Latest / Pod Save America / "Kevin Can Wait.”

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"Kevin Can Wait.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Vitor. Happy New Year, guys. We're back. Welcome back, Tommy.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you. It's great to be here. I missed you guys.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: You have a child. I do. She's very cute. She
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: eats a lot. She poops a lot. So far, so good.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: That's the whole thing. There you go. But enough about
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: love it.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Let's get to the news.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: We have a lot of news. Yeah, let's get to
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: the news. On today's show, the house descends into chaos
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: as Kevin McCarthy fails to win the race for speaker
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: on the first and second ballot. Republicans swear in a
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: new member of Congress who made up his entire life story.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: And the last Congress ends by making Donald Trump's tax
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: returns public and asking the Department of Justice to charge
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: him with multiple crimes. And later, we'll kick off the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: new year with a round of Take Appreciator. But first,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: the Crooked store is having a post-holiday sale. Shop bestsellers
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: and more and get up to 75% off. Head to crooked.com
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: slash store to shop. And also, don't miss the season
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: finale of Radio Lingo, the newest podcast from Crooked and Duolingo.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: In this week's episode, host Ahmed Ali Akbar takes you
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: on a journey through the world of secret and invented languages.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Listen to new episodes of Radio Lingo today, wherever you
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: get your podcasts. All right, let's get to the news.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: For the first time in a century, the House of
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Representatives failed to elect a speaker on the first ballot
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: and the second ballot, thanks to a small group of
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: right-wing extremists who accurately believe that Kevin McCarthy is an
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: empty suit who can't be trusted. So absolutely nothing can
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: get done in the House until at least 218 of
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: the 222 Republicans agree on a speaker. They can't even
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: swear in the new Congress. Here's a clip of anti-McCarthy
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Congressman Matt Gaetz and pro-McCarthy Congressman Dan Crenshaw that gives
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: you a flavor of the substantive ideological debate that's splitting
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: the Republican Party right now.
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: If you want to drain the swamp, you cannot put
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: the biggest alligator.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: in charge of the exercise. I'm a Florida man and
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: I know of what I speak. We will not vote
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: for anyone else but McCartney. These people think they're stubborn,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: we're more stubborn. They think they're not going to get
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: the committees they want. Obviously they won't, but it's going
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: to be so much worse than that. They are enemies now.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: They have made it clear that they prefer a Democrat
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: agenda than a Republican agenda. Just wonderful. Off to a
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: really great start.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: There was some member described to CNN that this is
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: like a game of chicken, but both sides have ripped
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: off the steering wheel.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: That is so good. So we are recording this at 3.30
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Eastern time on Tuesday. We pushed the recording time a
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: little bit later because we wanted to see what would
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: happen in the second ballot. So there were 19 Republicans
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: who did not vote for Kevin McCarthy in the first ballot.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Those same 19... Didn't vote for McCarthy in the second ballot.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: Only in the second ballot, they all voted for Jim Jordan,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: who was nominated to be speaker by Matt Gaetz after
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: he gave a speech, Jim Jordan, in favor of Kevin McCarthy.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: That's where we are right now.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: And right before we were recording, we said, all right,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: let's watch the second vote. And Andy, our producer, was like, well,
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: how long is that going to be? And it was like, well,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: we don't know, Andy. There hasn't been one in 100 years.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: 100 years.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: And between 1945 and 1995, not a single member voted
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: for anyone other than their party's nominee on that first ballot.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: So this is incredibly unprecedented.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about what's going on here. McCarthy has
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: spent the last few weeks, while we've all been gone,
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: trying to win over these holdouts, specifically the five Republicans
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: who announced that they were going to vote no, no
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: matter what. but then there was an additional nine that
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: sent a letter the other night saying that the concessions
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: weren't enough, and there's a few others that popped up today.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: What did McCarthy offer these holdouts, and why hasn't anything
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: worked just yet?
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, McCarthy is now saying yes to
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: things that he said he would never say yes to
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: a couple weeks ago, one of which is this ability
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: for Republicans to vacate the chair, which is basically... redo
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: the speaker vote at any time. Now, originally McCarthy said
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: he obviously couldn't do this. Now he's agreed to do
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: it as long as any five Republican yahoos at any
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: time say they'd like to have a vote on a
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: new speaker. There are obviously five votes at any time
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: to remove him from speaker. There are 19 people who
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: don't want to make him speaker now. So he's basically
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: conceded to that in full, but then this.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Very, very UK parliament. He's doing improv. Yes, he is.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: And he conceded on a whole bunch of other things
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: was actually hard this morning to figure out what he
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: hasn't conceded to. And then you go dig into the details.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: And basically, this group of Republicans has said, we want
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: to know before this vote that you're going to basically
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: put each and every one of us in charge of
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: each and every subcommittee that we're interested in.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: They wanted a budget bigger than the January 6th committees
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: and their own legal entity. To sue the Biden administration.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: I didn't understand what that meant. I have no idea
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: what it means, Tommy. What is a legal entity? I
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: was hoping that no one would ask more than just
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: what legal entity is because I couldn't understand what that
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: even means. Google it, listener. I think this goes, like,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: Brendan Buck, who used to work for Paul Ryan, has
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: an op-ed in the New York Times today. And Boehner.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: And Boehner, right, sorry. Where he said, the embarrassment is
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the point. Yeah. And I do think that speaks to, like,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: they're just making up demands at this point. I think
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: that's right. They don't want McCarthy.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: Well, because he conceded to everything, and then they just
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: made up a new set of demands. The no was
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: they were always working hard to get to now. The
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: more pedestrian things are defunding. He will allow these legislative terrorists,
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: as John Boehner once called them, to defund various parts
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: of the executive branch that they don't like. He's going
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: to get rid of the mags outside the House chamber
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: because nothing violence happened in the Capitol lately. Getting rid
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: of the fines for wearing masks. He said he promised
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: to put conservatives on important committees, get rid of proxy voting,
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: virtual committee work. In Leavitt, like you're saying, the big
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: thing is this motion to vacate. But he already completely
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: caved on that. And so he has nothing left to
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: give is the point.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: There was also a promise for him to to stay
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: at a primary so that the Republican campaign committee. congressional
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: committee doesn't support more establishment Republicans when there are right wing, yeah,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: who's running in a primary.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: They also said they wanted this church style commission to
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: look at the federal government's war on the American people,
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: which he basically said he would do.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: He said he would do that, right.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think the point here is that McCarthy
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: gave up everything he had to give without a guarantee
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: for votes in return. And it seems like maybe that
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: was his only option because the arguments against him aren't substantive.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: They just don't like him.
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: I don't think Matt Gaetz is like, I really want
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: to be on X committee so I can deliver for
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: my constituents.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: And it's just, it's deeply satisfying and ironic because Kevin
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: McCarthy is the one who empowered and appeased these people
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: for the last several years, basically since he was John
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Boehner's whip.
• 7:15
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: He has been empowering these people. And now it's, you know,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: it's like that, um, The Twitter meme there about the leopards.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't expect the leopard-eating party to eat my face.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: But the face-eating party to eat my face. But the
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: other piece of this, too, is it's like, this is
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: something we've been talking about for years, that these people
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: demand concessions, and McCarthy gives, and he gives, and he gives. Now,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: if these were people that really were interested in getting
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: the fruits of this negotiation, they'd vote yes on McCarthy
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: at this point. They got a ton out of him.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: They did a negotiation. They got a ton out of him.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: they're still a no, right? And so there was some
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Republican member was quoted saying, I'm worried that these defectors
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: are not acting in good faith.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Oh, are you? Right, they never were. Is that your fear?
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: That's their whole thing. They never have been acting in
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: good faith. They don't like Kevin McCarthy. And they're nuts.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: These people are not interested in governing in any way.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: They are only interested in, like, becoming the next Tucker
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Carlson or Alex Jones. They're in it for themselves. They
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: don't really care about governing. They don't have an ideological agenda.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: They don't have a policy agenda. They just like to
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: embarrass the people they can embarrass, which in this case are,
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: you know, what they consider establishment Republicans. Like McCarthy and
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: his goons keep saying, you know, our strategy is you
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: can't beat something with nothing. They don't have an alternative
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: candidate who can get 218 votes or So our plan
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: is to just stay on the floor for as many
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: votes as it takes. But like these aren't rational people
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: that they're dealing with.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Look, you're arguing over a parking spot with a person
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: that has nowhere to go after. You've got places to
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: go after. They will stay all fucking day. They're the
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: kind of people that will stay for that parking spot
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: till they die. They will have family and friends bring
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: them food. Smart lawyers never ask a question they don't
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: know the answer to. Nancy Pelosi never scheduled a floor
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: vote that she knew she wasn't going to win. Kevin
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: McCarthy's just like, YOLO. This is all I got. Let's
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: go to the floor and try to wait it out.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: It's just like, what about these people make Kevin McCarthy
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: or anyone think that they're going to be amenable to
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: political pressure? That's not what they're all about. They're in
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: like Trump plus 40 districts. They're safe. They can do
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: whatever the fuck they want.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: And it is satisfying to watch the same dynamic that
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: we've been decrying between the parties playing out within this party.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Because we've been saying this for years, that this is
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: not a party acting in good faith. You can negotiate
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: with them, but there's never going to be enough. They'll
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: never get to yes on whatever issue you want to
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: talk about. And now we're seeing it exactly that same dynamic,
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: but playing out inside of the Republican Party.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, they used to say this about Obama,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and now they'll do it about Biden. Like, why can't
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: they bring around... Why can't they just... negotiate with the
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Republicans and get them to do what you want? And
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: shouldn't it take more arm twisting and all this bullshit?
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: It's like, No, they can't even... The leaders of their
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: own party can't even fucking get them in line here.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: It's funny.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: It's also a bit ironic, too. It's like, why can't
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: this group of insurrectionists get together and pick a leader?
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Don't they care about democracy? Oh, no, famously not. Famously
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: a tough group to wrangle. So people are probably wondering
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: what happens now. This could be resolved by the time
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: you listen to this podcast, but it seems unlikely. This
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: could end today. They could figure out a consensus candidate
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: or McCarthy could somehow... get all, let's see, there's 19
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: no votes. I think he can only afford to lose four.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: So yeah, he could flip 15 people by the end
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: of today.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Or a bunch of people could not show up for
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: votes and reduce your win number. And that's sort of
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: the X factor in all of this.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Hopefully that doesn't happen. Or people vote present. That would
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: be very stupid. Yeah. But it could theoretically go on
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: for weeks. The House of Representatives cannot function. They can't
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: even swear in new members. Until they have a speaker.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: So this could last for who knows.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Just because what happens is you pick a speaker, then
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: you pass a set of rules. That set of rules
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: is what allows the House to function. Otherwise, everything gets
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: a full majority vote. This is just a group of
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: people without a set of rules that pass everything they
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: do by majority. That's why they're going to all these
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: other ballots. That's why nothing can move forward without a speaker.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about who the possible McCarthy alternatives are.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't they all be worse? Worse is hard to define here. Potentially.
• 11:35
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: I do think that like I think that there is
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: one threshold question about who the Republican speaker will be
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: is some of them are people that will, for the
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: sake of the country, allow a vote on a debt
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: limit or budget bill to go through. Now, there are
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: ways that a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans can
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: get around that. But I do think that's important, right?
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Like who is who is the person that's going to
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: relent and say we got to raise the debt ceiling without,
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: you know, putting the country into default.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: No one who can get Matt Gaetz and Scott Perry
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: on board here.
• 12:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: I mean, well, so there's lots of talk about Steve
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Scalise as potentially being someone who could pull enough votes.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Like he once described himself to.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: A reporter in Louisiana as being like David Duke without
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: the baggage.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Honestly, that sounds perfect. So not a great book. It
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: sounds like a great fit.
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: Andy Biggs from Arizona is the stalking horse for the
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: anti-McCarthy crowd. I saw Patrick McHenry from North Carolina bandied about.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: The nightmare scenario maybe is Jim Jordan, the anti-suit jacket
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: zealot from Ohio.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: So that's who all the no votes have coalesced behind,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: at least in the second ballot. Alyssa Farah, who was
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Trump communications director, left the White House. She had previously
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: been a spokesperson for the House Freedom Caucus. Great resume.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: She was just saying that in 15, the plan was
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: if Hillary Clinton won the presidency, what was going to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: happen is the Freedom Caucus was going to challenge Paul Ryan.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: And they were going to put up Jordan to challenge
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: Ryan to show that Ryan couldn't get the votes. And
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: also when they realized that Jordan could also not get
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: the votes, then they were going to have a consensus
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: conservative that they all got behind to be the new speaker.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: And back then it was going to be then House
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: member Mike Pompeo. who of course went on to bigger
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: and better things. Deeply triggering. Basically, she said that because
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: maybe Jordan is sort of the stalking horse now to
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: show that McCarthy can't get the votes because it is
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: hard to believe that all of these Republicans, the 18
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: House Republicans who are sitting in Biden districts, districts that
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden won, are going to back Jim Jordan. Yeah,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: I find that hard to believe too. Which makes you
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: think that maybe Steve Scalise is the play here or
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: Patrick McHenry or Elise Stefanik.
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: Or the MAGA fantasy scenario is Donald Trump. Or the
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Aaron Sorkin West Wing fantasy scenario with some moderate unity
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: candidate that the two sides come together and put forward.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: A moderate like Liz Cheney. There you go. Yeah, it's
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: hard to get.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: I would say it's hard to get towards the West
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: Wing scenario when Jim Jordan didn't pick up any votes
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: on this second round either. So McCarthy didn't pick off
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: anybody who was doing a protest vote, which is a
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: very bad sign for him. But it's not like a
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: lot of people jump for McCarthy. So it's pretty stuck.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: So I do still think like, like we don't know
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen, but like one scenario that is
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: just sort of like less fun, but still a real
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: possibility is McCarthy. You know, he puts on, you know,
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: he gets down hands and knees and he crawls across
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: broken glass and he puts in the ball gag and
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: he takes the photos and he just gives.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: In to whatever they want.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: That's their kink. Their kink is making him suffer so
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: that he just really goes through the whole thing.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: But to me, that speaks to a Scalise win here
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: because he, Scalise is McCarthy's number two. He gives them
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: everything McCarthy would have given them. Yeah. No more. But
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: because he's not Kevin McCarthy, he wins. The funniest thing
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: is some of these people who are voting against McCarthy saying,
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: it's not personal, it's not personal. Actually, it's the definition
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: of personal. It is so personal. Because it has nothing
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: to do with policies or rules or concessions or anything
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: like that. It's purely that you think Kevin McCarthy is
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: full of shit, which... He is. Which they're all saying
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: on the record.
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: And also it's a demonstration that if they make it
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: someone who is any, whoever was the first person, if
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: they defeat the first person, it has demonstrated their power,
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: regardless of the difference between Scalise and McCarthy, who might
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: ultimately look the same in terms of what their speakership
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: would look like, which is probably true of any of
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: these people that end up as being speaker, because this
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: is the dynamic. What we are seeing now is the
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: dynamic that will play out over the next two years.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a good, that brings us to the next
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: topic here, which is like, what, we can't predict what's
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: going to happen right now, but what does all this
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: say about both the Republican Party and how this House
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: will operate over the next two years? Yeah.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: Well, I think the simple biggest thing it says is
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: that there are not 218 Republicans who want to govern.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: There are not 218 Republicans who will vote to do
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: normal politics, pass normal bills, conduct business, that they would
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: much rather grind the Congress to a halt than let
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: anything through if it is not purely and perfectly conforming
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: to their ideological priors. And so what that means is
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: for anything that we have to get through this Congress
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: and through the Senate and to Joe Biden's desk, it
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: is going to require a bipartisan group of people and
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: a way of getting that vote to the floor, either
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: with the speaker's permission or outside the speaker's permission to
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: get things through. Otherwise, we will be at a situation
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: in which these 19 people or 15 people or whatever
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: number ultimately joins whatever fight have a gun to the
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: head of the country, basically.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: And again, I think you talked about their ideological priors.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: I think there's only one ideology that these people have,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: which is to own the libs. That's their policy. That's
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: their ideology. There is no more policy agenda or platform
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: for the Republican Party.
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, listen, this is fun to watch today, but I
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: do think it is empowering the fringes of the party,
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: the Matt Gaetz, the Lauren Boebert's of the world. And
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: Kevin McCarthy, if he becomes speaker, he is weak and
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: feckless and can't deliver. If someone else becomes speaker, he
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: or she is probably in the same boat. And again,
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: like John Boehner called this legislative terrorism. And I think
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: that's what Joe Biden and the Democrats should expect going forward,
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: which is starting with the debt ceiling vote.
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Well, so love it. Remember, we talked to Brian Schatz
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: right before the break and we asked him like, what
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: are you going to do here? What's the plan of
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: the debt ceiling if we don't, if they didn't lift
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: it during the lame duck? And he said, the message
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: is you get nothing.
• 17:40
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Right. That you basically, you don't negotiate with legislative terrorists.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: And at the time I was like, oof, we're going
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: to go with that. And it totally makes sense to
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: me now because watching Kevin McCarthy offer all these concessions
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: to people in his own party and just failing miserably
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: at it, Now we're going to have the Democrats and
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden offer concessions on the debt ceiling? No, I
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: think that is the message. You get nothing. And then hopefully, Lovett,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: you were alluding to a way around sort of the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: debt ceiling debacle. I saw this in Playbook the other
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: day that people close to McCarthy were saying that there's
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: maybe a get-out-of-jail-free card for him if he ends up
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: being speaker, which is Democrats and a couple moderate Republicans
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: or sensible Republicans, whatever you're going to call them, could
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: file a discharge petition to force a vote, a clean
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: vote on a clean debt ceiling on the House floor.
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: And then McCarthy could say, I'm against this. A lot
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: of Republicans could whine about it, but there would be
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: a majority in the House to pass that bill. So
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: maybe there's hope that we could get the debt ceiling
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: situation solved. But you're right. These people have no intention
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: of governing.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: And you do see it in their demands. You see
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: it in what Jim Jordan said when he was nominating McCarthy,
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: but also giving what seemed to be an inaugural address.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: which ultimately led Matt Gaetz to nominate Jim Jordan. Their
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: ideology is around attention. They want attention. It's why they
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: want the heads of these committees. They want attention to
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: these issues. He was already conceding.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: The issue is them.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Well, it's them and it's Hunter Biden. It's the manufactured
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: attack on the American people by the IRS. It's their
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: invented idea that the federal government is targeting people. All
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: the nonsense that they whip up in the right-wing echo chamber.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: But that's what they want. They want the ability to
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: have that microphone... And he even conceded in that speech.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: He's like, well, even though the things we pass will
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: die in the Senate, we'll make them pay for that
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: in 2024. So he's basically already saying the job of
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: the next speaker is to pass a bunch of message bills,
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: grind the government to a halt and then do investigations
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: and get attention. That's why their demand is for these
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: subcommittee chairs. They want they just want control over C-SPAN.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: They want control over these sort of television operations.
• 19:50
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think they're also doing the bidding of
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump. I mean, Trump could call Matt Gaetz, I think,
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: and say, do vote for Kevin. Yeah, I was wondering
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: about that. He's noticeably silent.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: He's been truthing up a storm today and nothing on
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: this yet.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: He ejects himself in every single race, but not this one.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: And I don't think it's because he wants the job.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: He just sort of like, I don't think he trusts McCarthy.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: For Biden, I mean, I think you have to lift
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: these clowns up and run against them. I mean, it
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: folds to this broader narrative. Like Joe Biden's the adult
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: in the room. He's more moderate than these kind of
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: nutty fringe Republicans who are clearly controlling a Republican party
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: and run on that.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: These Republicans are giving Joe Biden and the Democrats the
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: opportunity to run the same play they just ran in
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the midterms. We just had an election where swing state
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: voters rejected MAGA grifters up and down the ballot because
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: they thought they were too extreme. And now Republicans in
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Washington have essentially put them in charge of the House.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Whether Kevin McCarthy pulls this out or not, they are
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: in charge. There are 18 House Republicans in districts that
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden won. Many of them are in New York
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: and California, two states where the difference between turnout in
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: the midterm and a presidential turnout in 2024 will almost
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: certainly help the Democrats. And if I'm the Democratic Party,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: if I'm Democrats running like Joe Biden or Democrats in
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the House and the Senate, I would run against the
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: chaos and extremism of the Republican Party and use the
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: House as the prime example of that over the next
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: two years. And who knows what's going to happen over
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: the next two years, but, uh, what's happening today, I
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: think does set the tone for exactly what we're going
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: to see, whether it's the debt ceiling, whether it's the
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: government funding, whether, whatever it may, whether it's the investigations
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: into Hunter Biden, these are not serious people.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: I have obviously been, um, uh, half tuned into politics
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: in between diaper changes. Why is Joe Biden doing something
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: tomorrow with Mitch McConnell in Kentucky?
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So, you know, the infrastructure bill, I heard of that. Yeah.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: So now they're finally doling out the money and they're finally,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: you know, start starting projects. Remember the, um, Brent Spence
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Bridge between... How could I forget that? Kentucky, you know...
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: For the listeners at home, tell them. We did so
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: many events there. It was a broken bridge between Cincinnati
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and Kentucky, between the Ohio and Kentucky side. And you'd
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: go there and you'd talk about why infrastructure in the
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: country was broken and we need to fix it and rebuild.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: But then... We'd never pass an infrastructure bill. Sure, sure, sure.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: So now the bridge is finally going to be fixed.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: That's great. I'm glad we could do that solid. What
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a nice story. So Biden is going with Sherrod and
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: McConnell and the senators and members of Congress from Ohio
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and Kentucky to do that tomorrow. So his plan, at least...
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Kind of an on-the-nose metaphor. Kind of an on-the-nose metaphor.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: So the New York Times said that this is part
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: of their plan to sort of... Biden's plan is to
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: stay above the political fray let all this, you know,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: craziness in the house go on and show that, you know,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: he's been bipartisan and actually gotten a lot done. Cool.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: I like how McConnell's trying to do a big event
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: today about himself being like, I'm the longest.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Serving leader since Mark Mansfield. It's not bad.
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: What?
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: It wasn't bad. Thank you. Thank you. You just kind
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: of gargle. So we'll see what happens there. We'll see
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: what happens. Hey, watch the space. Listen here. All these
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: predictions are wrong. Speaker fiasco isn't the only embarrassment facing
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: House Republicans. They're also about to swear in, again, if
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: there ever is a speaker and they can start swearing
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: in members, a new member of Congress who's been caught
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: lying about his race, religion, heritage, education, employment, philanthropy, marital status,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: the circumstances of his mother's death, and even his name.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: George Santos, also known as Anthony DeVolder, won a Long
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Island seat in an upset so surprising that that he
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: escaped even the most basic scrutiny until the New York
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Times began to unravel his entire life story a few
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: weeks ago. Santos has admitted to some of his lies,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: is now being investigated by federal prosecutors, the Nassau County
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: District Attorney, and Brazilian law enforcement for potential financial and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: campaign fraud. But as of today... He's about to be
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: a member of Congress.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: So, first of all, this guy flew too close to
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: the sun.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: He just went too far. You can't just too big
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: of a scam. You tried to pull too big of
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: a scam, buddy. One thing that's really funny is he's
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: literally sitting. First of all, Kevin McCarthy can't criticize this guy.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: He needs his fucking vote. And so he's sitting there
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: voting for Kevin McCarthy in these speaker votes by himself.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Nobody will go near him. He's basically like radioactive. But
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: one one member of Congress said, walked up because I
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: think he didn't recognize him, walked up and said, hi,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: I'm so-and-so. What's your name? He said, I'm George Santos.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: The guy just turned around and walked away. He's a
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: pariah that can't go near him.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: So he lied. So he's been avoiding, for that reason,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: he's been avoiding reporters. He's been avoiding people. And that's
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: been ever since he went on Tucker Carlson's program. Huge mistake.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: And was grilled by Tucker Carlson's understudy slash protege, Tulsi Gabbard.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: We have a clip.
• 24:59
  Speaker 6: We can debate my resume and how I worked with
• 25:03
  Speaker 6: firms such as Goldman.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And Citigroup all my life. Is it debatable or is
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: it just false? Is it debatable or is it just false? No,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: it's not false at all. It's debatable.
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: I can sit down and explain to you what you
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: can do in private equity, in capital intro, via servicing
• 25:19
  Speaker 6: limited partners and general partners. And we can have this
• 25:21
  Speaker 6: discussion that's going to go way above the American people's head.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: But that's not what I campaigned on.
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: I campaigned on delivering results for the American people.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: This is not about settling scores.
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: And I think you just kind of highlighted, I think,
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: my concern and the concern that people at home have.
• 25:35
  Speaker 5: You're saying that this discussion will go way above the
• 25:38
  Speaker 5: heads of the American people, basically insulting their intelligence. So
• 25:42
  Speaker 5: not only are you.
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: Now backtracking on these lies.
• 25:45
  Speaker 5: That you've told, but you're saying that you can't explain
• 25:48
  Speaker 5: it in a way that your constituents would actually be
• 25:51
  Speaker 5: able to.
• 25:51
  Speaker 6: Understand and that these lies are debatable. I can explain
• 25:55
  Speaker 6: it in a way that if you give me the time,
• 25:57
  Speaker 6: I can easily explain it for you.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: So just the full list. He claimed he earned a
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: college degree.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: It wasn't true. Claimed to be Jewish. Two college degrees.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Neither true. He didn't even attend either college.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: Claimed to be Jewish, but now said he meant he
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: was like Jewish.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Even Yahweh was like, I never heard of this guy.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Didn't work at Citigroup. Didn't work at Goldman Sachs. He
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: claimed he had multiple co-workers die in the Pulse nightclub shooting.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: Made that up. He said he owned 13 properties. Doesn't
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: own any. Said he ran a pets charity that claimed
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: to rescue thousands of dogs. As far as we can tell,
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: the charity doesn't exist. He also has said he was
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: gay for a decade.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: Is he?
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Because he was married to a woman until 2019. His
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: divorce wasn't finalized until 12 days before he announced.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: I think we know that doesn't mean anything.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: So maybe, look, whatever journey he's on, good for him.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: But the point is that he said he was openly
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: gay for a decade, but he was married to a
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: woman until days before he filed. He was evicted from
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: his apartment for not being able to pay rent, but
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: then soon after, he loans his campaign hundreds of thousands
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: of dollars. And that is.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: The part that like... He got a bunch of cash somewhere.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Where is this money coming from?
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: And he paid for rent at a house that he
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: said his staff lived at, but apparently he was living there.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: And ultimately went from being broken and unable to pay
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: rent to claiming a net worth of $ 11 million in
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: a short span of time. So that is where I think,
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: I think police got to start looking.
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: This is all great, but you missed my two favorites,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: which was, uh, they came from his own responses on Twitter. One,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: someone said, what races are you? And he said, Caucasian
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and black, but not true. Uh, and then, uh, he
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: said that his mother died on nine 11. Uh, But
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: then years later in 2016 said, oh, she just died.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Well, also that he also had someone claim that she
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: was in the towers on 9-11, but didn't die.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: I think he has multiple claims about his mother's connection.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: I think she did work in the towers and then
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: died in like 2016. And he tried to say it
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: was because of exposure.
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: Like soon after.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: There's absolutely no evidence that was the case. So the
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: question is, how did none of this come out during
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: the campaign? Dropping balls. Yeah, like New Year's. I mean,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: everybody dropped the ball here.
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd say that when a car crashes, one thing
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: can go wrong. When a plane crashes, everything went wrong.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: And it just seems like every single person dropped the ball.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: The media. Except the New York Times.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: New York Times covered it, but it was in December. Now,
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: I went back and looked.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I heard Maggie saved it all for her book.
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: The people who were yelling at the New York Times
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: when they read it, it's like, guys, they don't have
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: time to cover literally everything.
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: Anyway.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I do think that something was happening during the campaign.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: Because the Zimmerman campaign put out a statement after the
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Times story came out, like, this doesn't come as a shock.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: We were trying to draw attention to some of this.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Like, okay, buddy.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: If you go back and look at what the DCCC
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: was saying about Santos.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: So they had some of this in a research doc.
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: They had some of it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: You've seen some of this.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: But I just think it's worth, like, the way that
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: they were talking about Santos, they kind of treated him
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: a bit more like a normal candidate. Basically, this was
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: like the Maloney statement on their big kind of like
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: oppo dump about him, which is that like he was
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: from joining insurrectionists to overturning Roe. Santos has a radical record.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: He's not there.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: You know, like he was sort of going through the litany.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: And then it says Long Island voters will once again
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: make sure George Santos fails in his effort to get
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: to Congress. And they describe him as like his shady dealings.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: And so like on a litany of things, the fact
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: that he was lying about some of his shady dealings
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: was like part of the story. But they never hammered
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: him as just a fraud, a straight up fraud.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Here's the thing.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: When you're in like a Democratic primary and you're trying
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: to be subtle with your oppo hits, you pitch them
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: to reporters, you try to launder them through news outlets,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: you get people to write things for you. When you're
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: in a general election running against a guy who said,
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: I went to NYU, but he didn't. I started a
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: dog and cat rescue charity that doesn't exist.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: You just tweet it out. You know what I mean?
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Just put the story out yourself. And the fact that
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: they didn't do that suggests to me They didn't know
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: the extent of it. They somehow hadn't found all of this. Like, listen,
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: opposition researchers, self researchers, they miss things.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: I remember Reverend, right?
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: I'm sure you guys too. It took us a little
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: too long to remember it as a challenge back in 2008.
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: But like, this is just a catastrophic failure.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: That's a good point because there's, I've noticed quite a
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: few stories that sort of folds this into a larger
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: story about the decline of local news, you know, and
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: they said that Newsday was like busy covering a lot
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: of the other races on Long Island. And, and look,
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: George Santos ran in 2020, lost by 12 points. So
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: there was, on the Republican side, Democratic side, and media
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: all thinking like, eh, this is not, there's too many
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: races to cover that are close. This isn't one of them, right?
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: But you're right. Like, you're the Democratic campaign. You have
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: this stuff. Tweet it out. He also said he was
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: an early COVID survivor. I think he said he got
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: it in March of 2020. I actually didn't.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: When I was reading about Santos, all of a sudden,
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: I realized that we were introduced to George Santos earlier.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: years ago because he was the gay guy at Mar-a-Lago
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: that said the Times covering his massless attendance to a
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Mar-a-Lago party in January 2021 forced him and his fiance
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: to leave their home and cause his fiance, a pharmacist,
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: to lose their job.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: I don't remember this at all. I don't either.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: It was just in this story at the time. He
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: was just like, oh, the media is attacking me and
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: destroying my life. Probably wasn't true at all. He was
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: probably making it all up.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: Incredible.
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: But he was just it was just at the time
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: he was just another random Trumpy congressional candidate. I do
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: like describing him as a shady Wall Street bro does
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: feel like the paint by numbers version of how you
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: attack this guy. And they never really flipped the switch
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: to really hammer home that what they were finding, that
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: he was a fraud. Because even when they were putting
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: out this oppo, they knew that he had made up
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: this charity.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: Listen, as a card-carrying bro, I think we're letting that,
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: the aperture on that term, just get too broad.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: It's a general matter. We just got to be more
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: specific with our criticisms. Not all bros. Hashtag not all bros.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like, this guy is just
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: a serial fabulous. Go with that. I don't even like
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: the word. Fabulous is such a. That sounds funny.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: He's amazing.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Even like the talented Mr. Ripley stuff, I'm like, yeah, don't. Yeah,
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the talented kind of. Yeah, exactly. All right, so a
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: handful of House Republicans have called on Santos to resign,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: but most have just refused to say anything about him
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: per usual. Nancy Pelosi seems to think Republicans could pay
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: a political price for this. She told reporters that Santos
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: is now, quote, tattooed on the party. Is she right?
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, clearly they got bigger fish to fry today.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Santos is sitting there all alone. you know, making up
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: more stories, but Kevin McCarthy can't even win the speaker.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: They got a lot of, look, if they're tattooed by
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: their worst members, there's like very little space left to
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: get more tattoos.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: They got Marjorie Taylor Greene. They got Lauren Boebert. They
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: got Jim Jordan. They're the worst. Matt Gaetz. They are
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: tattooed all over. Tattooing with Jewish space lasers all over
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: the place already. A lot of Jewish space laser tattoos.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Hard to do. They're certainly trying. House Democrat Richie Torres
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: introduced a bill that would require candidates to disclose under
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: oath their employment, educational, and military history. It's called the
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Stop Another Non-Truthful Office Seeker Act. Anyone know what that
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: stands for? Santos. It's the Santos Act. That's pretty great.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: That's pretty great.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: I do think what they do with this guy will
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: be another chapter in the Republican Party's just total disregard for.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Facts and character and credibility. I mean, Donald Trump is,
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: I think, still going to be the the lead case
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: when you're prosecuting that one.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: But this is adds to it. Yeah, exactly. This I
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: think this fills in the story that they've that we've
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: been trying to tell.
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: You throw them in the bucket of here's another kooky
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: right wing extremist who's not fit to govern just like
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: the rest of them in Congress. Yeah, I do.
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: I also I think the there's a lot of the
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: math here. The money doesn't make sense. And so there's
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: criminality here that's going to be a Brazil piece, too.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got problems back in Brazil, too. The party's
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: got sociopaths, they got criminals, they got both. Yeah. Man,
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: that's a lot. He's both. One sociopath Republicans won't be
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: able to run away from so easily is Donald Trump.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Since our last episode, the January 6th committee voted unanimously
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: to refer criminal charges against the former president to the
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Justice Department for four charges, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiring
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: to defraud the United States, making false statements, and inciting
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: an insurrection. Democrats in Congress also released six years of
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Donald Trump's tax returns. Yeah, there's a there's there's a
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: deep cut tax returns after the Supreme Court ruled that
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: he could not keep them private. Anything noteworthy to you
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: guys in Trump's tax returns or the January 6th committee's
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: final report?
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: On the tax returns, I mean, I think it had
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: been out there, but I don't know that it was
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: totally confirmed that he had these foreign bank accounts like
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: he had to have had some sort of foreign bank.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: banking presence in places like the UK, I think, because
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: he had the Scotland course. But the fact that he
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: had an account in China is notable, is weird, I
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: think is politically dangerous for him.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: That was part of the debate, one of the Biden-Trump debates,
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: because it was a New York Times story.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: It came up, but then we confirmed it. And then
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: I do like that Trump promised every year to donate
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: his presidential salary to charity, and then he just refused
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: to do it in 2020.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I do think along the line of the secret Chinese
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: bank account, which I just remember is just a fun
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Fun Obama line. In 2017, Trump paid more in foreign
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: taxes than he did in U.S. taxes. That was good.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: America first. He just inherited all his money and then
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: his businesses run into loss.
• 35:29
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: I feel like it put a lot more, a little
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: bit more information on some of the more nefarious tax
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: avoidance strategies that Trump uses. making big loans to his
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: children that they pay interest on, which is really just
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: a way of giving them a tax-free gift. These deductions
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: that he's taken for not developing land, which is a
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: pure fucking scam. He buys a bunch of land and
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: then he says, I'm not putting a golf course on it.
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: I can deduct that because if there were a golf course,
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: I'd make a bunch of money. There are scams like
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: that all over his tax return. And the only question
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: is whether or not Actually, not even specific to Donald Trump,
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: whether the IRS as an institution cares about these big
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: ticket violations versus what they normally do, which is go
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: after small time kind of like kind of normal income taxpayers.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: But the whole point of the money we just gave
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: the IRS was to make it possible for them to
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: investigate and look at cases like this.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: The only reason he pays any taxes is because of
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: the AMT.
• 36:24
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Anything to close the book here on the January 6th committee,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: which is now wrapped up. So now we're just waiting
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: for Merrick Garland to see what he does on the
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: criminal referrals, even though they're sort of on their own
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: track anyway. But there was a final report released, and
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: there was just an avalanche of documents, texts, evidence that
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: the committee also released along with the report.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: I would say for a committee that I think for
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: the most part was masterful in using the media to
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: get their information far and wide. A news dump like
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: three hours before Christmas was like a huge fucking mistake.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: It just like it's over. Like I think that the
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: as a result.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know what else could they have done. Got
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: it out earlier. I think it was just a time.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: You know, listen, I'm of two minds about this. I
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: agree with you. It may just be an unfortunate. I guess, yeah,
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: what would it have done if it was... I mean,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: the damage is.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: It's all out there. They got it out there for history.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, we now know that the Will B. Wilde
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: tweet he wrote himself and then he ad-libbed a lot
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: of the most incendiary stuff at the January 6th rally.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: More details about the fact that he himself wanted to
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: go with them to the Capitol.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Talk about walking there. Walking there. The Sorkin approach. The
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Tony Ornato Secret Service thing, that's all the color we
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: needed on that. I think we were pretty clear what happened.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: I think what I took away from the final release
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: is The January committee's report was the friends we made
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: along the way. It was what we got out of
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: these national hearings and the attention it brought to it
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: before the midterms. I think it was good to put
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: all this stuff out there for history, for reporters to
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: comb through. I mean, look, the whole process shows you
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: that obstruction of justice is frustratingly effective. You know, like
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Dan Scavino just refused to talk and he will not
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: be prosecuted. And I'm sure that guy could have filled
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: in a lot of holes, a lot of people that
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: I don't recall.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: And just kind of lied their way through it. But
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: we did like some loops were closed.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: Like Trump does the call with Brad Raffensperger where he
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: asked for just a few more votes. And then he
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: jumps on a call with Rudy Giuliani. Then another one
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: with Mark Meadows. Another one with Steve Bannon. So like
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: the closed circle of who he was really collaborating with
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: on that Georgia approach becomes clearer because of these this release.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: I don't know. You have Hope Hicks.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: Whining about her image and becoming unemployable. Like, a little
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: anecdote so we'll live with this.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: I don't think anything... With them, I mean. I don't
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: think they released anything that was more damning than information
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: that we already knew. I think there was some fun color. Like,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: you know, Trump wanted a trademark rigged election. Right. And
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: then the Hicks, Ivanka chief of staff stuff was great.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: These texts between Hope Hicks and Ivanka's chief of staff.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: Karlie Kloss, supermodel, who is married to Josh Kushner, Jared's brother. She...
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: tweeted during the insurrection that Trump's response was anti-American. And
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: so Ivanka's chief of staff sends that tweet to Hope
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: and they start complaining about it. And they say, I
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: can't believe her. She's unrecognizable. Ivanka's so pissed. And then
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: they start going back and forth. And Hicks says... And
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: one day Trump ended every future opportunity that doesn't include
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: speaking engagements at the local Proud Boys chapter. And all
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: of us that didn't have jobs lined up will be
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: perpetually unemployed. I'm so mad and upset. We all look
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: like domestic terrorists now. This has made us all unemployable,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: like untouchable. God, I'm so fucking mad. It's just great fun.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: So selfish. Also just like amazingly perfect.
• 39:57
  Speaker 5: You know what?
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Honestly. And sadly, she was wrong. Yeah. That's the worst part.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: She made like a million and a half working at
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: Fox News. That's the worst part. It's also the exact. Yeah.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: Everybody was wrong about what the consequences were. But in
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: the same way, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy spoke out
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: against it. The great sin that Donald Trump committed was
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: making them less electorally successful. And the great sin for
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Hilpux Hicks is that she couldn't get another job.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: Mark Milley said he had to talk the Trump administration
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: out of court-martialing retired military officers who criticized Trump. Lots
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: of just color, a lot of anecdotes that, I don't know,
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: remind you of how completely out of control that period was.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Well, so Trump's been taking all this in stride after
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: a truth the other day where he wished a happy
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: new year to radical left Democrats, Marxist lunatics, clueless rhinos,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and China-loving Coco Chow and her obedient husband, Mitch. Yeah,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: it's just... He said it wasn't his fault that Republicans
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: didn't do well in the midterms. It was, quote, the
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: abortion issue poorly handled by many Republicans. He specifically criticized
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: them for taking a position on abortion that was no exceptions.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Is he right? Is he right that that was a problem? Sure.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: These are two problems. They were both problems. He was
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: one of the problems and this was the other one.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: There were two big problems. He was one and this
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: was the other. Absolutely true.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: And also his judges allowed the other to happen.
• 41:14
  Speaker 6: So.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: I think it is interesting for what that says about
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: the primary that we're about to see, if there is
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: a Republican primary, if someone else announces against Donald Trump,
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: because you have Trump who clearly sees that abortion and
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: the way that Republicans handled abortion did not go too
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: well and seems willing at least to take a position
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: on it that is a little less extreme than some
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: of the Republicans did in the midterms. And then we've
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: talked about DeSantis before, Trump's potential biggest challenger, who has
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: only signed the 15-week ban in Florida. And you wonder
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: if abortion politics in the Republican primary is going to
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: be different than you might expect based on what happened
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: in the midterms.
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: My guess, I think that the far right sort of
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: anti-abortion people are some of the most transactional human beings
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: out there. They're sort of right-wing evangelical Christians, and they
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: are thrilled to to work with an imperfect vessel with
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: imperfect views in history as long as he will do
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: their bidding. And Trump did their bidding for four years
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: and gave them the courts they wanted.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: I think that's right. Which is why I think we
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: could see a different kind of primary than we might
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: expect on that issue.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: You also see it, I mean, if it's a DeSantis-Trump debate,
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: you can see it kind of falling by the wayside
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: as DeSantis always goes back to a line about the
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: bill he passed in Florida.
• 42:34
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: Something that neither of them actually want to bring up.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: And Trump taking credit for appointing these judges. Although Trump
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: has for years, for years, been like, look, this is
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: what these wackadoos want. They want me to do these judges.
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: I'll do these judges. But I'm a little worried that
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: it's going to be bad for us. Like he's always
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: said that.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: For us and me personally.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: And for me, and especially, well, I mean, me, I don't,
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: you are just meat zombies that wander around to serve me.
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: I'm a person. I don't care what.
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: Happens to any of you sacks of farts.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Flesh. I was going to say, no one hates Trump
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: base more than Donald Trump. That's exactly right.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: But you did see, I mean, to your point about
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: the primary, John, Mike Pence was quote tweeting some group
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: called SBA pro-life who were out there saying the approach
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: to winning on abortion is to have the clearest contrast
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: with extreme Democrats. And Pence retweeted that saying, well said
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: SBA pro-life, whatever that is. Again, these guys are trying
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: to subtweet their way to victory against Donald Trump in
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: a Republican primary. And I just, I don't think that's
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: going to work.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, the base is not pro-life when it comes to
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: Mike Pence. Well said. Yeah, that's too bad. We'll leave
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: it there.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: Well, I do think like there's, there's, there as an,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: outside of Trump and DeSantis, there is an intra-Republican debate
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: about abortion amongst those who have recognized that it costs
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: them votes in this, which is on the one side,
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: you have the people who said it costs us votes
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: and good. That was the, we said we would do
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: this and it was worth it. And there's the people
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: like Mike Pence who are trying to make an argument
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: that we just got outplayed. They painted us as extremists
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: on the issue. Our position is actually popular. They're the extremists.
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: We need to run harder on abortion.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: Anyway, it seems like the Republican Party is in great shape.
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: Cheers.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Happy 2023. All right. When we come back, Elijah Cohen
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: will be here, our chief tech officer, to get us
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: through another round of Take Appreciator.
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: Take Appreciator.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: All right, we're back. Before we go, our chief take officer,
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, is here with us once again to play
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: a game of Take Appreciator. Elijah, how's it going? Happy
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: New Year.
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: It's great, guys. Happy New Year. Good breaks?
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: You got some takes?
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I got some takes.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: You just been collecting takes for the last couple weeks?
• 44:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, people have been throwing at me. There's no off
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: button for takes. Content never sleeps.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I love the banter we do before. Let's go.
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: All right, let's do it. Let's set the tone for
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: the upcoming year in takes. Do I still need to
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: explain how the game works? Does everyone know? Should I
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: still explain it for the audience? Okay, let's just get
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: right into it. If you don't know how it works,
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: you'll figure it out. It's pretty easy. Let's start by
• 45:12
  Speaker 4: looking backwards from the Washington Post. We have a piece titled,
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: The 10 Worst Things Joe Biden Did in 2022.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah. I got this one. I know who
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it's great.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Is it Mark Thiessen? Come on. It is Marky T.
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: He also wrote the 10 best things Biden did.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: He's trying to be a straight shooter. Both sides. Okay,
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: look at that. Yes.
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: I'll get to that.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: Trying out for a New York Times column, huh? But sorry, Elijah, continue.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: A preemptive strike against David French.
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: For our excerpt, we'll just jump straight to number one.
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: The worst thing Joe Biden did in 2022 was, quote,
• 45:56
  Speaker 4: He slow rolled military aid to Ukraine out of fear
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: of provoking Vladimir Putin. Here's the kicker. As Tommy noted,
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: there was a 10 best things list, but the number
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: one best thing Joe Biden did was, quote, he saved Ukraine.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, consistency is not high on Mark's list
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: of things he cares about.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Also, did he slow roll Ukraine?
• 46:20
  Speaker 5: Maybe.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: Look, we're not in a nuclear war. It seems like
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: it's going pretty well for the Ukrainian side compared to Putin.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: It's a low bar, but it's a bar we've got
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: to clear. Yeah, that's my bar. You know what? I
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: think that was just pretty dumb. Weak effort on Mark Thiessen.
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: I'm saying no politicos. Oh, definitely give him one.
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: No.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: I can never give Mark Thiessen.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: He did the 10 best. What, we're not going to
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: applaud Mark Thiessen for doing 10 best?
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Are we going to applaud Roger Stone for putting Joe
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: Biden on his top 10 best dressed list? That was weird.
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: That was weird.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: What do you call Bannon, like a slob Johnny Cash
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: or something like that?
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: I usually can't get on that list without sleeping with him.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Oh boy. One, one Politico for me.
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:59
  Speaker 6: Same.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Me too. It's good.
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: Bipartisanship is back.
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: So says Paul Gosar.
• 47:06
  Speaker 4: All right. So we'll move on to number two. This
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: is very requested yesterday. Uh, it's a piece from the
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: Atlantic titled the Senate needs more Kirsten cinemas.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: Oh boy.
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: Uh, This piece.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: I think I saw this. I couldn't click on it.
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I couldn't recognize the author either. I don't know who
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: that was.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: I didn't click on it. I saw it go by.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, was it Connor Fursdorf?
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: You don't even want to hear the excerpt. We're just
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: going straight to guessing.
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: Sorry, sorry, sorry. Getting ahead of the game.
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: I mean, you're two for two.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: I know what I think about the take. It sucks.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: I think you do need to explain the rules, Elijah.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, God.
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: No respect for the format. Let's hear the take.
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: Okay, let's go for it. Here's the quote. Although three
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: independents who caucus with the Democrats may not be enough
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: of a change to make Congress more popular or less dysfunctional,
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: 10 independent senators could wield real clout as a swing block.
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: 15 or 20 independent senators would transform the institution and
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: offer encouragement to the many American voters whose policy preferences
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: do not neatly align with Democrats or Republicans.
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: We already know it's Conor Friedersdorf. No, you got it.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: I just couldn't say his last name.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go two politicos on this one. It's
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: not really getting my hackles up.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: It's pretty stupid, though. Oh, imagine if there was 10
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: or 15 independents. Where are you getting this from? Where
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: are they coming from? What has made you think this
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: is a possibility?
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll give it a two, but I also, I
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: too am exhausted by takes that describe some sort of
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: fantasy land politics.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: It's very Aaron Sorkin sort of.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: And it's also like, finally, all the Americans that look
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: and think like me will finally have their tribune. And
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: it's like, you are alone, my friend. There's no one,
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: there's a cosmopolitan libertarian type.
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: You have no one. There's no one with you. Also,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: wheeling and dealing Joe Biden. is leading the Democratic Party
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: right now. He's cutting deals. He's passing bipartisan legislation. What
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: are you talking about? We need more independence in the
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: center the republican party's fucking crazy.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: And we just and he's had like you could have
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: done maybe you're writing this nonsense a year ago there's
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: been an incredible week months of bipartisan legislation passing over
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: and over again infrastructure right the chips thing that we
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: love and care about so much three and a half
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: got me Wow.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Got me angrier. I worked myself up from two to
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: three and a half. He's got three and a half politicos.
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: Can I get you to four?
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: No, you cannot. You absolutely cannot.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: I was just going to say the common criticism of
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: this was that, you know, it's like, oh, the three parties, Democrats, Republicans,
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: and Independents, who are a uniform group with policy positions
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: they agree on.
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Also true. Also true.
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's what's silly about this whole thing is
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: I know we've all decided the parties are bad, just
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: sort of definition, but really what they are is just
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: a way to group people based on what they believe.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: I think politicians should believe in things and vote accordingly.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: So you're kind of going to end up ending up
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: in groups.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Just how it goes.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: Most of the people that argue for some kind of
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: broader independent movement or independent party are people who want
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: to a Democratic Party with a new name that isn't
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: getting attacked by Republicans.
• 50:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Forward. Something like that.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: They like, you know, they're always saying they want a
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: center-left political system. They just don't like that it's Democrats
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: doing politics to actually make that happen.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: There should be no labels. No labels.
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: So we're at three and a half. We're staying at
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: three and a half.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: Okay. Well, I am. I'm at two. I'm sticking with
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: my two.
• 50:45
  Speaker 6: Same.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: Well, now we're coming to a fork in the road.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: where instead of just going to a third take, ahead
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: of you are four takes. Some of them are normal
• 50:54
  Speaker 4: take appreciators. Some of them are just fun topics that
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: we thought would be good to talk about, and also
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: I think will do well on TikTok, if we talk
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: about them. The first path will lead you to Andrew
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: Tate slash Greta Thunberg. The next path will lead you
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: to Glass Onion, the film. The next path will lead
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: you to height, like how tall you are. And the
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: final path will lead you to Southwest Airlines and Pete Buttigieg.
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: Which path would you like to take?
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: I've been familiar with all four examples of all four
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: of those takes. I have not. I have not.
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: I have avoided Glass Onion News because I still need
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: to watch it. I haven't finished The Crown yet. So
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: I'd like to skip that one.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: OK, well, then I'll just say I saw it and
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: then I did. read the Ben Shapiro thread on it.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: Oh my God. Say no more, please. We can talk
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: about it, Elijah.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: His take was the take.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that's... I knew that. Of course. You can't...
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: Elijah resisting a Ben Shapiro take? Come on. That's not even...
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: That's not possible.
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: Mark Thiessen's my new fave.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Anyway, okay. So that one's out. That one's out. So.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: The short thing was sort of just that one op-ed.
• 52:02
  Speaker 3: Not that interesting to me.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: It's a good time to be short?
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, something like that. I agree. I will say... Southwest
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: is tempting. Let's do Southwest. Okay.
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Although I kind of then want to know what your.
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: Take on Thunberg was.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: You know what? There's no rules.
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: We're doing Southwest and we're doing Greta Thunberg.
• 52:16
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: There you go.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. Let's go. Let's do it. All right.
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: Southwest. We'll go to Southwest first. I got to scroll down.
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: So this is a piece from FoxNews.com titled, Is Pete
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: Buttigieg's Political Future Grounded Forever After Southwest Holiday Travel Disaster?
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: That's good. That's good.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: This piece is about the disastrous meltdown- that Southwest Airlines
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: had over the holidays. I witnessed it firsthand. It resulted
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: in a huge amount of delays and canceled flights. And naturally,
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: the implications for Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Here is a quote.
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: For almost every Democrat, and sadly too many Republicans, the
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: federal government is the immediate scapegoat of every problem under
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: the sun, even in the private sector. Gone are the
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: days of free markets and letting consumers punish Southwest by
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: choosing other airlines. For a Democratic Party soon in search
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: of its next leader, Christmas 2022 could be a make-or-break
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: moment for one of the potential contenders. I don't know
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: if you guys are going to get this from this author.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: What is this argument, even? They're saying that they shouldn't
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: blame Pete Buttigieg? Well, I... You kind of zagged where
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: I thought they were going to go. Me too. That
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: they're saying that we shouldn't depend on the government to
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: do anything about the airlines fucking up and we should
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: just put our money in... What?
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: I guess they're saying that because Democrats are responsible for
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: why the government is so involved in the airlines, therefore
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: the Democrats are responsible for what happens when the airlines fail. Regardless, no,
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Pete Buttigieg will not pay a permanent political price for
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: a weekend of weather-related Southwest issues, even though there is
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: a real issue in which for years, for many years,
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: having nothing to do with Pete Buttigieg, we've allowed too
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: many airline mergers and we've allowed the airlines to get
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: away with murder. We did deregulation. And as a result,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: these airlines can now run. They're running much fuller flights
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: with much fewer backups or rooms for problems. They cancel
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: with impunity. They mistreat passengers with impunity. There is a
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: big problem here, but it's really, really hard to beat Buttigieg.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: Well, to the point of whatever this was, we can't
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: just have consumers punish the airlines or vote with their
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: wallets here because they don't have that much choice because
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: of all the mergers.
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: The mergers that should never have been allowed to go
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: through that reduce competition and put people at the whims
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: of these.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: Horrible giant airlines. It is not a competitive market.
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: If I'm going to get in a tin can that
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: goes to 30,000 feet, I'd like the government to be
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: involved in the regulation of that.
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: It's either the government or Elon. That's the only people
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: that I'm trusting on this. Good point.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Um, I'm going to, I'm saying three politicos for that.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: That gets three for me. See, I'm going down to
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: two cause I just think it was so poorly. I don't,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: it didn't make sense to me. I'll go three cause
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: it didn't make sense to me.
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: Yeah. This guy's, his thing is that Pete's most intense
• 55:07
  Speaker 4: criticism came from the left. Uh, so they could like
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: affect it maybe in a primary.
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: Well, there's certainly some people who hate Pete. Yeah. Some
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: of the Bernie folks.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: From the primary who are far more focused on, you know,
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: airline specific issues, uh, during that time period than they
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: might otherwise have been.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: There have been a lot of people on Fox news
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: that like went after Pete for this. Like, oh, so
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: you want the government to step in and more heavily
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: regulate and control the airlines.
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: Fine. Let's do that. Great. Good.
• 55:33
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: Should we go down the Greta Thunberg, Andrew Tate path?
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: Let's do it. This is the grand finale here. All right.
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: So this requires some setup because I know a lot
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: of people here are less online than we are over
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: the break. An internet shock jock misogynist named Andrew Tate
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: sent a tweet mocking climate activist Greta Thunberg. He basically
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: said he has a lot of gas guzzling cars and
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: he asked for Greta's email so he could give her
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: more information. She replied, quote, send it to smalldickenergy at getalife.com.
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: Reply that way.
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Take a viral.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: Imagine you're just you're trying to troll a teen and
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: you get absolutely bodied.
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great.
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: To make this discourse crazier, Andrew Tate was shortly thereafter
• 56:18
  Speaker 4: arrested for human trafficking in Romania. You guys with me
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: so far? And do you want to comment on the
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: story generally before we get to the actual take here?
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: No, it's extremely bad human being. He's way worse than
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: shock jock. I think he's like a really, he probably.
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: Will do some time. I was going to say as
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: the human trafficking charge shows. He is a despicable. I
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: also will just say that like, this is one of.
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: The people that Elon wanted to have their platform back.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: This is somebody that Elon felt was needed.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: In the discourse. And granted him such a platform. His sanctuary.
• 56:52
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 56:53
  Speaker 4: I wrote the beginning of the paragraph before the end.
• 56:55
  Speaker 4: And in hindsight, I should have described him at the
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: top as a convicted human trafficker or, you know, Arrested
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: for human trafficking. Anyway, here's one of the most viral
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: takes to arise from this incident. If you aren't familiar
• 57:07
  Speaker 4: with Andrew Tate, again, he's an extreme men's right activist
• 57:09
  Speaker 4: and misogynist. Quote, the Andrew Tates of the world would
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: not exist if men weren't demoralized, degraded, and confused about
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: what masculinity is and isn't. Thanks, feminists, for the absolute
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: shit show you created.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 57:25
  Speaker 6: Wow.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Disgusting. There you go. That's the full playbook. I know.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: It's like the playbook scale is like the wrong scale
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: for this. That's just horrible. That's childish nonsense. I took
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: my extremely disgusting position because you made me. I'm always
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: the victim. Right. I did not choose this. this horrific
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: lifestyle myself.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: This is the, yeah, this is the, uh, you drove
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: me to it.
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: You drove me to it.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: You know, you drove me to it that you see
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: this with like the, you know, uh, the Andrew Sullivan's
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: of the world say, this is what's driven people to
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: the right. It's because of what the left is doing,
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: but taken to just such a disgusting extreme.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: Where's that from? Yeah, who did it? Who did it?
• 58:05
  Speaker 4: It's not just a random guy. It's kind of a
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: random guy. He has a sub stack. He refers to
• 58:09
  Speaker 4: himself as a non-woke poet, which is just like a
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: huge L. I'm not going to say his name. He's
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: got tens of thousands of followers himself.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Got it. Non-woke poet. Non-woke poet. That's cool.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: I also understand that the Taliban expressed their concern about
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: how Andrew Chase was treated. So it's a real who's
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: who's of the fucking worst human beings on earth.
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: Chiming in. They did have Twitter spaces, right? And also,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: there was a whole thing that the Andrew Tate video
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: that he posted in which he goes after Greta is
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: what led the Romanian authorities to him. That's not true.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Completely baseless. That wasn't true, huh?
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: People just wanted that to be true, but it wasn't true.
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: It didn't make sense when they said it. Why would
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: they wait for the pizza boxes?
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: It'd be cool if it was. It didn't make sense.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: I saw people saying that, and I was like, but
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: that doesn't make any sense.
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it was one Twitter account just sort
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: of stated it as fact, and.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: It was too good to check. And then a bunch
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: of actual outlets wrote it up without doing a lot
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: of checking.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: If you went to Andrew Tate's social media feeds, you
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: saw him post a series of videos and messages before that.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: They were like, look at me back in Romania. So
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: it was not.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: And then as people were correcting it, then there was
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: a group of people who were like, why are you
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: defending Andrew Tate? It's like, what? No, it's just saying,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: but this is the real story.
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: This is why, this is why, this is why the
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: whole thing is, this is why I was not on
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: Twitter and why I was focused entirely on building a
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: magnificent dexterity-based bleed build in Elden Ring.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. I don't know any of that.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: I'm going to use, Elijah, I'm going to use one
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: of my larval tears and I'm going to respect it.
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: I think I'm going to put some, I think I'm
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: going to put some of my points towards, I'm going
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: to do an intelligence dex build.
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: Huh?
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: Did you win? Did you complete the game?
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: I know, but I'm, I want to respect before I
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: get into the, I'm in the land of the giants.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: We just lost.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: I really want to, I really want to respect my
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: character and I want to have some sorceries going so
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: I can do a little bit more range battle. Cause
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: I've been just all decks. I've been dumping all my
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: points into decks.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Love it. Just lost the third through 10th ballot.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: And, um, and, uh, I'm still looking for some of
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: the talisman that help you with the bleed build.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: I don't have, if you're still listening, um, That's our
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: show for today. But I've been using... I appreciate it.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Elijah Cohn.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: I used the talisman to increase my ability, my equipment load.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: So I'm using heavy armor, but with a medium roll.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: To John Lovett, to Matt Gates.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: And I've been actually just using the hook claws. Just
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: the good old hook claws.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: This just in. This just in. Kevin McCarthy's set to
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: lose the third vote.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 5: Wow.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: And more Republicans defect to Jordan this time. That's not good. See, that's...
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: That's not good. That's some... The writing is beginning to
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: be written. That got us off Elden Ring, and now
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: we're out. Bye, everyone. and to our digital team, Elijah Cohn,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.