he's a little weird because he's like a big the Stantusk guy Trump guy. Anyway, he did back McCarthy, but he is somebody who votes no on almost every piece of legislation. He did support McCarthy, but he tweeted a meme I think yesterday that was a photo of McCarthy and it just said miss me yet.
And I think that does encapsulate how even a lot of conservatives are feeling, which is that, yeah, maybe McCarthy got some stuff wrong, he didn't like him on some prospects, or didn't trust him, whatever, but that he was probably the only person who was positioned to run the conference. Now he's gone and shuck with Mike Johnson and they are careening towards the shutdown with no real plan exactly.
I mean. Now, the one I think data point here that's useful is that, I mean, the thinking is that the base will love a shutdown. Those hearings yesterday where we had Marjorie Tayler Green chasing Hunter Biden out of the room, right, and then she wasn't really but Hunter Biden was there. You know, the Republican Comm's Operations sent out a tweet that said, Marjorie Teller Green and chases Hunter Biden out of the hearing. Do the Republicans think that this is I mean, do they feel like is
this their caravan? Is this what they're going to be doing for the twenty twenty election? And do they think this helps them?
The Hunter Biden stuff?
Yeah, and also just the really embarrassing bad behavior that kind of you know, screaming, you know, you have no balls, I mean that stuff.
Yeah, I mean they you know, the most consequential thing that happened now is the representatives yesterday was that Marjorie Taylor Green showed pictures of Hunter Biden dick I mean again, yeah, again again after a hold ust up about a percent. Look, here's the way I do it is Republicans are hopelessly divided. The level of acrimony within the party is at just unbelievable highs. There is not much that really unites them and gets them growing in the same direction except for
really two things, the border and Hunter Biden. And so you better believe that they're going to desperately try and change the subject and focus on the only things that really unite them. Look, you know, they've clearly decided that, you know, from a political perspective, they're going to use these probes to bloody the president and see what happens and create a lot of smoke and see if it'll
stick with voters. I think they're already kind of too far down that road to change, but yeah, you know, it probably was a welcome thing to change the subject. I think they'd probably rather have the media talking about Margie Taylor greens Inox then the fact that they, you know, could not fulfill even the most basic task of governing in the legislative body.
Sam Brody, that was great. I really appreciate you, and that was exactly exactly right.
Thank you, thanks for having me. I always love talking about the House of Representatives.
They're mormical Fuent, Jesse Cannon.
Molly jung Fest. You know, Elon, he's always tweeting through it, but somehow some people can't see the very obvious hints at what his political ideology is.
Elon Musk was right wing, or at least he certainly seemed right wing, but he has, as he has been tweeting through it, revealed himself to be redpilled, to be maga, to be anti immigrant, and in fact every.
Tweet I think we could go a little further and just go full on white supremacists.
At this point, he really has become the kind of South African billionaire that I, in my heart always knew he was. You're going to see a lot of him complaining about the caravan, him worried about bloodlines.
Referring people to Stephen Miller's white grievance slaw firm.
And also he'll probably start using Stephen Miller's hair and a can.
Now he bought the good stuff.
Come on, anyway, all of this is why Elon Musk, beneficiary of government contracts and white nationalists is our moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.