No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - House Republicans hatch last ditch plan to end Speaker drama

Episode Date: October 22, 2023

The House remains mired in dysfunction as we’re more than 3 weeks without a Speaker-- but the Republicans have a brilliant new plan to finally bring the conference together. Brian interviews Congressman Jamie Raskin about his response to Republican claims that this is all the Democrats’ fault, his prediction as to how this drama will end, and his reaction to some more “smoking gun” evidence against Joe Biden that was just released.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 the continued dysfunction in the House, as we're now more than three weeks without a speaker, and the Republican's brilliant new plan to finally bring the conference together. And I interview Congressman Jamie Raskin about his response to Republican claims that it's all the Democrats' fault, his prediction as to how this drama will finally end, and his reaction to some more smoking gun evidence against Joe Biden that's just come out. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. We're back to Square One in the House after three votes where Jim Jordan not only failed to get

the votes necessary to become Speaker, but actually went backwards on all three ballots. And so now we've got a new flood of apparently self-hating Republicans who are coming forward to hold a job so horrible, Mike Roe wouldn't even touch it. But here's a fun new twist. This is according to Politico, we've now got a unity pledge. That's right, unity pledges are back. Republicans are now passing around a promise to, quote, support the Speaker-designate duly elected by the Republican House Conference, regardless of who that candidate is,

when their election proceeds to the House floor. Further, I pledge to vote for the speaker-designate on the House floor for as long as they remain the speaker-designate. Here's the thing. These pledges are so funny because they are clearly the last grasps of some dwindling faction of quasi-moderate Republicans who think that the extremists, who they've emboldened these last few years by capitulating at every turn, would ever actually abide by a unity pledge when push came to shove.

This unity pledge is a toothless effort that's really just meant to make those moderates feel better, but let's be honest, deep down, even they know that if the House Freedom Caucus doesn't get what it wants, there's no chance they'll just lay down their arms, especially because there's some unity pledge written down on paper. Like, I almost feel bad for these moderates who think that the same far-right extremist lunatics in their conference who emboldened and supported an insurrection against our own government think that a little piece of paper is going to be what it takes to get them to give up their crusade for power. Here's why I think this is doomed. Matt Gates and the other House Freedom Caucus members

who ousted McCarthy a few weeks back know that everything is on the line right now they can't have made their party endure this humiliation for more than three weeks now and get nothing out of it their pot committed at this point so they have to get one of their fellow extremists in there otherwise this whole thing was for nothing and guess what because the margins are so slim

they have that power if all eight of them for example withhold their votes no one's getting elected so the moderates can pass around all the unity pledges they want but at the end of the day, you know and I know and all of those House Republicans know that a strongly worded letter is nothing more than kindling for those extremists in the House Republican Conference. And so while I don't know how this ends, this might be a good moment for some introspection

for those moderate Republicans in the House who kept allowing the extremists to chip away at their power and who allowed them spots on the Rules Committee and who allowed them the one member motion to vacate and who refused to speak out while these people devoured their party. because now it's finally too late. The extremists have fully consumed the Republican Party and given how much power they have, they're never going to relinquish it. I'm sorry, but you're not going to get Matt Gates

to suddenly support some Kevin McCarthy clone because, A, the whole point of the House Freedom Conference is that they don't compromise and they don't capitulate because they are hostage takers and B, the dysfunction doesn't even hurt them. Remember, these people at a fundamental level do not believe in government. They want it to fail

because then they can point to that failure, as evidence that government doesn't work and that we should eliminate the DOJ and the FBI and the IRS and the EPA and the Department of Education. In other words, these people will gladly break it and then point to the thing that they just broke as evidence that it can't work. And of course, that what they conveniently leave out is that the only reason it can't work is because they won't let it. And obviously, the flip side of that is that when you have people in charge who do believe in government, it actually can work to help people. When the Democrats had basically the same exact majority that the Republicans currently have, they meant that.

to pass the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Pact Act, the Chips Act, the Infrastructure Law, the Gun Safety Law, they reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, they codified marriage equality into federal law. Again, all with the exact same size majority that the Republicans currently have where they can't manage to elect a speaker. So no, it's not that the government is inherently dysfunctional or that it can't work. It's that the government only works when you elect people who want it to. The Republicans are not those people, and they're making that abundantly clear right now. So they can try to pass around unity pledges, but it's clear that their conference is being held together by gum and paper clips.

And hopefully the country sees this and recognizes that when you hire unqualified people, this is what it looks like. Next up is my interview with Jamie Raskin. Now we've got Congressman Jamie Raskin. Thank you so much for taking the time. The pleasure is all mine, Brian. So we are in the midst of this doom loop that is Republicans trying to elect their own speaker. More and more Republicans are now recognizing how bad this life.

looks for them in the House and trying to pin the blame on Democrats for their inability to elect a Speaker of their own party, saying that all the Democrats joined with just a tiny little fraction of Republicans. And so because of that, Democrats should actually shoulder the blame here. Can I have your response to that? Well, first of all, Matt Gates and his group of, I don't know, eight or nine who managed to overthrow Kevin McCarthy did it under a rule that Kevin McCarthy promoted that we all opposed. He was the one who advanced the rule that one member at any point could move to vacate the chair.

So he's hoist on his own partard. I mean, he's a victim of his own terrible rulemaking. And, you know, if you live by extreme mega rules, you die by extreme mega rules. And that's why he was overthrown. I mean, we have been consistent. We have voted, I think, now it's 18 times, maybe 19 times for Hakeem. Jeffries for Speaker. We're Democrats. That's who we want. We're not voting for Kevin McCarthy or Jim Jordan or any of them. I mean, it may be that there is a pro-constitutionalist

Republican we could support if we decided to do that in our caucus. I mean, if it came down to it, we would probably support Liz Cheney because even though we disagree with her politics so much we find her to be a champion of, you know, constitutional patriotism. Yeah, well, I think the fact that she's a champion for constitutional patriotism is the exact reason why she wouldn't be a suitable choice for Republicans. But, you know, Jim Jordan has lost multiple rounds for Speaker and yet continued to plow ahead as if somehow that was a mandate for him to serve. So can you speak on the irony of Republicans writ large embracing election denialism only to now get stuck with the humiliation of having to deal with an election denier in their

own conference? And he's in denial about the repeated election results in the House floor, too. I mean, he is following the cult master himself, Donald Trump, in simply refusing to take no foreign answer. And it's as if his ambitions for power and control trump everything else that's going on. It's more important to them than aid to our besieged Democratic allies in Ukraine and Israel. It's more important in getting humanitarian assistance to the civilians. In Gaza, it's more important than keeping the government of the United States going. And so, you know, we're telling them come over and meet us in the middle for a bipartisan path forward. There are a lot of things we can work out, but it's not going to be by putting an insurrectionist in the speaker's chair,

someone who's overriding legislative agenda today is to ban abortion across the country. What does it say that when the Republican conference was forced to vote in public, Jim Jordan finished at the end of this whole charade with 194 votes? But when the subsequent private vote took place out of view of the bloodthirsty, rabid base, Jordan only garnered 86 votes, less than half. What did you take from that? Well, I think it confirmed the applause meter that we were registering on the House floor. When Hakeem Jeffries was nominated, there was enthusiastic, lusty applause from the Democrats, really cheering and feeling very good about his leadership.

And even after Jordan was nominated the first time, it was just completely lukewarm to have that applause. So you've got to believe that there were some people who were voting yes in public because they didn't want to face the wrong. wrath and the retaliation and the reprisals of Fox News and the death threats and so on. But we're opposing him in private. Yeah. Hopefully nobody relayed that information to Sean Hannity and his producers. Congressman, what are, and you alluded to this, you alluded to this just a few moments ago. What are the implications of not having a speaker or a functioning house now in particular, given what we're seeing in Israel and Ukraine? I mean, this is the U.S. House of Representatives. This is the House of the people. You know, unlike the Senate, which is apportioned according to the states,

each state getting to, this is the best approximation and representation that we have of the American people. And there are a number of functions that we have that are constitutionally assigned, like originating budgets. But we're not doing it. And the clock is ticking on November 17th when we will either pass a budget, perhaps a continuing resolution or another budget, or the government will shut down. But we're just lurching from crisis to crisis under the GOP. If the Republican Party is not ultimately able to land on some speaker, some permanent speaker, there has been the idea of Patrick McHenry floated as an interim speaker.

So do you think that the Constitution allows for Patrick McHenry or any interim speaker, for example, to be empowered to move legislation or budget bills or aid packages in that role? Well, the Article 1 in the Constitution says that each House may set and define the rules of its own proceedings. So we theoretically could set up, you know, an office in the House called moderator or MC or, I suppose, acting speaker pro tem. The question is, who is the House? Can the House do that if the House doesn't have a speaker? And we're just in terra incognita. Nobody knows. I mean, as with so many other things during the Trump period of derangement and chaos, these are all cases of constitutional first impression. So if we were

to pass legislation during that period, nobody really knows, you know, whether that could be challenged, who would have standing to challenge it? Would it be considered in non-justiciable political question. I mean, it raises a lot of serious legal problems. Also, McHenry himself has said he would not stay on in a capacity that required him to bring legislation to the floor and exercise other powers that he does not see as contemplated by that office, which means we would go to whoever is next on Kevin McCarthy's list, and nobody's seen the list. It's a secret list. Well, who would be the arbiter of whether any legislation or any rules handed down without a speaker in place to hand them down is valid? Well, the parliamentarian would be the first cut at it.

You know, I imagine that the background constitutional rule is a majority could adopt rules or provisional rules or transitional rules. I suppose the argument can be made that when the Constitution departs from a simple majority rule and says that you need two-thirds, for example, for passing a constitutional amendment or two-thirds to convict a president in impeachment trial, it specifies that departure from the general majority rule background presumption. The Supreme Court, for example, operates with a majority rule, although it's nowhere stated in the Constitution. They've just always done it. So I think that that would be a safe presumption. But again, you know, the Constitution invokes the existence of a speaker. And so one could query the legality of any legislation that we pass absent a speaker.

So we just don't know. And, you know, the chaos. continues for at least another week. By the way, I've said, you know, we want Hakeem Jeffries. We think he's super well organized and somebody who really stands for American people. But if they can't stomach voting for Democrat, I hope that the moderate Republicans could find somebody like Liz Cheney or Mitt Romney or Angus King from Maine who we could gather consensus around and bring that person in. Yeah.

You know, we had alluded to this a few minutes ago as well, but there have been those reports of Jim Jordan's allies, threatening the wives, for example, of Republican holdouts. Can I have your response to that? You know, I think about January 6th and the run-up to it when there were tons of death threats and threats of political retaliation and threats of violence that were going to members of Congress. We saw what happened on January 6th. So if you don't renounce and denounce the kind of political violence we saw, that

Then it's going to go from Hang Mike Pence and Where's Nancy to let's get Liz Cheney, let's get Adam Kinsiger, let's get the Democrats to eventually let's get you. And so I think the moderate Republicans have learned a tough lesson over the last several days about what the rest of us have been living through for a long time now. I think meme culture would suggest that this is the Leopards Eating Faces Party. You know, the question I get more than any other question. question right now, as we've been living through all of this dysfunction in the House, is, will any moderate Republicans recognize that dysfunction and defect by voting for

Hakeem Jeffries? What are your thoughts on that? Well, I think that, you know, even the more moderate Republicans who are in a Biden district believe that would be the end of their career of Republicans. So, you know, I think that their suspicion is they would have to leave the Republican Party and become Democrats if they did that. I know a lot of them feel much closer politically now to our political leadership than to Matt Gates and Jim Jordan and the ruler ruined faction of the mega right. Yeah, but to your point, as you mentioned before, they can't really do anything in public because then they'll be at the, you know, at the mercy of the Fox News machine and the House

Freedom Caucus and all of their tactics. So that's why what we see in public is going to be a lot different than what we see in private. That's why we saw, you know, 194 Republicans vote for Jim Jordan in public, but then when it's a private ballot, suddenly that support is cut down by more than half. Right. A lot of them may have just gone home too. We saw some people leaving. We saw Daryl Issa just leave the floor for the airport.

So a lot of them just have enough. I mean, that doesn't speak much for your political coalition that people won't even stick around to vote for you. Yeah. Almost can't blame them. So, can I ask what your prediction will be in terms of what will happen with the Republican speakership? I believe that they have a real political legitimacy crisis within the Republican conference.

You know, I'm somebody who happens to think that Jim Jordan was behind the overthrow of McCarthy and then also blockaded Steve Scalise. In other words, I think, you know, he had it in mind from the beginning that he was going to end up on top after all of these events took place. And so that hardcore right-wing faction is something like a majority or a near majority at this point. But the moderates have been empowered by this last process of saying, no way. And I just think they're incredibly divided. There's a lot of bitter, caustic feelings that are being harbored by the different factions. So maybe they could settle for somebody like Tom Cole.

Maybe they go back to McCarthy, but I think more likely they will stand by some kind of speaker pro tem arrangement with expanded powers. But that creates the question of the mystery speaker in training pro tem because nobody knows. who that is and the Speaker of the House made a list and theoretically could have made a list ranked choice voting style of the entire membership without representatives. We don't know how far down it goes, but presumably there's at least a handful of them. Well, is there any worry that if Patrick McHenry, for example, is empowered for 30 or 60 or 90 days, that that will give someone like Jim Jordan the time to then work on all of those holdovers instead of just what we have right now, which is, you know, the momentum was slipping away from him

and he didn't want to deal with the abject humiliation of losing vote after vote after vote day after day, but then this different situation would kind of allow him to take his time and really exert pressure onto those holdouts. Is that a worry at all? Maybe, but of course, if you just say came right out in elected McHenry or another moderate, they can move to vacate the chair anyway. And at this point, since it's utter chaos and instability there, there's nothing that would stop them from doing it. I think that Jordan has gotten his come up and by the last several days. And, you know, there are other things that were going on behind the scenes. A lot of people were talking about this George Clooney produced documentary about

Jim Jordan that is out there that apparently is going to expose exactly what happened in the player abuse, sex scandal, sex abuse scandal from Ohio State. Yeah. In general, what's your message to Americans who are watching this dysfunction play out and the chaos play out as they prepare to cast ballots for their elected officials, including their officials in the House, as we head into 2024? Well, look, I mean, we're dealing with a party now which has been involved in a violent insurrection against the union, an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, which Joe Biden won by more than 7 million votes in 306 to 232 in the Electoral College, has tried to shut down the government of the United States,

has tried to default on the debt of the United States, is talking about basically dismantling all federal regulation for clean air and clean water and climate progress and you name it. I mean, we're talking about a rule or ruined faction that wants power above all other things and doesn't have any vision for progress for the country. So my message to people, whenever they call me a liberal, I say, you're damn right, I'm a liberal. The heart of that word is liberty,

and I'm a progressive because the heart of that word is progress. But these days, I'm very happy to call myself a conservative because unlike the party of nihilists and insurrectionists, I want to conserve the land, the air, the water, the climate system, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Social Security Act, the Medicare Act, Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 64, the Voting Rights Act of 65, the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, you name it.

Everything that they want to tear down is everything that we want to conserve and make work that the American people have built up over the decades and centuries of progress that we've made. Perfectly put. I want to switch gears here to the Oversight Committee that you sit on. We've apparently got yet another smoking gun from Republicans, this time James Comer. has come out with evidence of the crime that Joe Biden received a loan repayment from his brother in 2018.

And of course, we all know how famously powerful Joe Biden was in the year 2018. Can I have your response to what I can only imagine is this high crime of receiving a loan repayment? Well, Brian, we thought they'd given the whole thing up after the first impeachment hearing when their own witnesses testified that there was not remotely sufficient evidence to justify an impeachment, they didn't even see evidence of a crime, much less an impeachable offense. So now they come back with this huge stack of bank records, and the most that they can pull out of it is that Joe Biden repaid a bank loan that his brother got. That's not a crime. That's not an

offense. If anything, that's being a good brother. He's helping his family members out. And, you know, The folly continues. Some reporter said to me today on the way in, you know, do you think if you guys agreed to have an acting speaker pro tem, you would demand that they end their impeachment inquiry towards Joe Biden? And I said, we'd be doing them a favor at that point. They should be asking us if they can end it because it makes them look utterly absurd and ridiculous.

Do you think that there will still be an appetite after the disaster that was the first impeachment an inquiry hearing that it'll continue forward? I mean, that's what the suggestion by James Comer coming out with this new smoking gun would suggest. The big surprise was that it came out in the oversight committee because we had heard that they would be moving things from oversight to the Judiciary Committee. And maybe he negotiated to keep it in return for supporting Jordan for speaker or something. I don't know exactly what happened.

It's hard to know. But that was a surprise to some people that. they would still keep going within the Oversight Committee. It is definitely not gone well there. Yeah, well, I think if the whole Jim Jordan vote has taught us anything, it's that there's no shortage of a humiliation fetish among the Republican conference. Let's finish off with this, Congressman. How is your health?

Well, thank you for asking. I finished up my chemotherapy, and I have done my cat scan. I've done my pet scan. I feel like I should do my dog scan. My dogs have been barking like crazy here. but and right now there's no cancer cells so I'm back in the land of the living and healthy and you're sweet to ask so I feel great and I have got my energy back and alas the world is on fire and it's a very tough situation all over the world and we want to do whatever we can help

well we're glad we have you back and glad for your health as well so as always thank you so much for taking the time it's always great speaking with you thanks for having me great to be here Thanks again to Jamie Raskin. 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 on your 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.