No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - AOC rips Republican dysfunction amid Speaker battle

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

Republicans make a fatal mistake during their latest power grab-- and may very well have signed their own death certificate. Brian interviews AOC about the Republicans blaming Democrats for not saving Kevin McCarthy, how she was instrumental in getting the NY AG probe started against Trump that’s resulted in the trial we’re watching now, and whether she believes that there will ever be another Biden impeachment inquiry hearing after the disaster that was the first one.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about how Republicans made a fatal mistake during their latest power grab and may very well have signed their own death certificate. And I interview AOC about the Republicans blaming Democrats for not saving Kevin McCarthy, how she was instrumental in getting the New York Attorney General probe against Trump started that resulted in the trial we're watching now, and whether she believes there will ever be another Biden impeachment inquiry hearing after the disaster that was the first one. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.

So these last few weeks of John, objectively speaking, have ranked somewhere between dumpster fire and the Hindenburg for Republicans, first from the disaster that was the impeachment inquiry hearing against Joe Biden, where their own witnesses conceded that there was no justification to be there to just days ago when Kevin McCarthy, who became Speaker under the most humiliating of circumstances, was stripped of that position in a way that was equally, if not more humiliating. And let's be clear, this is all very much a function of the disinformation machine that powers right-wing media and that serves as a north star for far-right House Freedom Caucus members.

But it does nothing for the majority of Republicans, or I guess I should say the minority of Republicans who still claims to be moderate. And so the question really becomes, why are Republicans allowing this to happen? Why are they pandering to the extremists within their own ranks by allowing this failure theater, Matt Gase's own words, when it just hangs the rest of the party out to dry? And the answer is that the priority on the right has shifted to winning primaries.

How does Republicans know that if they don't cowtow to the farthest right fringes of their base that they will be primaried? And so rather than having a spine and speaking out, they defer to keeping their own jobs, meaning that they tack right to avoid being primaried by, you know, the next Marjorie Teller Green or Lauren Bobert. But the question then becomes, won't they just lose in the general election? And that's where gerrymandering comes in. Republican legislatures have spent the last couple of decades redrawing their state's maps

to allow for maximum advantage for Republicans. voters are basically packed into one or two massively, massively blue districts. And the rest of the state then becomes safe red districts for Republicans. So you don't need to moderate your positions to win. In fact, it's the opposite. You actually need to show off your right-wing bona fides since your general election race is hardly any different from the primary. One top Republican campaign strategist in the 2000 and 2002 elections, Tom Davis, came out and said, we ran our caucus to basically support members in swing districts. That's how we got power.

Today, they run the caucus now to protect members from R plus 30 districts to protect them in primaries. And so what we're left with is a House Republican conference that's just getting more extreme and less likely to accept any modicum of compromise. What they refuse to recognize is that while they're out there

trying to shore up their next primary win, there actually are still some moderate Republicans who are being hung out to dry. Right now, in a house with a five-seat Republican majority, there are still 18 Republicans serving in Biden-1 districts. and yet, instead of protecting those people, without whom there will be no-house majority for the GOP, the extremists are just introducing messaging bills that have zero chance of becoming law, but that put those moderates on record having to cast their ballots for legislation

that'll be fodder for attack ads if they vote for it, and primary threats if they vote against it. Like, not a great strategy if your goal is to help those people keep their seats and help the party keep its majority. I don't know, maybe the smart thing to do would be to protect those vulnerable members instead of constantly putting those people in a position where they have to align themselves with the lunatics. And yet the incentive structure for the extremists to do their extremism is just too great. They need the attention, need their five-minute fox hit, need the fundraising pitch, need their social media followers. And so regardless of the fact that they're putting their majority, and therefore any real semblance of power at risk in real time, still they barrel forward because they have created a system where they can bolster primary wins or protect the moderates, but not both.

And the folks protecting themselves in the primary right now have all the power. And it goes without saying, but there is zero chance of any governing happening because even if these people do manage to pass one of their bills that look like they were drawn up in the comment section of a Dan Bongino Facebook video, they are DOA in a Democratic Senate with a Democratic president. But again, they don't care because it's not about working together. It's not about bipartisanship. It's not about governing.

It is about winning a primary. It's about appealing to the farthest right fringes of the base, and those people don't care about governing. Which is why, by the way, when Democrats had the exact same margin that Republicans currently have, they passed the Inflation Reduction Act, and the American Rescue Plan, and the infrastructure package, the gun safety law, the Pact Act, CHIPS Act,

reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act. They codified marriage equality into federal law. But with the same size majority, Republicans have passed zero meaningful legislation and still don't even have a speaker. In the last 30 years, the government shut down six times. All of them, every single time was at the hands of Republicans. I don't know how to make this any more clear.

Not only can't these people govern, but they don't want to. The incentive isn't there. They're there for a lot of things. Fame, attention, social media following, fundraising, power. But governing isn't one of them. And given where Republicans are now putting their resources, it's only going to get worse. Something to think about, regardless of which party you're in, when you're deciding whose salaries you want your hard-earned tax dollars to actually pay.

Next up is my interview with AOC. Now we have Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Thanks so much for joining me. Of course. Thanks for having me. So we are right now in the midst of this speaker battle, just more chaos and dysfunction within the Republican conference in the House. Some Republicans are trying to cast the blame on Democrats for not swooping in and saving Kevin McCarthy as he was being ousted as speaker.

Can I have your thoughts on that? Is it Democrats' responsibility to save Republicans from themselves? Almost never in the history of the House of Representatives has a party. a party voted for the other party's speaker. That is not part of the function, tradition, or even structure of the House of Representatives. In fact, one would say that part of the essential structure of the party structure

is to elect your own party speaker. And so, of course, every Democrat is going to vote for Hakeem Jeffries to be Speaker of the House. And it is a Republican responsibility to elect the Republican speaker. But even taking a step beyond that, for folks who say, why can't we, you know, meet in the middle or cut a deal? Kevin McCarthy didn't even try. He at no point asked Democrats to vote for him, tried to negotiate anything for there to be some

sort of coalition government. It really seemed that this expectation, frankly, that Democrats would vote for Republicans was something that was learned after the fact. Right. And obviously the indication that they're trying to give is that surely if Republicans, were in the minority and they had to vote for a speaker, that they would vote to protect Hocking Jeffries and not vote to elect somebody in the Republican Party, right? I mean, let's be real. Do we really think any Republican would have voted

for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House? That kind of answers the question right there. What do you say to, like, the pro-McCarthy Republicans who say Democrats are just as responsible for the chaos now as Matt Gates is? Well, I think that Democrats tried to save Republicans from themselves. There was this entire rule that allowed for one member of the House to try to kick out the Speaker of the House was something that was adopted by Republicans in January of this year.

Every single Democrat voted against this rule. We said this is bad for the institution. This is not going to be good for you all. And they didn't listen. They voted for this. They put this structure into place. And, you know, all we can say is that we tried. We did try.

The reason that Matt Gates led this mutiny against Kevin McCarthy was because at the end of the day the government was allowed to stay open. But at the end of this 45-day continuing resolution, whoever replaces Kevin McCarthy is going to come out of this knowing that the only lesson that he or she should learn is that there should be no cooperation, no capitulation, and that they have to be as extreme as possible because at this point, that's quite literally the only qualification now. So does the prospect of that worry you moving forward? Well, it goes both ways. Just as Matt Gates and his crew can threaten to withhold their votes,

you can also have five or six courageous Republicans on the other side of that spectrum also hold their leadership's feet to the fire and say, we have to have sanity in this situation. We can't bow to extremism and we need to work together. And the question here is if there are any Republicans in the Republican Party, even those in swing seats that, you know, seats that have elected for both Joe Biden and elected a Republican member of Congress, if those folks will stand up and really try to strengthen our democracy as strongly as these rebels are, you know, trying to kind of destruct their own party.

Yeah, right. Like the responsibility always, always, it's basically never on those 18 Republicans, for example, who are currently sitting in Biden one districts to do anything to defend the Republican It's always the Democrats' fault that we didn't swoop in, and yet we have these moderate Republicans, so-called moderate Republicans, or Republicans who should be worried about saving their own seats, and at the end of the day, it's them who capitulate to the extremists in the Republican conference. Yeah, and perhaps this party of personal responsibility and lifting yourself up by the

bootstraps, you know, take some personal responsibility and lift themselves up by the bootstraps. So the news now is that Donald Trump has come forward and endorsed Jim Jordan. He's also come forward and says that if his, if the Republican, conference isn't able to choose anybody, that he would be willing to step in for a short period of time, to swoop in as the white night of the Republican Party. What is your reaction to the prospect of Donald Trump serving as Speaker of the House? I think someone should let Trump know that the speakership does not make you immune to a court challenge or federal investigation, and also that this job is literally a lot of work,

and you can't have executive time until noon. There's talk among pro-McCarthy Republicans that Matt Gates should be expelled now as the result of all of this. Does it strike you as strange that the whole expel Matt Gates' narrative came before there were any Republicans calling for the expulsion of George Santos, who was literally indicted? Republicans think it's completely fine if you are indicted by the Department of Justice, and yet, God forbid, you undermine another Republican politician. They are okay with voting to overturn elections.

They openly embrace, and in fact, virtually every single Republican voted to protect George Santos earlier this year from any sort of expulsion matter or vote on the floor of the House. Yet the moment a member becomes politically inconvenient for them, they're discussing expulsion either from the Congress or the House of Representatives. And I think it shows just how deeply corrupt and how deeply inconsistent the Republican Party has become. If whoever becomes the next Republican speaker makes the issue of Ukraine funding a wedge

issue, are Democrats prepared to go to the wall to defend it? And beyond that, what do you say to Republicans who don't think that we should fund Ukraine? Well, I think U.S. commitment to democracy is incredibly important. U.S. commitment to our allies are important, and the word of the United States globally is important. And when we say that we're going to make a commitment to follow through on that, we're going to commitment to support our allies and to also defend people of Ukraine this is very important for global stability to allow a country to invade another

country and taking us back to 18th century 19th century imperialism is very dangerous and so I think you know to that I think it is important for us to discuss the stakes I think it's very understandable for us to discuss the fact that we don't want a forever war, we should have a game plan, there should be accountability to the American people. But to simply turn that spigot off because of dysfunction and chaos, that I believe is something that sets a dangerous precedent. I think that people are expecting that this streak of extremism, that the fever will break

in the Republican Party, but can you talk about the incentive structure on the right and why it won't? Well, I do think it's important to talk about how Democrats. enabling and bailing out Republicans for a long period of time created this incentive structure where all they had to worry about was their right wing, appeasing their right wing instead of actually governing. And what was very important about what happened this week is that the Democratic Party finally took a stance and we said, you have to be responsible and you have to be a governing

partner. And we're not going to tolerate these antics anymore. You have to get your act together. And so now they have the responsibility to govern. But historically, all they have worried about is appeasing their right wing. And they have slowly but surely let go of the idea that they are responsible to all Americans, not just Fox News and their most right wing elements. I think something that was striking to that point is Representative Graves, Republican Representative came forward when they were doing this whole battle on the House floor and he came forward and showed a fundraising text message that Matt Gates had sent out once he had effectuated one step of what would be a long process to oust Kevin McCarthy.

Did that strike you as surprising or how did that, how did you react to that? You know, I think there is one area where I actually think that it was a fascinating interaction because there also is this very interesting dynamic where Matt Gates made a point where he said, you know, I fundraise on a grassroots basis and there is something to be said about fundraising off of chaos and spectacle, but also they're fundraising off of big oil

and lobbyists and the NRA. And so there really are no good guys here and this explains a lot. And in fact, a lot of that big money really financed and bank role, the racism, xenophobia, and extremism that these folks are now using to oust their own speaker. And so both of these folks have actually helped and enabled the other, despite the fact that they're very angry at each other right now. During the Biden impeachment inquiry

hearing, you exposed Republicans basically concocting this fabricated evidence to incriminate Joe Biden. Can you speak on the shamelessness of that stunt and just the legitimacy of their whole effort more broadly? Yeah. I think it does go back to this underlying theme that the House of Representatives are hollowed hallways of Congress belong to the people. And service is sacred. But when you are constantly considering or thinking of your seat as something that is for spectacle or for show or for fundraising, there's a point where you stop taking your work seriously and the gravity of your work seriously. Submitting fabricated evidence to a congressional investigation, no less an impeachment, is an extremely serious matter that should be taken very seriously. I think it's

something that a person could potentially lose their seat over, whether at the ballot box, you know, or otherwise. And I think the fact that this has become so normal to them is something that should worry everybody. I think to your earlier point, unless one of those people who presented that fabricated evidence does something to undermine another Republican, we're very likely to see, very unlikely to see any accountability within the Republican conference. Right, right. You also teamed up with Jamie Raskin to basically show that the impeachment inquiry isn't even valid. Because of Republicans' own rule, you need a full House vote to actually authorize an inquiry.

Has there been any acknowledgement from the Republican conference, either in public or in private, that this whole effort has kind of been a failure and an embarrassment every step of the way? Absolutely. In fact, there have been other Republican members of Congress that have gone on the record publicly saying this is a spectacle, this is a distraction, this is not something that should happen. And at the beginning of that hearing, Congressman Raskin held up all of these signs with these quotes of Republican members of Congress basically saying that this is a farce.

And so I think that admission is there. But again, this was something that they did. And then Speaker McCarthy allowed it to proceed simply to placate the same people. who then turned around and ousted him. And in fact, I believe there's an open question right now as to whether the impeachment inquiry is even valid because it did not pass by a House majority and because the speaker who authorized it

is no longer there. And what are your thoughts on that? And I personally think that it's not valid. Do you think between the fact that it's very likely invalid and also the fact that it was such a disaster of the first go-round? I mean, to have Jonathan Turley, who would come out and say that Bill Clinton should be impeached,

but that Donald Trump shouldn't be impeached, and for somebody as partisan as that, basically the rubber stamp to approve any constitutional matters for him to come out and say that there's no basis for an impeachment right now. So between those two things, do you think that they'll continue on with this whole charade? I don't see how they can.

I think that they dramatically undermine their own case. I mean, their shamelessness is difficult to find the best, find the bounds of it, but even this, I think, was something that pumped the brakes for them. And so they may try to proceed, but I think that they have made their own case and momentum very, very complicated right now. There was an article in Salon that I want to discuss. You were in Congress for two months. You had the opportunity to cross-examine Michael Cohen in March of 2019.

Here's a clip of that exchange. Secondly, I want to ask a little bit about your conversation with my colleague from Missouri about asset inflation. To your knowledge, do the President ever provide inflated assets to an insurance company? Yes. Who else knows that the president did this? Alan Weisselberg, Ron Lieberman, and Matthew Kalamari. And where would the committee find more information on this? Do you think we need to review his financial statements and his tax returns in order to compare them? Yes, and you'd find it at the Trump org. Thank you very much. That line of questioning

would then serve as a predicate for an investigation whose end result was Donald Trump sitting in a courtroom in New York this past week. What's your reaction to seeing this whole thing come full circle four years later? It's really wild to look at that and to look at that moment because I had literally been waitressing

maybe eight months before. I was in that seat and asking those questions. And so it's a big personal, I think, full circle moment, but also it can show that no matter how powerful you are, or no matter how not powerful you may feel. First term, Congresswoman, two months into the job. You know, that this is still the United States of America where anything can happen and that possibilities are still there, and also that all people can and should be held to the

same standard of the law and that no one should be exempt from accountability. What was your mentality going into that whole thing? Because there is, you know, these hearings are very frequently, especially when it comes to Donald Trump, are very frequently used as just opportunities to grandstand or for theatrics and you came in there with a lot of attention around you and again, only had been on the job for what, like eight weeks at that point? What was your mentality going into that hearing? Did you feel like you had to prove something?

Or was this just, you know, setting the stage for how you want to govern? Yeah. I mean, I definitely felt that I needed to show what I always knew, which is that the people of my district and myself, we are here to do serious work. And we are optimistic and we are ambitious and we have really big visions for this country. And we want guaranteed health care for all Americans. And we want a Green New Deal. but also that these things are not unrealistic.

They're not naive. They're not pie in the sky. And we can show that by conducting our work with precision, integrity, and seriousness. And so I felt a lot of pressure that day to deliver on something that was so new and so big. But I'm very thankful to all of the people that really participated and played a role in that moment. Yeah, well, that was a really big deal, which I think is evidenced by what we're seeing right now. I want to stick to the New York Attorney General trial for just a moment more.

Donald Trump had come out and posted identifying information about Judge Engeron's clerk, which earned him a gag order, the first gag order in any of these prosecutions, but what I'm sure is not the last. What's your reaction to this very blatant dog whistle intended for his supporters to destroy the life of yet another innocent public servant just to prop himself up? This is what Trump does, but this is also what Trumpism does. And I think it's very important to understand that this is a tactic that is used to undermine democracy. It is, we see it everywhere from him intimidating this clerk to sometimes his followers trying to intimidate people sitting on a PTA board or a school board.

This idea that if you just try to stand and do the right thing and uphold the rules and, and execute on the law, that you will suffer, be targeted, be intimidated, and have to make great personal sacrifice. And the goal is to try to scare away or prevent people from standing up and doing their public service so that corruption can take over. And we have to uphold and support the people who are doing their jobs. We have to fight back against attacks. on rule of law. And we also have to be able to put our differences aside and respect rulings no matter who they come for and when they happen.

So right now, Republicans claim to be the party of law and order. They still claim to be the party of law and order, even as they line up behind a guy who's contending with 91 criminal charges in four different jurisdictions, just like they claim to be the party of fiscal responsibility. When they had full control of government, they added $7.8 trillion to the debt. They claim to be the party of family values,

as they walk off the cliff in fealty to a guy who cheated on his wife with porn stars. They claim to be the party of state's rights, which was supposedly the predicate for overturning row. And then the second that happened, they introduced legislation for a nationwide ban and abortion. Party of the police, and yet look what happened on January 6th, bludgeoning police officers. Can you talk about the massive chasm between Republicans' branding that they've relied on so long and they still rely on to this day and their actual actions, their actual behavior? You know, I think sometimes people think that, and it's understandable, that pointing out this hypocrisy is going to weaken their operation.

But sometimes I wonder if pointing out the hypocrisy in a way, or if the hypocrisy itself strengthens them because they are showing that this is actually not about values. They're whistling. It's a dog whistle to their supporters. That this is actually just a show. and that what this is really about is power and us getting power and us doing what we want. It's about us abusing power if it helps us, and it's about us, you know, making sure that we're targeting our political opponents unfairly if that helps us too. And so in a way, you know, this hypocrisy is very real, but it's also part of the DNA.

It's the show that we can do whatever we want. And I think that's actually one of the most appealing elements of Trumpism, which is that other people don't matter, our institutions don't matter. Trump will give you permission to be your worst self. And I actually think there's a very base appealing element to that. And our challenge as not just Democrats, but just as people who believe in this country, our challenge is in the face of someone appealing to our lowest instincts for us to be able to appeal to our highest and most inspiring and visionary possibilities for us as a collective. To that point on our highest, actually aspirations, there was a moment in.

in the Republican primary debate where Mike Pence said that as president, he would repeal the Green New Deal. How excited were you to learn that the Green New Deal had become law at some point? I was ecstatic. I had not known that Mike Pence had signed the Green, or rather that Mike Pence had advised Donald Trump to sign the Green New Deal. I was very interested to learn all this information. Also fascinated that a person who both served in Congress and was Vice President of the United States,

which means he was president of the Senate, head of the Senate. the Senate somehow does not know how a bill becomes law and that a resolution is not a bill. So to that point, what would you like to see the White House do on climate right now? Given everything we've seen with the Inflation Reduction Act and the actions that they've taken, what would you like to see over these next couple years? Well, you know, I think that climate is a real significant issue that all of us would like to see the administration grow much more on. We had the climate core that was just approved by the White House, but it needs to be much,

much, much bigger. So we want to focus on dramatically expanding the climate core into the Environmental Protection Agency on top of all the other agencies that we're working with. I think we also need to take a look at these fossil fuel permits that have been going on. And really, truly, be honest about the fact that there is an extraordinary amount of oil production and oil leasing, fossil fuel leasing that's happening at the present moment. And we have to take the climate crisis seriously and start turning the tide on that. What do you say to those Republicans who come out and say that we can't afford right

now, given the economy, given X, Y, and C, that we can't afford right now to upend everything and move toward renewables that we have to just double down on fossil fuels? Well, fossil fuels are only going to get more expensive in a lot of ways with that infrastructure, with the way that markets are moving. And so locking us in to one energy source almost guarantees that a major source, it's a lot of Americans are going to be paying a lot more money if we do that. Especially a finite one. Especially a finite one.

And secondarily, everything is going to become more expensive if we continue to walk into the climate crisis with a blindfold on and perpetuate it and make it worse. Republicans love to use the idea of China as a way to push American policy into whatever direction that they want. But can you speak on the danger of basically seeding all of this ground when it comes to renewables and clean energy to China if we don't take action and start manufacturing and start entrenching those technologies here? Absolutely. Well, I think that the Republican rhetoric around China is actually incredibly dangerous. It is one thing for other countries for us to acknowledge global competition, but it is another entirely for elected officials to intentionally stoke, xenophobic, and other kinds of language, and when it comes to the climate crisis specifically, we are not going to solve this with conflict. We have to solve this with global

collaboration. And it is true that the United States does need to pave away in greater production on renewable energies and being able to dramatically expand solar. or wind geothermal here in the United States, but we are not going to do that in if our frame is fighting with others. It's very dangerous. We should not try to stoke a Cold War stance when we're actually, the entire planet is going to need each other for us to survive what is going to come. On media and messaging, you've been a juggernaut in terms of reaching people. What is some advice that you would give to Democrats who are looking to better reach people, more effectively persuade people moving forward?

Talk like a regular person. Get out of the beltway. And a lot of times I think it's easy when you're surrounded by, you know, when you're in Washington, you're surrounded by other policymakers or analysts and all of that. be able to talk about things in a way that everybody understands and break things down. And that might not be comfortable in Washington, but I think it is the most truthful and honest way that we can express ourselves. And sure, sometimes that means being a little rough around the edges and being true to yourself. But I think that's the era that we're in and that we need to be

authentic and we need to govern authentically if we're going to reach people. You know, we're heading into an election where there are so many issues, like there's just a firehose of issues that Democrats could run on between women's reproductive rights, the threats to democracy, the threats of Donald Trump himself, and a host of other issues, climate change, health care, like, you name it. So you can't really do everything. I mean, Al Franken has a joke where he says Democrats, if they had a bumper sticker, it would list everything and say, continue on the next bumper sticker.

That's been a big problem for Democrats in terms of messaging for a long time. What would you focus on as we head into this election with so many issues? is kind of plaguing this country? I think talking about our plans and our visions and aspirations is important. There are so many threats out there, but I also think people want to vote for something instead of only voting against something.

And so in addition to, for example, abortion, we should talk about our steps to guarantee health care in the United States of America. I think we should talk about the steps towards a Green New Deal that we want to commit to in the next two to three years or on climate in the next two to three years. I think we should talk about our courts and specifically what we are willing to commit to when it comes to accountability for individuals like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

And I think the more specific and committed that vision is, the better off will be. Seems like a perfect place to end. So Congresswoman AOC, thank you so much for taking the time. Of course. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks again to AOC. That's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and preferred podcast app.

Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels. Thank you.