Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Senator Joe Manchin says, democracy as we know it wouldn't withstand another Trump administration file that under things we know, Please please don't run as a third party candidate. We have an amazing show today. The
dogs are excited. Are you excited? I'm excited. Congressman Jared Moskowitz from the Great State of Florida tells us about the chaos in the House as Republicans can't run hearings, or choose a speaker, or choose what to have for lunch. Then we'll talk to you off messages Brian Boittler about the GOP's turn against Medgates. But first we have former congressmen and current candidate in New York seventeenth District, Mondeir Jones. Welcome back, Too Fast Politics, mondere Jones.
It's great to be here and what a week.
So for the people who don't text with you every single day, you are probably like one of my frequent flyers of my contacts. You were a member of Congress, you got redistricted in New York just like everyone else. With this last minute nonpartisan map that Andrew Cuomo created as a way to kick the problem down the road, it came back like a big postule and lost Democrats of the House.
You are now running for your.
District again, which is now occupied by a very nervous Republican.
A very nervous Republican in a district drawn by a self described moderate Republican from out of state who single handedly got to draw all twenty six congressional districts in New York State. And still it's a district I would have won had there not been shenanigans last year, and
I've been allowed to run in my own district. Mike Lawler has been all over cable TV, as you know, Mop, and he has been as one does when they're running against someone who should be representing New York seventeenth congressional district, and he's been masturating as this moderate who is going to save us from the Republican Party, except we know that he has been enabling all of the chaos that we've been seeing in Washington.
So there are eighteen House Republicans who won in Biden districts, six of which I think or either five or six.
I think it's six. Actually come from New York State.
That's right, approximately six. And the fact is that there was a lot going on in New York State last year between.
A lot of fucking up.
Let's be honest here, there were a lot.
Of fuck ups going on in New York State last year.
And let me remind people about the district that I'm running to represent.
It.
It's Rockland County, it's northern west Chester, it's Putnam County, and it's a small portion of Duchess it's the Lowerhudson Valley. And here in the Lower Hudson Valley, we want our members of Congress to support the freedom of women to have an abortion. We want them to not enable people like Kevin McCarthy who nearly shut down the government. Thank god for Democrats supplying the votes to keep the lights on.
And that was just a few days after a baseless impeachment hearing, and switched in between those two was last Friday, which is which is when Mike Lawler and a lot of Republicans voted to cut federal spending by thirty percent. So all of this was last week before this week, Kevin McCarthy was deposed.
There was a time when you had moderate Republicans who would you know, those would be the sort of members of the problems Solvers Caucus. They would be people who would push back against the Matt gateses. Those people have no power in the Republican Party anymore. They are too scared of the Matt gateses, and so they just vote the party line.
So, for example, that CR.
That you're talking about, the moderates voted for, but the hard right didn't vote for cut the federal budget by thirty percent.
Like it was an insane CR. It was. Somebody told me.
Somebody who was nonpartisan told me it was a quote unquote the most conservative CR they'd ever seen.
I mean, so, I think it's worth remembering that Mike.
Lawler is just because he's not Matt Gates does not mean he's a Democrat or even a traditional Republican of twenty years ago.
Molly, can I just explain briefly for your listeners what a CR is. A CR stands for continuing resolution. It's not a responsible way to run the government. It is an interim step when you can't pass a fiscal year appropriations bien exactly, And so This so called Continuing Resolution last Friday was an attempt at Kevin McCarthy to placate the MAGA Caucus, and Mike Lawler voted for it. It ended
up failing, thank god. And the reason that CR failed is because it was thirty percent cuts across the board. We're talking about make two hundred and fifty thousand children lose access to childcare, two hundred and ninety thousand children lose access to head start. We're talking about two point three I believe women, infants and other children losing access to nutritional assistants. As many as two hundred and forty Social Security officers would have added to a shut down.
More than ten thousand FBI agents would have lost their jobs. I mean, this is really extraordinary stuff. And Mike Lawler voted for on the path to Democrats ultimately supplying the votes for a clean CR to keep the government open for forty five days and we'll be back in this situation and open.
It's such a crazy way to live. And I want you to talk about this for a second. There is a world where Republicans could not do this right, like where a Kevin McCarthy could say to Democrats, look I don't have the votes to my own caucus. Let's figure out some kind of power sharing agreement so that we can get stuff done as opposed to naming post offices and having hearings on gas stoves.
If there were any moderate Republicans remaining in the House of Representatives, at a minimum, a threshold issue would be, are you willing to vote for Kakiem Jeffries to be Speaker of the House since you clearly cannot run the government through electing someone from your own party, And of course as part of that, you would intrupt to some kind of arrangement. I mean, I imagine there would be a host of concessions made to Republicans in the event
of such an arrangement. But that's what somebody like Mike Lawler, who's in a district that Biden won by ten points over Donald Trump, a district that rejected Donald Trump, and where he now finds himself running for reelection despite having work to elect and then reelect Donald Trump in the past.
At a minimum, that's what you would expect of someone like him, But instead he's been blaming Democrats for why Kevin Kark is no longer a Speaker of Oushi is just classic Michael Owen, never taking responsibility for what he and his fellow Republicans caused.
It's pretty interesting, though, to see the sort of panic because what we see like I feel like the House again. The House is a microcosm for the country, right, for where the parties are in the country.
Right.
So you have Republicans who are panicked because they know that Trumpism does not scale to these purple states. So actually want you to talk a little bit about Matt Gates, because you knew him, you served in Congress with him, you probably will serve in Congress again with unless Republicans managed to kick him out. He is known now as the man who removed McCarthy. Can you explain to us what you think his motivations are.
I think Matt Gates is exemplifying what the Republican Party in twenty twenty three has become, and certainly what the House Republican Caucus has become, a group of people who are deeply, deeply conservative and extreme in fact, both in their ideology and in the measures that they will take to achieve their ends. And still that's not enough for Matt Gates. Matt Gates, he relishes chaos, and this has come to define a party that is in office to
dismantle the government, not to actually improve people's lives. And so there is some consistency between the idea of chaos and making the government not work for everyday people. It's a horrible thing. It's a horrible motivation to be in office. And of course he enjoys the attention and is fundraising off of it. And I'm not sure even wants to remain in Congress for much longer, but he is probably going to have like a NEWSMAC show at some point in the future.
So I've heard a lot of different theories for his motivation. One is that he felt he was not supported during his FBI investigation. One of the things we saw last night on CNN, I'm sure you saw this Manu Raju, really smart congressional reporter. He talked to Mark wayIn Mullins. It's such an insane moment of truth.
You got to think about this guy. This is a guy that didn't have that The media didn't give a time at day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl. And there's a reason why no one and the conference came defended him because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the house floor that all of us had walked away. Of the girls that he had slept with. He'd brag about how he would crush ed medicine and chase it with with an energy drink so he could go all night. This
is obviously before you got married. And so when that accusation came out, no one defended him, and then no one on the media would give him the time of the day. All of a sudden he found fame because he opposed the Speaker of the House back in November.
That none of them defended him because they had seen videos. I don't know what was in those videos, but which seems in my mind to be a real indictment of the people who saw the videos, because if you are witness to something you think is a criminal action, you're really not supposed to just ignore it.
Look at what they've been doing with respect to George Santos, a guy who they know to be a serial grim, no effort to expel him. Just look at the several people who since being sworn in, have been exposed as having grossly lied about their biography. This is what the caucus has become people who are criminals, people who are compulks of liars, people who masquerade the things that they are demonstrably not. And it is all fine so long as they told the party line. And here Matt Gates
is not telling the party line. That's when people in the Republican Caucus finally acknowledge the things that he has been accused of.
Yeah, I mean, I just was shocked. You know, it's a real moment of saying the quiet part loud.
Yeah. And who is going to be the next Speaker of the House. Will it be Jim Jordan? Will it be the guy who probably that the great conspiracy theorist to ever serve in the House of Representatives. That person's name is Jim Jordan, someone who has led these baseless investigations into Joe Biden and who has given had his money accepted by people like Mike Lawler so caldmore So, what are they even doing?
So one of the cases that was made to me yesterday by Jake Sherman of punch Bowl was that Democrats should be happy that they had McCarthy, and that McCarthy was actually good to Democrats, and that Jim Jordan will be worse. I was somewhat baffled by this, because, like, what is worse than an impeachment in quiry.
And thirty percent cuts and walking away from your agreement with the White House and with your Democratic colleagues when it came to the dead ceiling agreement.
So even if Jim Jordan has the votes, I mean, can he actually like jail Democrats?
I mean, what is he going to do that's going to be worse.
The thing that we have learned the thirty percent cuts last Friday and so muchose is that Kevin McCarthy is as extreme as any other member of the House Republican when it comes to policy preferences and the legislation that they would be willing to support or bring to the floor. You know, when you're the speaker, at at a minimum, you're doing what you have the votes to do, which are Caucus is telling you to do, largely unless you're
a powerful speaker. And the way that Nancy Pelosi was who still very much reflected the values of our caucts, and you didn't see anything approximating the levels of disagreement that we've seen this year and the one hundred and eighteen comes. I think that Jake is wrang as someone who firmly believes the truth, which is that the House Republican Caucus is ungovernable and unable to run the country.
Demonstrating for people the chaos that comes when these people have the gavel is helpful in explaining to people what is going on and why they should go to defeat individual like Mike Walllett.
It's absolutely so insane. So tell me what your schedule is now.
My schedule is getting out in this district and talking with people about kitchen table subjects, my efforts to continue to lower costs for people when it comes to prescription drugs, and to make housing affordable, and to get assault weapons off our streets because people are getting gunned down every single Damia and it is a uniquely American problem that we can solve, but only if we have a majority willing to pass a universal background checks law and then
assault weapons. And I've been talking about democracy itself, which I think will become even more prominent in people's minds when Donald Trump is formally nominated this year and it continues to talk about pardoning the insurrection. As at the Capitol on January sixth, and jailing his political Thank you so.
Much for joining us. Really appreciate you, No problem, Molly.
People can also go to mondarefourcongress dot com and make a contribution or sign up to volunteer.
Yes both good.
Congressman Jared Moscowitz represents Florida's twenty third congressional district. Welcome to fast Politics, Congressman Moscowettes.
Hi, Molly, thanks for having me.
You're a freshman congressman, right.
Yes, Yes, it's been nine months of just absolute and utter enjoyment to be in the House of Representatives and your.
Freshman congressman from the state of Florida.
Yes, as they call it in other circles, the Free State of Florida.
Yes, the Free State of Florida.
First, let's talk about McCarthy had said he would take a vote on impeachment, realized he didn't have the votes, decided that he would just get going on impeachment. When you walked into that impeachment last week, did you think that Republicans really thought they had something.
I knew the hearing they were about to have was gonna be a big fucking mistake for them. And I knew that because they liked to tell everybody what they're gonna do. They've been telegraphing this entire impeachment inquiry on Twitter. We have this, we have that big, big alert or they show the red alert symbol every time they like drip drip this stuff. And so everything they had was already public, right, and we already had seven or eight
or these hearings. They didn't have a new fact witness coming. They were bringing basically like a Fox News panel to comment. And so because of that, that allowed Democrats to prepare, which we did significantly on the last eight months of hearings and all of the statements they have made and all of the stuff about Donald Trump. And so look what you saw was you saw an organized Democratic committee oversight. Dems prepared. Republican oversight did not. And that is what
the dramatic part was. By the way, they also have no evidence, so you know, it's tough to prepare when you have no evidence. But they didn't even do a great job of making up new stuff. They brought, you know, their greatest playbook for the last eight months, and I think it completely backfired on them.
What I think is really interesting about that impeachment hearing is I've never seen an impeachment hearing that ended up into like a showcase. There's always so much media chatter about like there's no Democratic bench, and it was like one after another of you guys just like kind of showing off a little bit.
Hakin did that intentionally. So we understood at the very beginning of Congress that they had built that oversight committee. If you look who's on there, Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Bober, Andy Biggs, you know, Jim Jordan. Right, we understood that they built that committee for television, right, They built that committee for a specific audience to convince the American people.
We knew that, so we respond in kind, right, and a Quin put some of the best messengers on there that have been in Congress, like AOC, like Katie Porter, like Jamie Raskin. You have a number of them that are great messengers to get the truth out. And then he took a bunch of freshmen, myself, Maxwell Frost, Robert Garcia, Jasmine Crockett, Summer Lee. He took a bunch of these freshmen Dan as well, who had done the impeachment hearing previously.
They put a bunch of these freshmen to combat the lives. We knew we're going to come out of this committee, and so what you saw is you saw strategy from Hakim Jeffries come to fruition in that hearing.
Yeah, it's kind of incredible. Like I was thinking about it because just like listening to Summerlee and then you'd go back to the magas and it would be like Lauren Bobert MTG trying to get that photo. I don't know why, but she loves that have photo of Hunter Biden.
Well, because they have no evidence. Molly, think about it. If they had evidence, hard evidence, they would have presented it, but instead the presenting pictures of stuff that Hunter Biden did.
Look, we get it.
The last eight months of that hearing is all about Hunter, right, and look, Hunter has clearly done something's wrong. He's been indicted and he should pay the consequences if that is found by a jury or a judge that he has done something wrong. He deserves a fair trial, as is Donald Trump. But the laws the law, and Democrats are going to stick by it. Of course, by the way, you don't see that from our colleagues across the aisles.
You know, we asked members to raise their hands to say, if a jury or a judge says Hunter Biden is guilty and Donald Trump is guilty separately, will you stand by that? All the Democrats raise their hand. None of the Republicans did right, And so you know, look, we were coordinated, as not the right word, but we all were talking to each other, so we kind of knew what everyone was going to say, which is why, you know, I noticed people had different styles, people had different messages.
There wasn't us covering the same thing over and over again. They did was repeat each other with the same stuff they've been saying for eight months. If they had evidence, Molly, you would have seen evidence, but you didn't see that. You saw the greatest hits and all the things Hunter Biden has done wrong in his life.
So after that hearing, did Republicans realize that it went as badly as it clearly did or did it take them a day to realize it immediately?
They knew it was bad by the way, they knew it was bad as it was happening. I quoted Steve Bannon in the hearing, because Steve Bannon was podcasting the hearing as it was happening. And so yeah, no, look, you know Republican media knew right away that this was going poorly hours into the hearing. The members of the committee, as soon as the committee was over, they knew as well. I'm not going to say which ones, but many of them came over to us and was like, that was
a disaster for you. Guys crushed us. You could see that. Not only did they realize that, and the media realized that, Which is why, Molly, have you found or seen anyone trying to change the narrative and say that hearing went really well. Not a single person, not even the chairman Okay, has been on TV saying that was a home run
hearing for us. That's how poorly it went. In fact, even Republicans that were not on the committee believed that what just transpired or the six hours set the impeachment hearings that they're trying to have back now, maybe by months.
So do we think this is the thing? I have long suspected, But I'm curious if you think this too. That was why Kevin McCarthy decided he couldn't afford the shutdown was because he realized that that was such a disaster that a shutdown to would just endanger those eighteen vulnerable Republicans so much.
I don't know.
Kevin didn't tell me why he did that. I think, in fairness to him for a second, I think he realized Republicans would get blamed for the shutdown they did because right, every well not just that every time this has happened, because it is not the first time they've done this. Three other times in recent memory they've been blamed. So history had showed them, if we do this, we're
going to get blamed. And yes, he recognized that he's got vulnerable Republicans, many of them in Democratic seats, that in order to remain in the majority, he didn't want to hang those guys out, so he did that. But he surprised the Democratic Party by doing that. We didn't know that CR was coming. It came out of nowhere. Now, look,
I voted for it. I'm glad to what we were paying our troops and we kept the government, the government open, But we were Democrats were never interested in shutting down
the government. That was a narrative that they put out there right to try to explain to people why they brought this CR because as they knew then, which has now proven to be true, that cr was not going to be popular with the Republican base, and so they tried to explain it away and blame Democrats, but it didn't work, and that obviously is what has led us now to having the vacancy in the speakership.
So every newsroom thought the government was going to shut down for months and months and months, and I was like, really surprised at the sea change.
I was convinced well, because look for eight months, other than the debt ceiling deal, for eight months, we saw the MAGA wing right emboldened for the last eight months, and we saw them emboldened because of that motion to vacate. That motion of akate of one member right gave them power. This motion of ak didn't come out of nowhere. This
has been a threat that's been out there. They've been teasing it, they've been talking about it, they've been whispering about it, right, And so that kept the majority of the Republicans, even the moderate ones, kind of beholden to the Freedom Caucus, to those twenty or so MAGA members that are in the House. That's where the power center
has been. When it was clear that they wanted to shut down, and it was clear they were getting their instructions from Donald Trump, beamed down from Truth Social that they wanted to shut down.
Right.
It was the belief of many that we were going to go off the cliff because those guys were never going to allow anything to happen.
And when they.
Voted against the conservative cr a thirty percent cut, Now obviously I voted against that.
The one with all the poison pills.
Yeah, with only all the poison pills. When they voted against that, I thought to myself, Oh, we're definitely going off the cliff. That was the most conservative cr that has I think ever been put forward in recent memory. If they were serious about really wanting to cut spending, they should have given that some serious consideration. But you know, they have all sorts of chaos politics going on on
their side of the aisle. But yeah, when we saw that fail, we absolutely concluded, well, if that's not good enough, right, if cutting the government thirty percent is not good enough, then only shutting it down must be what they wanted.
Kevin McCarthy's basic pitch to Democrats was that he is less awful than Jim Jordan. Right, that's sort of the devil, you know, et cetera.
Et cetera.
But Kevin McCarthy in saying that he was, in fact though he did do this impeachment right, so that was like, you know, he had gas stove hearings, He tortured many members of the Biden administration, bringing them in.
Has the government knocked on your door to take your stove away yet?
If only? But I mean, he did all the stuff that you know. The worry is Jim Jordan might do. First of all, Jim Jordan doesn't have the votes right now anyway, But like, how would that even work?
Well, first of all, look, there are multiple narratives here that can all simultaneously be true. Right. One narrative is that, yes, I think a speaker Jim Jordan would be worse than a speaker Kevin McCarthy. That narrative can be true. We can agree on that. I think we can also agree that if a Democrat filed a motion of vacate on Nancy Pelosi, I think we can also agree that we
wouldn't have had one Republican vote to save Nancy Pelosi. Now, look, people like myself, I'm not celebrating that the House now doesn't have a speaker, and I don't think Democrats should be celebrating that. I don't think Democrats should be celebrating that Kevin McCarthy was removed, okay, because it's still going to be a Republican speaker. We shouldn't celebrate this chaos.
Democrats need a functioning Republican Party. There's only two parties, and we're always going to have either a divided House of Representatives or divided Senate. We're always going to have some sort of divided government, and we need a functioning Republican Party. Donald Trump has made them non functioning. He has ruined them in ways that I don't think anyone anticipated that anyone could do to the Republican Party before
Donald Trump came on the scene. And it's unclear what will be left of the Republican Party after Donald Trump loses the election and how they will try to move past that error. But look, Democrats don't vote for Republican speakers. Now, that doesn't mean Molly, we didn't try to find a potential deal for the Institution. There were many conversations going on between Democrats and Republicans right to try not to allow the Imaga wing to plunge the Institution into this
sort of chaos. But in order to have a deal, the side that wants to deal, the moderate Republicans, have to present something, and they presented nothing. They just wanted us to help them. But this was an internal Republican civil war between themselves. It didn't involve us. But also, look, we have our own politics. Let's not pretend that politics
isn't a part of it. If Democrats went out and saved Kevin McCarthy just because it was a Tuesday for no other reason, no deal, not stopping the impeachment, not getting more seats on rules, not getting Ukraine funding just because we were asked to do it. Think about the problems we'd have now in the Democratic caucus to progressives, that the Democratic Progressives and the Democratic Moderates would be fighting, and how came Jeffries would be having to referee that.
Do you think there's a world where there ends up being some kind of power sharing or now.
No, Listen, there were times this week where I thought, well, maybe we're headed towards power sharing. It won't be real power sharing, but maybe we can get a sliver, Maybe we can get a little bit, Maybe we can get a couple members more on rules and make things slightly more moderate that come to the floor. I thought there was a glimmer of that, but when the other side didn't offer anything, and I think the reason ultimately they realized why they didn't offer anything is not because they
didn't want to try. They recognized that they would They would bleed even further.
Right because the base is so radicalized.
Yeah, because of the base right, it's so radicalized. If the Speaker made a deal with us to survive, it would have been a short survival rather than having a fast, quick death of yesterday, it would have been a slow bleed where okay, now it went from eight, now it's ten, now it's twelve, now it's fifteen, now twenty. The pressure from outside Republican Twitter politics right would have been so
immense that it would have collapsed. And the amount of Democrats it would have constantly taken to save the Speaker, it would eventually not have worked. And so I concluded after the last couple of days, and unfortunately, I don't think that some sort of power sharing agreement can survive in today's politics.
So there are eighteen vulnerable House Republicans who want in Biden districts. I think six in New York. Some in Arizona, California, they would like to not have a Jim Jordana speaker. I always think back to like how Nancy Pelosi never wanted her moderates, her people who came from swingey districts to have to vote against or for very extreme legislation because she thought it would hurt them. But that seems to not be on the radar of Republicans at all.
Look, Nancy Pelosi will go down as one of the greatest speakers of all time, and if that wasn't clear before yesterday, it's super clear now. But at the same time, Democrats didn't have this power. There's no doubt that Speaker McCarthy's team when they finally agreed to lower the threshold to one member being able to file a motion of a kate. But you know, I'm making like a Marvel Avengers reference when they gave Matt Gates the Infinity Stones.
The Infinity Stones, Yes.
It was only a matter of time until Matt Gates snapped his fingers to make Kevin McCarthy disappear. This was absolutely inevitable, by the way, I think many Republicans also thought this was inevitable. Now they didn't know that Matt would be able to get seven others to join him, but they knew that at some point Matt would use this. Now, apparently Matt made a promise he wouldn't. Okay, but come on, this was power that an individual member has not had
in the House for a long time. It didn't happen under Nancy because the power didn't exist. By the way, it's an interest think kind of political conversation, which is, if a single member had this power when Nancy was speaker, would they have used it? Probably not, but they would have used the threat of it right to move policy.
I think this is dangerous. I think giving one member the ability to vacate a speaker when ninety five of ninety six percent of your conference may support the speaker, which is what happened here, and four percent of the conference decides to remove the speaker, I think that's dangerous. I don't think we should have a one person being able to do that now. I don't think it should go back to only like the majority leader or the whip. I think it shouldn't go back just to leadership. I
think it could go to the members. But one no, twenty thirty, Yeah, That makes a little more sense now because now it's a much larger part of the caucus. This was something Molly that members have been talking about for months. Is Matt going to do it? Is Matt not going to do it?
Right?
It has been the back of the mind. After the debt sealing deal, we thought there was a chance that this could happen. But look, Matt was clearly very strategic. He needed to wait for the moment in which he could get other members to join him, and as soon as he realized he had other members on his side of the aisle to join him. I think Matt always knew that, just like I said, Republicans would never vote for Nancy Pelosi. I think Matt always knew Democrats wouldn't
vote for a Republican speaker. But that doesn't happen. By the way, Democrats vote for Democratics speakers. Republicans vote for Republican speakers. We don't vote for each other speaker. I think Matt knew that, even though he was messaging for weeks that, oh, I think the Democrats are going to save him. I think the Democrats are gonna save him. I think that was some just some you know, verbal jiu jitsu Matt was doing. But I think Matt always knew that he had to do it with his folks.
He had to find enough members on his side to do it, and when he had it, he pulled the trigger.
Thank you so much, Congressman.
I hope you'll come back absolutely.
Brian Boitler is the editor of the new substack Off Message.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Brian, thanks for having me.
Molly, you write a substack. Tell us a little bit about your substack.
The substack is called off Message. I launched it well, today's Thursday, as we record this. I launched it almost two weeks ago, on Friday, the twenty eighth of September. I think it is meant to make people feel okay about fostering vigorous intra democratic party and intraliberal debate.
I launched it because I had this.
Kind of gnawing, brewing sense over the last few years, at least that in the Biden era, but really the in I think the post Trump era, that media on the on the center to left had kind of split
or fractured into two camps. One that sort of like Pro Democratic Party sort of presents a united front against Donald Trump and authoritarianism, and then sort of more factional media where there is obviously like dissenting opinion about the Democratic Party or Joe Biden, but it's really about factional grievances or factional concerns, and there isn't this sort of freewheeling conversation among most liberals about how things are going
inside the house. I think that's totally understandable. I mean, the Trump presidency was a very traumatic moment for the country. It's reasonable for people to feel like there's a lot of risk inherent in airing differences and revealing that not everything is harmonious inside the big tent.
So speaking of not harmonious inside the big tent, let's talk about what's not harmonious inside the GOP. Sure, Kevin McCarthy nine months they decided, and a full term abortion is something that is not a real thing, but that Republicans love to talk about. The thing that gets me furious is there is a mainstream media messaging operation that is saying Democrats, you didn't save Kevin McCarthy, and you blew it.
And now and now, oh you're going.
To see now Speaker Jim Jordan is going to exact his revenge, like trying to impeach the president.
I mean, what does that revenge even look like?
Well, at the moment, it looks like very petty things, right, Like, apparently under instruction from Kevin McCarthy, the interim leadership of the House is expelling.
The guy who stands on the plastic crank.
That's Patrick McKenny.
He's expelling the Democratic leadership from some of their extra office space on the Capitol. The hideaways, Yeah, they're hideaways, and it just it's extremely petty.
This kind of really petty staff. Do voters like that?
So, I'm not sure how much of it voters see. I think that like if you explained it to a voter, a median voter and average voter, they would think that's petty and stupid.
I don't like that.
I think the atmospherically, what you end up with is like one party really likes to smack the other party around, belittle them, abuse them. And that's not appealing per se. But neither is like refue using the stand up for yourself or not looking for ways to stand up for yourself. And sometimes I think Democrats fall into this trap of just assuming well everyone's going to see this Republican behavior, They're going to be put off by it, and that's all we have to do.
It's sort of like when John Kerry got swift voted.
It was this moment where they punched him in the nose and a lot of people were like, well, that's unbecoming. But they also, I think, didn't respond well to John Kerrey's inability to like authentically stand up for himself and it hurt him. And I think that that happens over and over again in this kind of partisan conflict, This idea that it was democrats job to rescue Kevin McCarthy
from his antagonist or save him from himself. I think it like initially started with Republican operatives and conservative or centrist pundits who were kind of looking for like a hot take about the whole thing, but it has bled into sort of mainstream cable news type commentary and coverage.
And it's part of a dynamic in mainstream journalism where Republican extremism and kind of bad acting, this sort of like their abusive will punch in the face stuff, is just presumed that they will be dysfunctional, they will misgovern the place. It's up to Democrats to clean everything up or to make unreciprocated concessions to the Republicans to sort of appease them so that they don't do too much damage.
And obviously that that's not a reasonable or fair or sustainable way to organize the country or a fair expectation for any kind of outside critic to impose on people in parties and politics. It long predates this speakership fight, and you're just seeing this manifestation of it. And I agree it's extremely annoying.
But it's also for example, the threat of a Jim Jordan's speakership, which I heard a number of sort of people who are theoretically center as say, did he's going to come after Democrats? Jim Jordan's speakership does not look good for the eighteen Republicans who are desperately needed. If Republicans want to keep the.
Hand right, I mean, like you know, Jim Jordan gets up there and starts screaming and jumping up and down. I mean, do soccer moms in Pennsylvania like that? I mean, is that what they want?
I think Jim Jordan, for the reasons you articulate and others, is going to have a hard time getting two hundred and eighteen votes to become.
A speaker, but that's being held up as the threat against Democrats, Like, so he's mean to the like ultimately that's better for winning back the majority, and they've already done everything crazy.
I don't understand do therapy for me?
There's a or what sort of question that hangs around all this, Like what is worse than Kevin McCarthy, And I think Democrats reason through this fairly intelligently before they made the decision to unify and vote to aust McCarthy, is that the House was already led by somebody who was an apologist for the insurrection, who tried to undermine the January sixth Committee, who brought Donald Trump back into the party and launched the impeachment inpreak against Joe Biden.
So like, what is Jim Jordan going to do beyond that? That's so much worse. I do think that, like if Donald Trump himself were to become a speaker, and there are Republicans talking about it, there's a level of narcissism, of sabotage, of corruption where if you put somebody with those qualities into the speakership. They could really take the
country in bad places. Like Donald Trump, I assume, would you know, shut the government down and leave it to close down and unlessen until the House defunded his prosecutions, and then you'd have to wait and see our like our five or six Republicans going to try to force a vote to reopen the government.
I don't know.
They will have just voted for Donald Trump to become a speaker. There's this theoretical realm where if you put somebody who doesn't understand like what a public trust is and is only in it for themselves into the speakership and they're they're using it for their own personal purposes as opposed to for partisan purposes or whatever else, they could do a lot of damage. But Jim Jordan, is he going to double impeach Joe Biden to Okay? I mean, I guess let him. I think I think the attitude
should be. Look, if you want help getting somebody elected speaker, you're going to have to make some reasonable concessions to us. Maybe you can start by saying that the twenty twenty election wasn't stolen, and we'll.
Give you some votes. But if you're not willing to do that.
Bring it on, like, bring us your worst, It's up to you, Like that is a you guys decision, and so far, at least, I think that's the posture Democrats have taken.
I think it's wise.
Yeah, I mean, it is just an incredible spot to be in, Like Republicans have decided that they are going to be held hostage by the far right, and then sort of the larger situation is that, you know, somehow this is Democrat's faults.
Yeah, I don't really know what Democrats can say beyond like are you are you fucking kidding me? When people try to say it's your fault.
It's such a sort of metaphor for where we are in this fucker well.
I mean, if if you have a two hundred and twenty two or whatever it is vote House majority, you have two options. You can have a disciplined party that's competent and operates in good faith with itself enough to sustain two hundred and eighteen votes, you have four votes to spare. This is what Nancy Pelosi was able to do for two years and there was no internal effort
to depose her. Or if you can't do that, then you more or less have to go to the other party and say, all right, like, let's come up with somebody who you can tolerate and give us, you know, just enough votes to get over the hump. But then it's not going to be one of your one of your fire breathing partisans. It's going to be somebody who understands that they need Democratic votes to sustain the speakership.
And as long as Republicans aren't willing.
To contemplate any kind of concessions like that, you know, Democrats have kind of done all they could.
Maybe they can go out in front of the.
Cameras and kind of mock reporters for taking this notion that they had some duty to rescue Kevin McCarthy seriously, Like, I don't think anybody in the media sincerely believes that it's just playing along with dumb, dumb talking points.
Right, Yeah, one of the really interesting things that I think that's going on. And I don't know if it's interesting exactly, but like it's really hard to know what's happening polling wise, Like do you trust polls? I mean, I saw an insane poll out of Pennsylvania that had Bob Casey winning by ten points and Joe Biden losing by three points.
I don't put much stock in them, just because the election is so far out. There isn't a whole lot of I think, like historical data to support this, because there's only been forty five presidents. But you know, it's two and a half years in to the Biden presidency.
I think some of the you know, the the novelty of having beat Trump and pushed him out of office has worn off, and warts are starting to show, and people are a little bit you know, frustrated by this or that, and so I think that there's a way to understand why Joe Biden, despite being a much better president than Donald Trump in every way, is polling at a similar level to him, and the senators and governors in their states are in a slightly less polarized political situation.
They're obviously almost all of them younger and a pure younger than Biden, so they are pulling better than Biden.
But I think that when Donald Trump seals up the nomination, which I expect he will, you know, American memories are short, but I think that the memory of the Trump presidency is still sharp enough and it will be people will recall it when he becomes the nominee, and they'll be reminded, you know why it is that they showed up to vote for Joe Biden in twenty twenty, and the base will reconsolidate around him and the poll and will improve.
I mean, I can't be certain that that's what's going to happen.
But that seems like a likely scenario.
That's how like you can look at a poll that says that and say that that is capturing something real about public sentiment at the moment, But it doesn't mean that the country is ready to go back.
To Trump, right.
It is interesting to me, though, like one of the fundamental problems we're having here is that there's a real economic inequality issue that is really a problem, and I actually do think that Biden is trying to address that, and you see him quietly trying to forgive student debt in big tranchos. But that that's sort of the question. If you want young people to vote for you, you have to give them a reason, right.
Yeah, Well, I think you have to acknowledge or speak to what they say their concerns are, even if their concerns aren't about policy.
Or finances or whatever else.
I mean, you know, young people obviously, I think want student loan forgiveness to happen, and we're happy when he rolled out his plan and we're bummed when the Supreme Court tossed it out.
But you know, they're also saying that, like.
The Democratic Party tells us that we are like we have to vote as if our lives depend on it. But they don't act like that when they're governing, and they don't elevate people who are in our generation or you know, just one generation older than us to leadership positions within the party, like which is it?
Pick one?
If that's what their concern is. And I think Democrats aren't doing themselves any favors by ignoring it. That doesn't mean they have to like throw out Joe Biden and throw out Chuck Schumer right now, but they should at least say, hey, we hear you, and change is coming and we and we get that you're speaking to a real issue within the party. It's not going to be us forever, and that might help on the sheer numbers of it. The Biden economy has been great for inequality.
I mean, obviously inequality persists, but he's brought it down substantially. Right, There's just been a lot of churn in this post pandemic period, but policy wise and in the economy, and it has you know, while on the whole brought income inequality down, it has also created these weird things where like a bunch of people get kicked off of Medicaid and student.
Loans are going to be forgiven, but then they're not.
So a lot of the things that have happened during the Biden administration that have been bad are things that were consequences of this Supreme Court. Right, yes, So for example, the fall of Row not being able to forgive the student debt that he wanted to forgive, stuff like that. So I've heard takes that Biden gets blamed for that even though it wasn't his fault. I mean, do you think that's a real phenomenon.
I think it's totally plausible.
I mean, I think it's a little bit mystifying why Biden continues to be I mean, it's not like he's we must respect the sanctity of the Supreme Court, and I trust the good faith of all the nine justices. He has gone further than that, right, he is willing to say that there's problems there, but he has not really been willing to hold them up as a foil.
I'm surprised by that because I know the idea of more justices is wildly unpopular, but the idea of term limits is not.
Yes.
And I mean, I don't think Biden necessarily has to come out in favor of court pack He's actually come out against it, so I doubt he's going to come out in favor of it. But he could say sort of vaguer thing like this Supreme Court, which Republicans stole, is corrupted by money and has issued these illegitimate rulings,
and we are going to undo them. We are going to bring back row, we are going to bring back student debt relief, and we are going to use our checks and balances to make sure that they don't for the will of the people anymore. I mean, there's a lot of ways you could message it without saying thirteen justices or bust. And I think that to the extent that Democrats pick up that their natural supporters don't really understand that the Supreme Court was the reason that abortion got thrown out.
Although I think almost everyone realizes that.
Or that the Supreme Court is the reason the student loan reform got thwarted, which I think many maybe many.
People don't realize that.
If there's some knowledge gap there, fill it just say the Supreme Court is the reason. But we have power to checks and balances are the foundation of the American system, and they have shown that they need to be checked, and so we're going to check them. And then that's how we're going to restore reproductive rights, and that's how we're going to restore a student debt relief.
I would that's what I would say.
So interesting, Who do you think is going to be Speaker of the House? Go?
It can be.
Crazy, probably Patrick McHenry. I think that it's not going to be that interesting. Probably when all of a sudden done, it's going to probably be a crazy process to get there.
Yeah, that's my take too. Go on.
My take is that all of the possible outcomes seems so imp osbi, but one of them has to be true.
Right, So somebody from.
The problem solvers realm, you know, who's like has tried to create distance from MAGA is going to be elected with like fifty to fifty support from Democrats, Republicans, or they'll find a conservative like like Tom Cole from Oklahoma who's very conservative but has like never really been part
of the MAGA scene, you know what I mean. And I think Democrats think that he's like somebody you can talk to and work with, and he could get he could get seventy five percent of the votes from Republicans and twenty five percent from Democrats.
But it's a strange situation.
They got to get to eighteen man.
Yeah, And I think Democrats have some you know, have some messaging options. They can say, we need if you want our votes, we need a speaker who doesn't reject the twenty the results of the twenty twenty election, like doesn't reject ad Ukraine.
Such a low bar. I'm laughing to keep from crime. Yes, thank you, Brian.
Thank you.
Molly was great the moment second Jesse.
Cannon, Molly Jong Fast. I have never seen someone more thirsty for attention than Marjorie Taylor Green and how excited she is at the idea that mister Trump is coming to visit the GOP clucus and could maybe be their new Speaker of the House.
It's the Donald Trump friend, Olympics and Marjorie Taylor Green is a candidate no listen.
First of all, I would it's hard for me.
To imagine a worse candidate for Speaker if you want to rewin the House than Donald Trump, and so I encourage Republicans to please nominate this person. Those eighteen vulnerable House Republicans are going to be completely and utterly screwed if Donald Trump becomes Speaker of the House.
And that is our moment of fuck Erray.
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 heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.