Alrighty, folks, as you can see, complete chaos has now broken out in the Congress of the United States. Conflict between Speaker Mike Johnson, President Trump, Elon Musk. So what the hell is going on here? Let me begin with this. Politics is a battle between principle. and pragmatism, the things that you want and the things that it is possible to get. Anybody in my job who tells you that pragmatic considerations
are simply a lack of will or a betrayal of principles, does not understand politics or is lying to you. There are a lot of people who are doing that today. People who suggest that any time Congress cuts any sort of deal, that is a violation of principle. And if only they'd acted.
With Nietzschean willpower, they could have gotten 100% of the things you wanted. That's a lie. Now, on the other side, anybody who tells you that pragmatism ought to lead to complete abandonment of principle is also lying to you. Anybody who says, listen, I had to give away the store because...
Otherwise, you wouldn't have gotten anything. Those people are generally lying to you also. So the art of politics and the difficult thing about politics, elective politics, is finding the balance between what you want, principle, and what you can get. Pragmatism. And that's what's happening in the House over the course of the last 48 hours. So, right now, a continuing resolution.
is currently being considered. So what exactly is a continuing resolution? Basically, it's stopgap funding. Why? Well, because Congress is unable to pass a real budget with Chuck Schumer as the head of the Senate and with a... Very, very slim House majority for the Republicans. And remember, Joe Biden is still technically the president. One of the things that I've been enjoying is the entire media suggesting that actually Elon Musk is the president. So they are off by what?
two orders of magnitude. So Joe Biden's the actual president. Trump isn't the president yet. And then they say Trump isn't the president. Elon is the president. Right now, the actual president of the United States is the senile daughter. who Democrats refused to oust as the actual president, despite the fact he doesn't have a working brain. But that dude can still stand in the way of anything Republicans pass in the House, and he can veto legislation if he doesn't like it.
That is still a thing he can do. So what is the actual position right now with regards to the continuing resolution? Well, the Wall Street Journal editorial board suggests. correctly, in lieu of passing a real budget, the House and Senate have agreed on another continuing resolution, or a CR, that will extend through March 14th in the new year. The only virtue here is the government won't shut down if...
The continuing resolution passes and it will give the new GOP Congress a chance to use budget rules to pass a reconciliation bill next year with 51 Senate votes, which means Chuck Schumer won't be able to extort more spending if Republicans want at least some of their priorities to pass. But.
Schumer is going out with a CR bang and the GOP is once again forced to take it. Some Republicans want to blame Speaker Johnson for getting too little in exchange. But as long as they refuse to vote for a continuing resolution.
then the Speaker is going to have to go to Democrats in order to pass a continuing resolution or you get a government shutdown. And this is how Schumer likes it. The GOP House actually passed nearly half of all of their appropriations bills this year. Susan Collins and Patty Murray.
passed almost all the Senate bills through the Appropriations Committee, and then Schumer refused to bring all that to the floor because he likes these giant omnibus crammed down packages. That's how you end up with these giant omnibus packages. Now, what is actually in this package? Well, yes, a bunch of pork. So...
They could have passed a clean CR, a clean continuing resolution, which just continues the discretionary spending at prior levels, basically up until Donald Trump takes office. We've gotten us through the next few weeks. That's what they could have done. They didn't do that. Instead.
they decided that they were going to load in a bunch of stuff, including that $100 billion for disaster relief funds, which is overkill, and $10 billion in farm pork. And by the way, this is something that many Republicans wanted, was this farm pork bill, including...
Donald Trump, J.D. Vance. They both wanted that farm bill spending in there. So we should point out at this point the conflicting interests between the parties who are involved in this negotiation. Donald Trump's mandate is to do things.
He wants to clear the decks before he becomes president of the United States. So he would like a few things. He would like, for example, the debt ceiling increased. So that way he can actually spend more money. And in the way that the government calculates things, tax cuts are spending money, which, of course, is really silly. But.
That is how things are done in terms of congressional appropriations and ability to take out additional debt and all the rest. So Trump would love to enter office with all of the spending off the books for him so he doesn't get blamed for it. And also an increase in the debt ceiling.
Mike Johnson's mandate is to try to get most of the things that Trump wants. And if that means giving up some concessions, he has to do that. And he has to do that by negotiating with his own caucus. This idea that Mike Johnson just has the singular ability to pass a bill himself.
Ignores the fact he has an incredibly slim majority in Congress. And I just want to show you this graphic from FiveThirtyEight because it's fairly accurate. It shows the breakdown of the House in terms of the various constituency groups inside Congress.
So you have basically three groups of Democrats. You have the progressive Democrats, the core Democrats and the moderate Democrats. And then you have five different groups of Republicans as FiveThirtyEight labels it. And again, this isn't totally inaccurate. moderate Republicans. There are about 39 of them. These would be people in purple districts who tend to vote for bigger spending and who also tend to vote for lax.
Social policy, for example, or might be squishes on the border. Those are moderate Republicans, and there are 39 of them. And then on the other side, you have what 538 calls far-right obstructionists. Now, again, I think that that is a mislabeling, but these are people who, for example, would rather shut down the government.
than green-light discretionary spending. I don't think that's far-right obstructionism. I think that's actually quite principled in some cases, but it does make it very difficult to work a coalitional bill through when you have 39 people on one end or in purple districts and who basically...
Just want to get by. Or those seats turn Democrat and you don't have any power. And on the other side, you have people who are like, I'm not going to vote come hell or high water for anything that increases debt levels in the country. Okay, well, how do you put all of that together? And the answer very often, especially with a very slim majority, is that Mike Johnson, in order to get the things that Trump wants, has to trade away some of the things.
that Republicans would like. Again, this is not specific to Mike Johnson. This was true of Kevin McCarthy. This was true of Paul Ryan. One of the most annoying things about the way, again, that people in my position, commentators on politics, people who try to shape public opinion.
One of the most annoying things that people in my position very often do is once again suggesting that the person who is charged with leading a coalition of widely disparate interests can single-handedly ram things through. That is not how the legislature works.
It is not how the legislature has literally ever worked. In fact, the only time in my lifetime that you had a leader who was able to do that on the Republican side was Newt Gingrich. He was able to do it for about two years. And then his only Republican caucus basically ousted him by 1998.
Gingrich was on the ropes. The Republican Revolution happened in 94. And within four years, Gingrich was on the ropes. So again, this is typically not how coalitional politics works. So I'm just pointing out all these interests because again, politics is the art of balancing.
principle and pragmatism. So on the one hand, you have President Trump who wants the things that he wants. So he wants the continuing resolution. He wanted the farm spending. He did. He also wanted the disaster relief spending.
He does want those things. Now, he's not in office yet, but he has, of course, an enormous amount of sway with the Republican caucus. And then you have Johnson, who wants to do the things that Trump wants him to do, but who's actually going to be the guy who has to negotiate the deal. Johnson, in this...
sort of iteration. He is more like an agent of the president, Donald Trump, than he is like a principled leader who is standing for the thing. That's not his job. His job is to cobble together the coalition to get 70% of the loaf of bread. So he sort of represents pragmatism in this particular mode of thinking. And then you have the person who's representing principle, which would be Elon. So Elon was set up.
at DOGE, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, to go through all of these bills and point out where there is pork. Now, here's the thing. Every single bill that Congress ever negotiates is going to be filled with pork. It is just a question of how much.
And so it's very good that Doge is there to point this sort of stuff out. However, what you can easily end up with, and this is actually what happened in this situation, is a bill that had been basically pre-negotiated between Trump, Johnson, Vance.
Congressional Republicans, few congressional Democrats. Everybody knows what's in it. Everybody knows there's a bunch of crap in it because, again, to get 70% of the loaf means 30% excrement. And again, this is not a defense of the bill. I would not vote for this bill were I in Congress.
Because I'd probably be labeled one of the far right obstructionists by 538. I would look at this bill. I wouldn't want the farm spending. I don't like farm subsidies. I think they are a waste of money. And I think they make industry significantly less competitive and efficient. I would not vote.
for a giant disaster relief package, because frankly, I think that much of the disaster relief stuff should be done at the state level. I, for example, don't see why California needs to subsidize Florida or Florida subsidize California. You know who agrees with me? Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Our home state here in Florida has been hit with a multiplicity of hurricanes over the last couple of years. And so I wouldn't vote for this package. I think it's a bad bill. But let's be clear about what happened here. The bill was pre-cleared and pre-negotiated between the White House.
and Congress. And then Elon, whose job is to go out and say the principle, came along and said the principle and created all sorts of backlash. And that backlash has been directed at Mike Johnson. But that, I think, again, is a misdirection of the backlash.
This is all a complicated negotiation that happens when you have disparate interests involved. So again, a lot of the heat has been brought to Johnson. I'm just telling you, you can yell at Mike Johnson. It's fine. He's a politician. He's used to taking it.
He's the one who took the Speaker of the House position, which is legitimately the worst position in American government. I'm just going to tell you right now the same thing that I've said about Johnson and McCarthy and Paul Ryan and John Boehner going back years and years and years and years, which is.
Anybody who tells you that any of these leaders has the capacity to single-handedly ram through all of the things you want without giving up any of the things you don't want, those people are lying to you. If somebody ever tells you that the real problem in politics is just that no one has principles, no one has principles, that's a bit of a fib. But you know what else is a fib? Imported meat in your fridge. It's a fib. Because, let's be real,
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So here's how this actually went down. So yesterday, Mike Johnson was on Newsmax and he was explaining, listen, this bill came about because there are struggling Americans who need disaster relief. This would be particularly Hurricane Helene in North Carolina. There are also farmers who require subsidies. Again, these are things that the Trump administration, the Trump team would like to see. Here he was explaining.
This was the conservative play call. We don't normally like what's called a continued resolution, a CR. But in this case, it makes sense because if we push it into the first quarter of next year, then we have a Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald J. Trump back in the White House.
We'll be able to have more say over the funding decisions for 2025. Now, that would have been an easier thing to do. But then we had circumstances outside of our control. We had these emergencies that are required. So we had, as you know, a record hurricane season. We had Helene and Milton.
They just did massive destruction across our red states, frankly, in the southeast and the eastern side of the country. And then we've had farmers who are in jeopardy of permanently going under. They've had three lost years in a row because of Bidenomics and inflation. and other circumstances outside of their control. And so when you cobble those two things together, there's a desperate need for that aid, and that's what adds another hundred.
plus billion dollars to the bill and that's why everybody's uncomfortable with it i am too we have a massive deficit and deficit and and debt problem of course in this country we can begin to address that and shrink the size and scope of government in january with republican control
But we've got to bridge the gap to get there. And we cannot leave our small farms and ranchers and our inner people who are devastated by the hurricanes out in the meantime. So that's the difficult part about this. That's what people are.
are really struggling with, and I am too, but we have a responsibility here, and that's legislative. Now, again, because there are a lot of people like me in the Congress who wouldn't vote for this bill, that means that Johnson then had to go to Democrats and negotiate something to get the things that Trump and Johnson and Vance all wanted.
And a lot of those things are absolute crap, right? They are bad. Make no mistake about it. And Vivek Ramaswamy, whose job it is, along with Elon Musk, to go through these kinds of things and point out the bad things, they pointed out the bad things today. And there are, in fact, a lot of bad things.
So as Vivek points out, keeping the government open until March 14th will cost $380 billion by itself. But the true cost of this omnibus is far greater due to new spending. Renewing the farm bill for an extra year, $130 billion. Okay, now again, that's something that I oppose.
I'm not sure that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Mike Johnson opposed that because they would like the farmers to get the subsidies. Disaster relief, $100 billion. Stimulus for farmers, $10 billion. And again, I disagree with an enormous amount of the spending.
I'm not sure that's true of, for example, President Trump. The legislation will end up hurting many of the people it purports to help says a vague debt-fueled spending sprees may feel good today, but it's like showering cocaine on an egg. It's not compassion, it's cruelty.
Farmers will see more land sold to foreign buyers when taxes inevitably rise to meet our obligations. Our children will be saddled with crippling debt. Interest payments will be the largest item in our national budget. These are all points that Vivek is making. And then he suggested.
that people call their congressmen and tell them to reject the bill. Here was Vivek yesterday. Again, Vivek and Elon are the ones who are running Doge. Congress is about to pass a bill that blows away your taxpayer money.
but they made it over 1,500 pages long so you wouldn't read it. I did you a favor. I read it for you. It's supposed to be about keeping government operations open and providing disaster relief aid to hurricane victims, which I'm sympathetic to. But if you read the bill carefully, it contains
pay raises for members of Congress, and I'm not making this up, an expansion of their federal health benefits. It contains all kinds of special interests and pork funding, including opening up a new stadium in Washington, DC. It renews the global engagement. center which is a key node of the censorship industrial complex
And the worst part is they didn't want you to know about any of it. And that's why they made this a last minute jam job. The reason I'm co-heading Doge is I think we need outsiders to bring actual accountability to Washington, D.C. So feel free to call your congressman.
and let them know how you feel about it. So again, there's a bunch of stuff in the bill that is pretty terrible, including, for example, a short-term funding bill that includes more funding for the so-called Global Engagement Center.
which is an organization, it's part of the State Department, that we at The Daily Wire are suing, right? We don't want that organization to be in existence. It is a terrible organization. It basically works with groups like, for example, NewsGuard in order to target quote-unquote disinformation.
and suppress American speech. And so I would very much like for that agency to disappear. This bill, for example, keeps the agency alive. And there's a bunch of stuff in the bill that is just like that. A bunch of actual nonsense in the bill. That is true. And Vivek's doing his job, and Elon is doing his job. So Elon Musk then signed into chat, and Elon really started ramming through all sorts of objections to the bill, which again...
In his job as head of Doge, that's the job to do is to look at the bills and say, here's all the pork, here's all the problems with the bill. Some of the things he was saying were true and absolutely necessary. Some of the things he was retreating were sort of not true. So again, all sorts of bad stuff in there.
potentially up to $2 billion in funding to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge. $69,000 pay bump for lawmakers was suggested, but that actually, that's not actually real. The thing that is actually happening in terms of the pay bump for lawmakers, just to be perfectly accurate.
as to what exactly is happening. The pay raise that is happening is a part of the cost of living adjustment freeze that is now being unfrozen. So members of Congress have not had a raise to their $174,000 salary since 2009. The pending CR does not include a colifreeze. That would not result in a 40% boost in pay. That would result in a potential 3.8% increase in pay thanks to cost of living adjustment from 2009 in terms of inflation. It's an increase of about $6,600.
not an increase of $69,000, as was implied by many of the people who are sort of putting out this information. There was also some bad information put out suggesting that $3 billion in federal money would be put forward for a new NFL stadium in Washington. That's not true. The bill just transfers control of the site.
from the federal government to the D.C. local government for redevelopment. So some of the stuff that was put out was not true, but a lot of it was. I mean, there's a lot of bad nonsense that is in this particular bill. And again, it is the job of Doge to go through all of those things. However...
this does create a rather large conflict because, once again, it is not as though Mike Johnson went about this deal by himself. He was working with President Trump and J.D. Vance the whole time. Okay, here was. Johnson, pointing this out, says I was on the phone the entire time with Trump and with Elon.
I was in constant contact with President Trump and his team, the chief staff and all the domestic policy advisors. They know exactly what we're doing and why. And I was on a text chain last night with Elon and Vivek about Doge, because I'm super excited about that. And I said, guys, these are the...
necessary things. They don't like spending either. They say, we know this is not you personally, Mr. Speaker, and we've got to get through this. So, look, everybody understands the necessity. It is not palatable. This is the sausage-making part of legislation that nobody likes.
We're governing, and we'll pick it up in January and start a brand new day for America. Okay, again, that is the pragmatic side of the equation that we are talking about. And it's not as though Trump was not involved. It's not as though...
Johnson was sort of negotiating this thing on his own without any reference back to what Trump would want. That would be a very stupid move by Johnson, frankly. If he were to start go freelancing, making bills on his own, how's that going to go? I mean, really?
And Johnson is not a stupid man. You may not like Mike Johnson. He's not stupid. But here is Johnson saying, listen, this is the least of all the bad options. Now, again, maybe that's not true. Maybe he could get a better deal. But that's a question of incremental better deal. And the reality is if you want all the things that you want to get in politics, you're going to have to give up a bunch of stuff that you don't particularly like. And then it's just a question of that balance.
We've tried to navigate this as best as possible and chosen the least of the bad options in front of us. No one wants to spend $110 billion, but when you have emergencies that are actually, you know, as they're legally called, acts of God, these are not...
man-made disasters, they're outside of our control and there's a certain principle that the federal government has some role to play. So we don't like that. We don't like spending money. But in a case like this, you know, to be frank, it would be the red states that are left out.
the rural areas. Democrats don't have a big priority on the agriculture community because they don't have that in their districts. These are Republican states and Republican districts, and we'd be derelict in our duty if we didn't take care of them. So that's the part of this that is uncomfortable for people.
spending money, but we have to do it responsibly. Okay. So Elon, of course, then saw the bill and he had been apprised of the fact that a compromise had to be made, but he didn't like the actual compromise that was made. So he started rage tweeting about this yesterday. And again, I agree with a huge number of his criticisms.
He called the bill criminal and insane crime against the American people in outrage, terrible and madness. I should point out at this point that for all the talk about the overspending in this particular CR, literally yesterday, the same day that this happened, the Senate.
passed a bill that's going to cost way more money than anything that we are talking about right now. A social security bill passed the Senate that effectively pays more to public sector employees for social security that they wouldn't have got anyway. The bill is quite properly opposed by Senator Rand Paul, who points out that these social security reforms are going to cost $200 billion. And nobody's noting that. And this is part of the problem with sort of the Eye of Sauron approach.
to federal debt and federal spending is that you kind of sporadically get interested in the thing that's on the table. But in the meantime, something is happening in the back room that is really, really much worse.
The reality is the systemic drivers of debt in the United States of America are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and all the discretionary welfare programs attached to them. And those are precisely the things that the Trump administration is very unlikely to tackle. So some of this is just arguing.
over incremental differences in the national debt without touching the actual substructure that drives the national debt. Again, that's not to say we shouldn't talk about discretionary spending. We absolutely should. It is just worth pointing out that there's sort of a whack-a-mole approach being taken. to the national debt and all this. Now, folks, if it feels like the government spends with one hand and then...
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for anyone who votes in favor of this bill. And as soon as that happens, Trump and Vance, President Trump and Vice President Vance, who, again, were part of the negotiation. It's not as though they were absent from all of this talk.
they signed into the chat and they started to saw off the limb behind Speaker Johnson. So they put out a statement that said, quote, the most foolish and inept thing ever done by congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.
Meanwhile, Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney. The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6th committee, which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day.
This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas. Increasing the debt ceiling is not great, but we'd rather do it on Biden's watch. If Democrats won't cooperate on the debt ceiling now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration?
Let's have this debate now, and we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn't give Chuck Schumer and Democrats everything they want. Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025.
The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill without Democrat giveaways combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country. Republicans must get smart and tough. If Democrats threaten to shut down the government unless we give them everything they want, call their bluff.
It is Schumer and Biden who are holding up aid to our farmers and disaster relief. This chaos would not be happening if we had a real president. We will in 32 days. That is a statement that is pointed out jointly by President Trump and Vice President Vance. Hey, so.
The options that are basically left on the table are these. One, what they probably should have done in the first place, a clean continuing resolution without the farm bill, without the disaster aid. Just put that forward. Get through the first few weeks of the new year. Trump's president.
You have a Republican Congress, Republican Senate. And now you can actually have an honest conversation about how Republicans should vote. Remember, right now, Chuck Schumer is still in charge of the Senate and Joe Biden is still the president of the United States. But again, it turns out that.
Trump, Vance and Johnson don't actually want a clean continuing resolution. So President Trump put out a statement yesterday, quote, if Republicans try to pass a clean continuing resolution without all of the Democrat bells and whistles that will be so destructive to the country, all it will do after January 20th. So now...
Trump and Vance are adding a new wrinkle. They don't just want to pass the clean CR. They also want to pass an increase in the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is what allows the government gives permission to the executive branch to go and take out more debt. We have this debate every year, every six months. in the Congress, the increase in the debt ceiling, and usually that is used as a lever to get the government to spend less money by Republicans.
president trump put out a statement saying quote sounds like the ridiculous and extraordinarily expensive continuing resolution plus is dying fast but can anyone imagine it passing without either terminating or extending the debt ceiling guillotine coming up in june unless the democrats terminate or substantially extend debt ceiling now
I will fight till the end. This is a nasty trap set in place by the radical left Democrats. They're looking to embarrass us in June when it comes up for a vote. The people that extended it from September 28th to June 1st should be ashamed of themselves. It was political malpractice.
Also, the Communist Global Engagement Center, a project of crooked Hillary Clinton, should not in any way, shape, or form be extended, and the shielding of the very corrupt J6 Unselect Committee of Political Losers and Thugs would be suicidal for any Republican approving it. Likewise, this is not a good time for Congress to be asking for pay increases.
Hopefully you'll be entitled to such an increase in the near future when we make America great again. Okay, so what exactly does all that mean? It means that now they are no longer at...
asking just for a clean CR, which again, would have been the best plan. Just get for a few more weeks of spending. That's it. Get Trump in office. Get the Republicans in office and then negotiate all this stuff out. President Trump would love for the debt ceiling to go away. So when he comes into office, Republicans can.
Pass the new tax bill, for example, or pass a border bill without having to worry about the debt ceiling. So the question is this, how? Again, this is where the principle and the pragmatism meet. How? How do you get all those things? So the only way you're going to get all those things is by wait for it.
giving concessions to Democrats because Republicans do not run the Senate because Republicans probably don't have enough votes in the House to get something like that across the finish line. There are a lot of Republicans who don't want to increase the debt ceiling and sort of sign a blank check.
Why exactly would Democrats vote to increase the debt ceiling to help Republicans in the future? That doesn't make any sense. They're not going to do that. This idea that Democrats are desperate to increase the debt ceiling on behalf of Trump and the Republicans taking office, that is not how politics works.
And Democrats are already pointing this out. So, for example, Chris Murphy, the execrable senator from Connecticut, Democrat, he put out a statement, quote, remember what this is all about. Trump wants Democrats to agree to raise the debt ceiling so he can pass his massive corporate and billionaire tax cut without a problem.
shorter version, tax cut for billionaires or the government shuts down for Christmas. So Democrats are now opposing a clean continuing resolution. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries suggested Wednesday, Democrats will oppose any federal spending bill that strays.
from the deal that was announced the day before because they understand that they sort of have Republicans boxed in. Politically speaking, what they believe is that if the government shuts down, Republicans will be blamed. Why? Because Republicans were perfectly willing to back the bipartisan deal until Elon Musk pointed out the flaws in the deal and then...
Donald Trump and J.D. Vance didn't like the public blowback on the deal and decided to walk back the deal. And so Democrats are like, why would we help you out? What exactly would be the purpose? So if there is a government shutdown, who will be blamed is sort of the question. I think that on the right side of the aisle, there's a generalized perception.
that the left will be blamed. That if Republicans, for example, pass a continuing resolution and still somehow are able to pass an increase in the debt ceiling and then Democrats refuse all those things, Democrats will be blamed.
for the continuing resolutions failure. Democrats will be blamed for the ensuing partial government shutdown. Again, government shutdown in the end of the world. We've done it before. It's not that big a deal. When I say it's not that big a deal, it is for the people who are furloughed, but typically they don't last all of that long. And also...
All of these sort of essential services, meaning social security checks, for example, those continue to go out on time. So what would the actual political result of this be? Well, it would be a battle that President Trump would have to inherit immediately on taking office. The next month.
Because it's still a month until he's president. The next month would be taken up with conversation in the media about why is the government shut down? Why didn't Donald Trump just let the Republicans pass the continuing resolution? Why are government workers not getting paid for Christmas? And all the rest. And maybe...
That makes no difference. Maybe it turns out that Trump comes into office, passes some funding, and everything is hunky-dory. Okay, great. But that is the risk. It's understanding that risk is, again, a question of pragmatism versus actual principle. What does that risk look like?
But if President Trump is counting on Democrats to vote for an increase in the debt ceiling and Joe Biden to sign that in order to help him in his first year, I don't think that's going to happen. So how far are Republicans going to take it? And then really, how far is Trump going to take it and own it? How far will President Trump and J.D. Vance and Elon Musk take it and say, yes, we're the ones who said no to this bill because we thought that the extra pork was not worth the squeeze?
That's always how these government shutdown battles go. They rarely result in exactly what Republicans would like them to result in. And the question of who receives the blame, maybe it doesn't matter to Republicans, but in a very closely divided Congress where you have a bunch of members.
who are fighting for their seats. Remember, Republicans are almost certainly going to lose seats in the Congress in 2026, which means they lose the majority in 2026. So there are a lot of Republican Congress people who are fighting for their seats who might not go along with any of this because...
Frankly, they don't want to be out of their jobs. These are the complex dynamics of the politics. Again, Democrats, I don't think are going to save Republicans from this one. Democrat Jasmine Crockett, who is quite a terrible congresswoman, she's reveling in the Republican dysfunction. What is happening in the House of Representatives?
Like, this was supposed to be just, you know, a pro forma exercise. They're going to pass the CR. And it has turned into an utter debacle with people openly calling for Speaker Johnson to be thrown out of the Speaker's office. Democrats looking at this listen we're looking at this like this is their problem
We have seen this play out over and over in the entire two years that I've been in Congress. We know that they had a problem picking a speaker when I first got to Congress. And I thought, since they held on to the speaker a little bit longer than they held on to McCarthy, that I could...
into january knowing that mike johnson would be the speaker but now they're calling for his ouster and remember this is not like one of the most senior members right so basically he had not burned enough bridges and so they had to go way way down in senor to find someone that they could come to a consensus on. We have seen this over and over and I'm just gonna sit back and sip my tea and wait on them to figure it out.
Or maybe sip something stronger. I'm just saying it. I mean, this is why you see Democrats are very, very happy about all this. Now, why is any of this important? In the end, some sort of...
Continuing resolution will be passed in the end. The government ain't going to shut down forever. Even if it lasts until President Trump becomes president and Republicans pass some sort of funding bill, it's going to get passed. The reason this is important is because it is a good precursor to what the dynamic could be when Trump takes office.
when President Trump takes office. And that could be a problem. What you need is a Republican caucus that moves in almost machine-like fashion in order to promote its highest priorities. They actually need to stick together, for example. And that does mean...
That if Doge is making points from the outside and putting public pressure from the outside, it has to be on particular members on particular issues, not just shooting down pre-written legislation. It depends. I mean, if Doge is truly sort of an independent body.
who's going to be calling out everything, then maybe that's their job. But that means that President Trump and J.D. Vance and team might have to push back against those from time to time. That may not be the dynamic that they're looking for.
If you want President Trump's priorities to pass, there is going to be some stuff that you don't like because that is the necessity of pragmatic politics. That is the reality. And so the kind of dream of everybody being on the same page, that is not how incentive structures work. In just one second.
We'll get to the people who I think are fibbing about some of this. First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans. Taxes. The October 15th deadline has passed. Are you prepared for what's coming? Do you owe back taxes? Are your tax returns still unfiled? Did you miss the deadline to file for an extension?
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Every dollar goes back into the battle to fight the left and build the future. Go to dailywire.com slash subscribe to join today for half the price. Now, again, there are a lot of people in my position in conservative media or in politics who I think there's always an interest in telling the public.
that if everyone were just more pure, that if Mike Johnson were just a stronger person, then you would have gotten everything you could possibly want. And that's just, I think the people who say this know that that's not true. I think that they know that.
I think it is a form of demagoguery, frankly, to suggest that every politician who doesn't do everything that you want is doing it because there's some sort of sellout or cuck. Sometimes they are. But this idea that every single House Speaker of my lifetime.
has been a sellout or a cuck. And it's not just a matter of incentive structures is wrong. Thomas Sowell once suggested that the art of politics is not getting the right person in the right place. It's making the wrong person do the right thing through incentive structures, right? That is the whole goal.
If Republicans, for example, had a 40 seat majority in the House rather than like a two seat majority in the House, you'd be able to get a lot more done. If Republicans were not on the verge of losing the House in 2026, you'd be able to get a lot more done. If they controlled the Senate already, you'd be able.
incentive structures mean an awful lot when it comes to politics. And I know that that creates a lot of frustration for people who want to see their politicals done. They want to see their priority. I get it. I totally get it. But the reason you have checks and balances in the United States, the reason that the processes are arcane.
The reason you have coalitional politics is because this is a big, unwieldy country. And it requires a government that actually has to go through the motions of compromise. And you don't get everything that you want all the time. Now, I'm going to push for everything that I want. I'm going to say that members who don't give me what I want.
ought to lose their primaries. I'm also not going to suggest that the Speaker of the House, or Donald Trump for that matter, that their job is the same as my job, because it is not. Their job is to get 70, 80% of the loaf.
Because it turns out the incentive structure still exists in government. We still have checks and balances. We still have another party in this country. And if we don't like it, then we should vote out more Democrats. That'd be the actual solution to structural underlying change. Again, there's this weird idea that goes about in Congress.
that just is really sort of distasteful. Just get rid of John. Just get rid of McCarthy. Just get rid of Ryan. Just get rid of Boehner. Just get rid of anything. And then everything will be hunky-dory. It ain't going to work that way. It's not. So Steve Bannon, who again, Steve is a very colorful figure for sure.
But Steve is is constantly on the sort of bandwagon of anyone I don't like is a cuck. And so here is Steve Bannon now suggesting that Mike Johnson is a Democrat, which I'm sorry, that's just ridiculous. It's just ridiculous on its face. Mike Johnson is one of the most conservative members of the House.
by his career voting record. But again, Steve always has an interest in suggesting that if you don't get what you want 100% of the time, it's because some politician has sold you down the river, has sold you out, which this sort of game I think is... Pretty ugly. Johnson's a Democrat. He's a Democrat. He holds the Bible. He's got the New Testament wrapped up tight. He can talk happy talk on a handful of social issues, you know, checking his son's.
I don't know, all this crazy nonsense. He does all that. He goes down there. He's a big, deep Christian. Except when it comes to showing courage and being courageous. I'm sorry, this grows suggesting that Mike Johnson is not a committed Christian because he is not able to get more of the loaf that, by the way, Donald Trump wanted. Again, this bill didn't emerge from nowhere. This sort of stuff is pretty distasteful.
Thomas Massey, who again is very consistent in terms of wanting smaller government, but now he's blaming Mike Johnson. And let's be clear about this. Thomas Massey will never at any point be happy with any Speaker of the House because any Speaker of the House is going to have to do things that Thomas Massey does not like.
in the same way that Ron Paul was a purist about spending. And it turned out that he never had a Speaker of the House that he liked. Ron Paul also happened to kind of like bringing the pork back home to his own district. But here's Thomas Massey. I have a person in mind, but I'm not going to say that name. Can you give us a hint for Christmas? It is Christmas coming up. Just a gift hint. Just a little hint. We'll keep it here. Kona Silence.
I know in my family, we always had one present you could unwrap on Christmas Eve. Can that be ours? No, this is not that present. I tried, everybody. I tried. But listen, the reason I'm doing that is to protect that person. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. Okay, I can promise you right now that anybody that Thomas Massey suggests is not going to speak to the House. Not because they're a bad person or anything, just because, as I pointed out at the top of the show...
Look at that Republican caucus again, and you will notice there are many people who do not agree with Thomas Massey in that caucus. It's a coalitional job. Understanding the dynamics of politics allow for a little bit more, I would say. sanguinity when it comes to the ugliness of the sausage making. I think so much of frustration in modern American politics is driven by people believing.
That if only there were people who were just committed enough to the principles, then magically all of my principles would manifest in real life. People who sell you that bill of goods are lying to you. And very often they're lying to you because they want to appear to be, quote unquote, the most principled.
Let me be clear. My spending principles are very, very similar to Thomas Massey's spending principles. Yeah, I do not like spending. I think spending is quite bad. In fact, I think that we ought to completely restructure an enormous amount of the American entitlement state.
which is something that the Trump administration is not going to do and is not interested in doing for electoral reasons. Why? Is that because Donald Trump loves Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid as they currently stand? No, it's because he understands those are popular programs and touching them is a third rail. Does that mean Trump is unprincipled?
No, it means he is a politician who's doing pragmatic things. It's important to note this going forward because I promise you every single bill that Republicans bring while Trump is president are going to have compromises in them. And if the basic idea is that every compromise is a sellout.
and not an attempt to grab 70, 80% of the loaf, you're going to be a very unhappy camper with President Trump, which is unfair to President Trump. It's unfair to J.D. Vance. It's unfair to Mike Johnson. They are in a different position than I am. They're in a different position than Steve Bannon. By the way, they're even in a different position.
than a normal congressperson whose job it is to vote their principal. And then all that gets hashed out by the leadership, right? That's why the structure is the way that it is. Okay, by the way, this is why in the end, you would hope President Trump has been going to UFC events with Mike Johnson. They are not at odds. This kind of idea that's now trying to be trotted out, that Johnson is the bad guy and all this, that Trump and Johnson are at odds, it's not true. Jamie Comer.
who is one of the more conservative members of Congress. He says, listen, if it comes down to a fight with Johnson with regard to the speakership, Trump is going to back Johnson. That is likely true. And it should be true because who else is Trump going to find who's going to do better than Johnson on this?
I think the only way Mike Johnson does not get reelected speaker is if Donald Trump came out and said he preferred someone else. Then we'd have to go through the process again. It's very difficult to get. practically every member to agree, because I think we could lose two votes on the speaker's race. If two Republicans vote against whoever the speaker nominee is, then it can still pass. If three vote against him, then it fails to get the...
the minimum number. So we've been through that before. I don't think many of us want to go through that again. So we'll see what happens. But right now, I think because of President Trump's strong support, I think Mike Johnson will be reelected Speaker. You think so. Maybe not. Who knows? Who knows? Politics is a lot dirtier a game and a lot more complicated a game than I think a lot of people want to make it out to be.
Meanwhile, the House Ethics Committee is set to release its report on former Congressman Matt Gaetz this week. That is a reversal for the panel. According to The Washington Post, the last month voted along party lines not to release the results of the long-running investigation into...
Matt Gaetz. That was a turnaround. It was a culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report in the first place. The 10-member panel actually voted to table the report after Trump named Gaetz his attorney general pick, and then he submitted his resignation to Congress.
The Congress suggested Speaker Johnson said there's no need to release the report. He's no longer a member of Congress. However, that all sort of fell apart in the House Ethics Committee. The House Ethics Committee then voted in order to release the report. Matt Gaetz says. that maybe he'll come back in and create a bit of havoc. He's responded to the news about the release of the report, categorizing his own behavior as embarrassing, but not criminal. And then he suggested that perhaps...
he would come back into Congress because he retired from the current session, that he might come back into Congress in order to dump out a bunch of other dirt on everybody else in Congress and then retire again. So, you know, it's never a dull day.
in Congress. Joining me online is Kristen Wagner. She serves as CEO, President and General Counsel of Alliance Defending Freedom. And as censorship regimes rise all over the globe, ADF is launching a new litigation team called the Center for Free Speech. Kristen, thanks so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So let's talk about why you guys decided to launch the Center for Free Speech and what the mission is. What are your first battles?
Well, our first battles are to defeat the censorship industrial complex. Those are three big words, but they pack a powerful punch. And the Daily Wire is very aware of that, I know. For many years, we've had the privilege of partnering with you as you've had different cases come up on.
campuses and defending rights on campuses to speak freely. But more and more, we're seeing this insidious development of collusive actors and government, private people colluding together to censor speech. And we're determined to use the tool. at our disposal to stop it. And I think that there's no greater moment and opportunity, but also no greater threat right now to where we're headed in the next season.
We have to take this on and take it on now. It's pretty incredible to see how many states, left-wing states, particularly California, trying to crack down on elements that are clearly free speech. You have a case in which you guys are representing the Babylon Bee. Because California is basically now trying to ban satire or parody, it seems. Right. And these are.
tools that we haven't seen states necessarily use in the past as such overt censorship. So we have three cases right now that the center's already started on, which include laws that are trying to stop satire and parody like the Babylon Bee, but also even large platforms.
that are essentially turned into snitches on those who would post content that the government might disapprove of. We also have a case right now involving sage publications where peer-reviewed published articles that are used in litigation. and academic journals are being rolled back, essentially depublished in breach of contract in an attempt to censor views that the left ideologues don't like any longer. In this particular case, the case involves chemical.
And it happened during the chemical abortion cases. But I just want to emphasize, I think that. One piece of this is also just ensuring there's essentially transparency. And as the Daily Wire sued the Global Engagement Center and the things that are happening in the Texas lawsuit, we need to have more of that because we're seeing the...
government funds censorship and then hide behind private actors to do its dirty work. I mean, I think this is a really important point. One of the things the government has been doing for a long time has been essentially using backdoor pressure to get private entities to engage in censorship.
Given the Supreme Court's ruling in the last term that, for example, the the Biden administration pressuring Facebook to take down particular content didn't amount to a violation of free speech. Now, what do you make of that? Do you think that that is going to change going forward? What sort of violations do you think would be necessary in order to have that very broad-based judgment at least curbed around the edges?
I think that the facts matter. You know that in terms of how a court's going to litigate a case. And we just have to keep trying. The one thing you have to do to litigate at the Supreme Court is have a lot of patience. They move in incremental steps. That ruling that you're referring to, Murthy, was...
based on standing, and essentially said there wasn't enough proof in the record to say that Facebook would have done these things on their own, that they wouldn't have done these things on their own, that they wouldn't have engaged in censorship on their own. And there were a few other nuances to it. I think a case that's squarely presented will come back again. And we intend to help bring those cases back to the court because as the dissent in the case.
you know, highlighted, there is great danger here that the NRA case is another Supreme Court case that was in the same term where that direct coercion or collusion between the government and a private entity was more transparent and visible. And in that case,
the court said it was wrong. So we've got to unearth this stuff. We have to ensure that there's transparency through FOIAs and public records requests, and then we have to make them pay. We have to ensure that the platforms that are engaging in this collusive relationship
have a reputational cost and stake in place, but also that we're using all the legal tools we can to protect speech. Well, that is Kristen Wagoner, she's CEO, President General Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom. They're doing amazing work and go check out all that they do at ADF Legal.
Kristen, thanks so much for the time. Really appreciate it. Thank you. All right, guys, coming up, the former CDC director, Robert Redfield, admits some things about the COVID vaccine. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. you