No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans finally reveal horrific debt ceiling demands

Episode Date: January 22, 2023

Republicans are trying to get unbelievable concessions in exchange for holding the debt ceiling hostage. Brian interviews former Republican consultant and writer at The Bulwark, Tim Miller, about the ever-growing list of George Santos lies, where a so-called moderate Republican like him fits into politics now, and what he expects to see from the impending Trump-DeSantis feud.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 what Republicans are trying to get in exchange for holding the debt ceiling hostage, and I interview former Republican consultant and writer at the bulwark, Tim Miller, about the ever-growing list of George Santos lies, where a so-called moderate Republican like him fits into politics now, and what he expects to see from the impending Trump to Santos feud. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So this past week, the U.S. officially hit its debt limit. In last week's episode, I warned about what's at stake if the U.S. defaults, which

which is basically the full faith and credit of the United States, domestic and global markets, the stability of the U.S. dollar. Even though we hit our limit, the Treasury Department is now using what it's calling extraordinary measures to meet its obligations for just a limited amount of time, which brings us to June of this year. If the debt ceiling isn't raised by then, we'll see our economy crater and the dollar's position

as the world's reserve currency put at risk. So fun stuff. So the solution here, as I explained in the past, is a clean bill raising the debt ceiling. Republicans won't do that because they see this as their opportunity to hold the entire economy hostage in exchange for a few concessions. And in terms of those concessions, we don't know all of them yet because Kevin McCarthy won't reveal what he promised those hostage takers

in exchange for their speaker votes, but we're slowly starting to learn what some of them are, and they are insane. We already know that they want to take an axe to popular programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, that they don't want because those programs serve the working class and not the donor class. And so even though you've spent your entire lives paying for those earned benefits, Republicans want to privatize because, you know, no enterprise is valid unless there's a rich

CEO behind it giving you the absolute bare minimum. But this week we also found out that they're pushing for the elimination of the IRS, all personal and corporate income taxes, the inheritance tax, the payroll tax, and all of that would be replaced by a 30% national sales tax. It's called the Fair Tax Act, which is a gift to the wealthy. It's like Christmas and their birthday and the 4th of July wrapped into one. So instead of collecting income tax commensurate with your income, which, you know, for the wealthy is a lot. Instead, we slap a flat tax on every item sold in this country, which means every single time you buy a shirt, a meal, a roll of toilet paper, it'll cost 30% more.

And so now it's not the wealthy being taxed based on their income, which is disproportionately higher than everyone else's. It's everyone else, the working class, that'll carry the brunt of the tax burden in this country. Like, think about it. It's not like someone making $10 million a year is buying lunches that cost a thousand times more than someone making $100,000 a year. So our tax revenues will plummet, which means less funding for programs that people rely on to survive, which means people pay out of their pockets and have less disposable income. That means less spending, which will contract our economy. And because we'll have less tax revenue, that means our deficit gets worse, which means it's harder to shrink our national debt, which is the thing that Republicans pretend to care about,

even though all of their policies actually make it worse. Like, there is no planet on which the elimination of all income and corporate taxes being replaced by a flat sales tax does anything other than drive our deficit through the roof. Here's the wildest part. Consider the fact that we just finished an election cycle where the only thing that the GOP ran on was high cost and inflation. And now that they have power in the house, the way they want to exercise that power is to tax everything 30% higher?

Every time you open your wallet, you're incurring a 30% premium. premium? Super low-income earners don't even incurring income tax, but now they get hit with paying more on everything? Again, the only people who win here are the ultra-rich, and it is the working poor who would get slammed. All of this coming from the same people who are currently cosplaying as the voice of the working man and following the price of eggs going up like it's the stock market on Black Friday. The gap between what these people say and what they actually do is big enough to fly a plane through. So what do we do? What's the what's the solution here?

Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz summed it up pretty perfectly. He said, quote, in exchange for not crashing the United States economy, you get nothing. You don't get a cookie. You don't get to be treated

like you're the second coming of LBJ. You're just a person doing the bare minimum of not intentionally screwing over your constituents for insane reasons, which is exactly right. Like, you don't negotiate with hostage takers because then that tells them that hostage taking is an effective strategy.

And these people already think that because it works with Kevin McCarthy. He's going to put a, bill on the floor seeking to eliminate the IRS. He's probably going to try and tie that bill to the debt ceiling. So the position here has to be making sure that Americans know that Republicans are trying to crater the U.S. economy. And in exchange for cratering the U.S. economy, they're also trying to take away your Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and slap a 30% tax on every single item sold in America. If you can find what part of that sounds good to you, like, I'm all

ears. So we'll continue to watch this fight play out, but hopefully it's resolved before the 11th hour in June when we're set to default. Hopefully the Democrats can make it clear that we're not going to sacrifice the entire economy so that a few terrorists can traffic in their fever dream of screwing over the working class. Because it's already clear that Kevin McCarthy and the rest of his party are perfectly

willing to do that. Next up is my interview with Tim Miller. Now, I've got Tim Miller, Republican consultant to a number of campaigns, including Jeb Bush's campaign in 2016, and now he's a writer at the bulwark. Tim, thanks for joining today. Hey, Brian. Good to be with you, man.

Thanks. So let's start with the obvious here. What was your favorite Katara Ravash routine? Oh, that is a good question. I mean, I did like her death drops on season three of drag race. Is that how you say it?

I don't know, and I was actually going to ask you. For those watching, by the way, Katara Ravash is George Santos' purported drag name from when he was, of course, a drag queen in Brazil. I don't know how many years ago. But I was trying to figure out what the pun is with Catara Ravash. Yeah. A ravishing maybe?

I don't know. My Portuguese has all got is al-a-ragado. So I don't know any other Portuguese. Yeah. Yeah. So he's giving drag queens a bad name, though, you know, with his, he's a thief and a liar. And, you know, this is, drag queens deserve better. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, I think in the drag community, this is probably the least of their problems lately. I was actually going to ask, like, do you think that this will be what does him in as far as Republicans are concerned because you can lie about your religion. You can lie about your job. You can lie about how many times your mother has died. But, you know, being a drag queen in the Republican party today does seem like the cardinal sin. That's not that great, but Carrie Lake used to be a drag king and she got along with that. I think the question is how willing are you to go along with MAGA? I mean, look, Republicans like, you know, somebody that will poke their eye in the

lips. It's one of them, right? Like, they love the idea of a gay Republican. There's no way to get them out beside shaming him or kicking him out, right? And he seems unshameable. And Kevin McCarthy is so desperate for every vote he can get, he's not going to get rid of him. And so I think that we're stuck with Santos, at least until there's legal issues, you know, which I think clearly we're going to run into legal issues since somehow he came up with $700,000, you know, despite the fact that he was, like, stealing his mom's patience checks to buy shoes. So, and, you know, I don't, I'm not really a drag critic, but it didn't look like he was spending a lot of money on his costumes either. Yeah. No, the beatdown wasn't top, top tier.

So do you think that the drip, drip, drip of George Santos's lies will eventually become an actual problem for Republicans? And I ask this because when you've got people like Marjorie Taylor Green, like Lauren Bobert, like George Santos, who become the de facto faces of the Republican Party by virtue of them being the only ones in the news every day, do you think that that will eventually kind of bear itself out when Republicans show up to vote for their candidates in the next election? in 2024. And the only people that they've heard about for the last two years are, you know, this guy who's lying about his religion, his mom, his, you know, drag queen passed and on and on. Yeah. A lot of it will depend on who the Republican nominee is, right? That will take out on a lot of what the 2024 vote is. But just as a general topic, the crazy-ass Republicans are absolutely

hurting other candidates. And, you know, I think that some of the smart set in D.C. was like, oh, this is a Twitter phenomenon. And actually real voters don't care about. this. But it turned out in 2022, we learned that real voters do care. And, you know, I was on the road a lot. I did some with the circus with Showtime this year and for the bulwark. And when you talk to kind of bulwarky types who are like former Republicans who have switched, you know, they're, I will hear just as a general comment from somebody that I'm talking to, like, these guys are a fucking shit show, you know? And you just list all the people. It's like every person that they come out, every person that I hear from, the whole Trump posse, like they're all corrupt,

that are all crazy. And I can't vote for my local Republicans if the party is such a show. Look, I'm from Colorado. This is a good example. Joe O'Day ran. He's probably the most normal Senate Republican in Colorado of all the Republicans. And I asked my friends and, you know, sources and stuff in Colorado. And a lot of people were just like, you know, Joe O'Day seems like a fine guy, but the rest of the party's fucking nuts. And I don't have any trust that he can go to D.C. and Zag because no other Republicans have shown that they could besides like Liz Cheney. So I do think that Santos is just like one more example of this on top of green, on top of all the others you named. You know, John Stewart came out in a recent episode of his show and cautioned against confusing absurdity for lack of danger.

And look, I don't think that George Santos is going to be the next Trump. You know, this guy is a dofy bowl of jello. But do you think that this is a cautionary tale against the kinds of people that, you know, run once deceit and shamelessness are no longer things that. stop people from running. Stewart hit it on the, exactly on the head. This was the January 6th phenomenon. As a Never Trumper who was speaking out and very concerned leading up to January 6th, there were a lot of people, you know, a lot of old gray beards who were like,

ah, this guy's a clown, he's not really going to have a coup. And then all of a sudden, the Capitol is getting stormed, right? That caution, right, to say, oh, these guys are jokers so they can't be scary. I mean, January 6th showed more clearly than anything that you can. can be a joker and be scary i mean like rudy juliani with the die dripping down his face i mean he didn't have the a team working on that coup um so so yeah i mean i think that that's like a you know something that is going to continue to be um an issue and i think if you look at the party so let's put it this way in 2016 when i first spoke out against trump i got a lot of calls

from people who are like business guys and you know normal centrist republican types who are like hey, I want your advice. Can I still run in 2018? Can I still be part of this party? I'm thinking already for Congress. I'm not sure if I should. And I would tell them, I don't think you can win a primary without being crazy. And usually those people didn't run. And so who has run? So this is like a supply and demand question, right? Who does decide to run? People who either are crazy or are happy to pretend being crazy. And so I do think that if you look at the makeup of Congress now in 23. It's actually significantly crazier than the 2017 Republican Congress. It wasn't like Trump just flipped a switch. It's a gradual effort where quasi-normal people opt out and people willing

to, you know, do what George Santos is doing opt in. Yeah. You know, with that said, you were a longtime Republican consultant. There are a small faction of you out there. Like, where do you fit into politics today because, you know, I hear a lot about these moderate Republicans, these Reagan Republicans, but that Republican Party doesn't actually exist in practice. We're in a moment where, like, Marjorie Taylor Green, who is a 9-11 truther, is sitting on the Homeland Security Committee. Like, that is, that's what the Republican Party looks like today. So I guess where do you fit into this? Certainly don't fit in there. And I tried to fight within the party. We tried to recruit a primary against Trump in 2020 and didn't recruit any strong candidates. And after the,

the stop-to-steel stuff. I officially left the party in 2020 because it just felt hopeless. But we still are pretty important, right? We're not, us, former Republican types, swing voters, moderate types. We might not be enough to control either of the parties, obviously, that have moved away from us. But if you just look at 2022, you know, this isn't kind of popular to say in progressive spaces, but if you just look at the numbers, with exception of young voters, like the Democratic core Democratic groups didn't turn out as high as Republican. groups. Young voters turned out higher than they tended to. So that helped Democrats in certain places. But Republican-based turnout was higher than Democratic-based turnout in 2022. The reason

why Republicans did worse was because people that identified as, you know, maybe 8% of people identified as Republicans nationwide, different and different districts, voted for the Democrat because they're like, this party is so crazy. That's why the Democrats won, you know, did better than expected and held the Senate. And so I think it's an important group that, that frankly, the Joe Biden Democratic Party is talking to now more than the Republican Party is talking to. We'll see if the Republicans learn their lesson for 2022. I don't see any evidence that they have. But right now, like, the reality is we're just my people, like the Romney, Clinton, Biden people. Like, we're just homeless and we're just going to be. And

many of us are, for all practical purposes, Democrats, until the Republicans get their shit together. And like you said, I don't see that on the horizon. I've spoken to Mike Murphy about this who is who is uh you know another republican who uh who uh who came on to to speak with me but just kind of this idea of would you kind of vote for democrats and mike mike said no but like i think it's going to be different here but would you vote for democrats to hasten the demise of the republican party as it stands now until you can kind of until up from the ashes will emerge a a different republican party god love mike murphy you know there's nothing false about hope and he's a sweet guy and a smart strategist and won a lot of campaigns but i i i

He's just hoping for a party that's going to come back that's not ever going to come back. And so I think that's why he answered the question. What he did because he thinks, in good faith, this isn't a criticism of him, in good faith, he thinks it's worth it to fight for the party, pick the handful of good Republicans that are still out there, your myths, your, you know, Adam Kinsinger's or whatever, and work with them. My view, I'm more aligned to your view, which is I think that there needs that the Republican Party isn't going to actually reform itself until it feels like it's not viable. you know, look at what happened to the Democratic Party in the 90s with Clinton, right?

Like, why did the Democrats move to the middle in the 90s? Well, because they just got their ass beat two straight times, or three straight times, excuse me, in overwhelming blowout fashion. And so they're like, we have to go into the middle. Now, maybe some of the progressive listeners didn't like that move, okay? But, like, that's what it was. It was a practical move. If the Republicans are ever going to move back to a sanity, you know, they're going to need to lose.

And so I do think that, that for now, I think that I'm essentially in an uneasy coalition, mostly with Democrats, you know, and it might be different on a case-by-case basis. Well, the irony of that is that Republicans had the opportunity to do that. I mean, they were repudiated at the ballot box. And so they should have taken that as an opportunity to retool and figure out, like, what didn't work and change those things moving forward. But by virtue of kind of, like, burying their heads in the sand and doing this political theater where they pretended that they did. lose an election that they very clearly lost, it kind of took that opportunity away from them to retool and present themselves better to their own voters so that they could win the next time. And then the next time they lost again. And so they kind of, I mean, they did it to themselves, right? None of them listen to me anymore, my old friends who stuck around at the party. But I was screaming this with the rooftops. Had they convicted him during the second impeachment, you know, instead of Mitch McConnell going out there and giving the speech or like about how his principles, but then voting to acquit, had they convicted him, he would have been. barred from running in 2024. Now, that would have pissed off some MAGA people. And so 2022 probably

still wouldn't have been great for Republicans because on the other side, they would have lost MAGA voters, not voters in the middle. But probably less than the amount of Republicans who defected to the Democrats. Yeah, exactly. And so, exactly. And so then you could have built for the future, right? So they had this opportunity right in front of their face. They just needed to get 17 Republicans. They got seven. They needed to scrounge 10 more to convict his ass, ban him from running and say, this is not us, this is not our party, and maybe they could have built from that. That, I think, was the critical air, and now I feel like we're in a spot where we're many cycles away from being able to fix it.

There was a recent vote at the end of the 117th Congress to protect pre-existing same-sex and interracial marriages. A handful of Republican senators voted for it, but about 75% of Republican senators didn't. This was, you know, just until a few years ago, your party, did this have any effect? on you, like, to see, to see that, I mean, that is, for all intents and purposes, like, an attack on, an attack on, on you. You mean, as a gay? As a gay.

An attack on you in, like, the entire LGBT community, I mean. The gay thing is so, is so interesting, right? Because on the one hand, you know, the idea that I like to think back to, like, 18-year-old young Republican closet of Tim, you know, if you would have told him that, like, oh, man, 47 Republicans will vote for gay marriage in 15 years. And, like, you'll be married and have a kid. I would have been like, well, it seems pretty good on balance, right? You know, okay?

But then fast forward, things have changed so fast. And we've made so much great progress, you know, thanks, obviously, to Democrats and to activists on the left, that now you look at it and it's like a slap in the face. Yeah, right? It's just like not. Not. Like the crumbs that you're being given are not. This is not enough. And you see, to me, that vote while disappointing, like, the number of Republicans have voted for it is less.

concerning, you know, now I come from a different place as a dad than the stuff that is in the schools, right? And you can see, like, the Republicans basically have seated this fight on marriage and on the military and, you know, some of the big fights of, you know, my youth. And now we're saying, okay, well, we're going to, I basically reskin the old 1970s and 80s, you know, gay scare, gay teacher scare, you know, for the 2020s. And I think that don't say gay stuff that DeSantis is pushing. Like, to me, that is, that's the stuff that I'm not going to be able to abide. And right, and that is, I think, is what makes, is one of the reasons, not all the reasons,

but one of the reasons that makes me different from, like, a Murphy and some of the others not to pick on him, right? You know, I hear from some Republicans who are like, well, Desantis seems like a little better. And I look at, I'm like, I don't think, like, I can't get there for DeSantis. Like, maybe you could sell me on a Chris Sununu, but you can't sell me on Ron fucking DeSantis and don't say gay thing. I want to get into exactly that point. And that is this idea that basically because Ron DeSantis, isn't Donald Trump, that all of his other flaws can just be, can be, you know, disregarded. But like, this is a guy who is who's not a moderate by any stretch of the imagination.

And in fact, I, I can promise you that as we see this fight, this primary fight, this impending primary fight move forward. We'll see Ron DeSantis, like, come at Trump from the right. And so, like, I guess what do you make of that as we, as we, you know, head toward 2024? He definitely will. And I think that he sees his lane against Trump as attacking him on vaccines, attacking him on the border. You didn't build the wall hard enough. You know, you weren't effective enough. And, you know, you just generally didn't own the libs as well as you should have, right?

Like, I think that's where his hit is on him. And so, you know, I look at that. To me, there were a lot of reasons. Donald Trump was ever even close. I never even contemplated the idea that I might support Donald Trump. You know, there are plenty of reasons. One of the reasons, though, to oppose Trump as an ever-trumper was that just the downside risk of him, he's just such a fucking loose cannon and psychotic, right?

You know, who the hell knows what he could do? Like, that's the only area where DeSantis is better than Trump for me, right? Like, you know, DeSantis is in some ways, it's kind of hard to close your eyes and imagine people waving DeSantis flags and horns and charging the Capitol, right? Famous last words. It's a little hard. That Trump always had that downside risk. But if you just look at him on a policy, you know, on a policy grid, Desanis and Trump are going to be indistinguishable.

There's been a lot of anointing Ron DeSantis, the air appearance in the Republican Party, despite him showing pretty much no appetite to take a swing at Trump. I guess not only is he not taking a swing at Trump, but he gained all of his fame in the Republican Party by like basically being as subservient to Trump as he could possibly be. I mean, you remember that build the wall commercial with his kid? And what do you think happens when it comes time for him to make a decision here?

Do you think that he ultimately does engage in this battle that will be scorched earth on Trump's end? People should go back and watch that out with his kid of building the Lego wall if they had seen it. It is actually crazier than it even sounds. So having campaigned against him in 16 with Jeb unsuccessfully. if you don't remember. DeSantis seems to be wanting to try the Ted Cruz model, right, which was, oh, I love you, I love you, I love you. But on this one or two things, I'm a little more conservative than you, but I don't really want to criticize with you. Don't fight with me. Not, you know, don't pick on me. Right. And that's kind of the path I think DeSantis wants to go. It didn't work for

Cruz, right? So I think there's a good reason to doubt that it could work for DeSantis. The one thing that he has going in his favor is that Trump is just has a lot more baggage than he did in 16, right? Like, you can't just, you can't be the outsider again. You can't, his stick is feeling a little tired. He's looking a little older, right? And so the question is, is Trump going to be as good at the Trump, at doing the Trump of it all of 2016? The nicknames, like Ron DeSanktonia seemed a little half, half baked, right?

Like, you know, it just is, so it's possible that the scene, that the cruise strategy from 16 might not have been enough in 16, but might be enough in 24 because of Trump's weaknesses. But I think that there's also a lot of reason to think that it won't, that it won't work. and that Trump will just lay the hammer down on him. And I don't think that DeSantis has demonstrated a ton of strength at the political performance of it. You know, like, he's good at yelling at a reporter at a press conference when you can't hear the reporter.

It's just a one-way thing, like Chris Christie was. He's good at that. But he hasn't demonstrated that he's, like, that charismatic or, you know, when staying next to Trump on stage is a very different animal than that. So I think there are a lot of potential pitfalls. It's going to be interesting, too, because in a lot of ways, Ron DeSantis' political identity is predicated on his fealty to Donald Trump or his kind of emergence out of out of the Trumpism of it all. And so for him to have to kind of go against that to like completely separate himself and then turn on Trump is, you know, it's not sure like

whether he's actually going to be capable of even. And Trump will use that. You can already see it. I mean, Trump's already saying out there saying that kind of stuff. You know, Trump's going to try to turn him into kind of like pat him on the head, his little mini-meet, you know, and say nice, you know, Good luck maybe next time, a little guy. And, you know, the question, I think, comes to whether, like, that alpha Trump thing is enough anymore, right? And, you know, or whether there's a critical mass of Republican voters that get convinced by the DeSantis argument, which will be basically, I'm giving you all the stuff you like about Trump, but without some of the baggage, without some of the political baggage. can that argument win in the vacuum it sounds like a good argument will it be a winning argument when when Trump is out there

talking about all the reasons why it's bad and making fun of him and mocking him and making him seem like a little bitch yeah well I guess it's never too early for some bad takes so with that said what do you think is going to be what do you think is going to happen as we head into 2024 what do you think the general election candidates or nominees rather are going to be boy it is really early for this number too early is for some bad takes I'm really bad. I'm really bad a prediction.

So I thought it was going to be Kamala in 20, you know, on the Democratic side last time. And I thought that it was going to be Rubio. So don't fucking listen to me. I guess so I'm going to say. Look, six months ago, I would have said I don't think Biden can run. And I think it'll be an open field. And, you know, it would be anybody's guess. I think Kamala, again, I would have maybe ran with Kamala, despite seeing her challenges.

Now I think it's pretty clear Biden wants to run. It's going to be tough to argue against that. He has a great record, and, you know, the midterms went well. Like, what is the record? What is the argument against him running if he wants to? So I think it will be Biden. And right now, you know, I think that Trump is a slight favorite over to Santos, a slight favorite. And, but, you know, I think that we really have a lot more information on this come summer, right?

But what I don't, here's what I, here's, I mean, much more, I will be much better telling you who. won't be. Like, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo, you know, all the, like, somebody's a moderate, that's not what the Republican voters want. Well, you, you saw a fighter. It'll be Desantis, Trump, or some other kind of MAGA outsider. It's hard to see it not being Mike Pompeo. I mean, this guy, the guy is so popular that, that, that you saw that blurb that, that, he made of himself. That he made of himself in his own book. Yeah. This book reads, reads like, like a stunning, compelling read. Putzbo. And it was so fun writing it.

Mike Pompeo. Yeah, no, Pompeo's going to be speaking to a lot of, like, half-empty pizza ranches in Iowa, and he's gotten skinny, and, you know, he's president in his own eyes, but I don't think that's going to land for him. Okay, so more broadly, in terms of what's happening right now, do you think that we're going to see anything substantive from this Republican-led house, or are we going to be relegated to two years of what I think is obviously the most important political issue facing us right now, the most important national security issue facing us right now,

which is what you called the issue of Hunter Biden's hog. Have you looked at Hunter Biden's hog? No, I haven't. I haven't seen it, but all these conservatives are doing their level best at trying to make sure that it gets back onto our timelines. Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's something to look at. I'll tell you that. Hunter, they are, the number one issue for Republicans is making sure that all the social

media networks are forced to put Hunter Biden's hog onto the, timeline. That's it. That's their top issue. They're going to investigate Hunter. They're going to investigate the naked pictures. They're going to investigate the, you know, his business dealings and, you know, find any evidence they can that Biden is involved with that at all. The President Biden, and I think that will be their top priority. And then I think there'll be other investigations, the new classified doc issue to muddy the waters with Trump. Obviously, there are differences, but the Republican House will do that investigation. I think that there'll be investigations and maybe some impeachments at Al-Harenda Majorcas. And then the only

substantive thing that they're going to do is this economic brinksmanship over the debt ceiling in order to force cuts. And I think secondary motivation is forcing economic troubles in the hopes that that helps Republicans in the long term. If the economy is weak, that's good for the out party. But there is no, if you define caring about substance as, oh, Kevin McCarthy and Chuck Schumer and Biden are going to get together to try to figure out a way to solve the asylum issue or, you know, help fix the tax code or come to a deal on, you know, climate. Like, no, obviously. Like, they're not going to, they don't fucking want to do any of that and they won't do any of it. Well, like you were immersed in this world up until just a few

years ago. Yeah. Is that, is that actually helpful for the right? I mean, does the right want to see legislative solutions or do they want the dysfunction because the dysfunction then shows that government isn't the solution, it's the problem. And so in turn, you have to get smaller government and at the end of the day, that's what these people want. They want no government at all. So in a way, are there Republicans out there rooting for the whole, for the whole building to burn down? Or is there some degree of like, look, in this last Congress, we were able to get the ability for the government to negotiate lower drug prices. We were able to get health care for veterans. We were able to get the Chips Act and the, you know, hundreds of thousands of jobs and

billions of dollars investments that came with it and on and on and on. Yeah, I think you hit on like it's a bottom up issue, right? Thomas Massey. is a libertarian congressman from Kentucky. He had this classic quote, which said, before 2016, we all thought that Republican voters wanted the most conservative policies.

It turns out what they wanted was the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And that's right. Republican voters, you know, particularly for federal offices. We have a, at the blog,

we have a focus group podcast. We talk to MAGA voters. And it's a little bit different probably governor's races. Like voters, voters do want specific things. from their governor, but from senators from the president, what they want is the performative, nihilistic, lib-owning, tear it, burn everything down. That's what the voters want, right?

And so if you go to cut a deal, you get punished. I mean, just look at John Boehner and Paul Ryan. Kevin McCarthy has learned from the failures of his predecessors, right? I mean, it was, the Republicans have gotten punished time and again by their own voters, not by the electorate at large, but by their own voters in primaries, you know, if they are too willing to kind of negotiate and solve, you know, if you try to solve a problem, well, then that open joke to a lot of criticism, right? If all you do is say, oh, I'm against this, I'm against that, I want to tear that down, well, then that, then you don't have any accountability or responsibility for anything, right? So I do think that that is what is driving this. You know, I think that there are still

a handful of Republicans in Washington that would love to, like, achieve maybe not the policy objectives that you agree with, but, like, you know, have genuine beliefs about regulatory reform or whatever. But they've learned that that just gets them in trouble with voters, and the best thing to do is, like, dunk on the lips. Yeah. Tim, where can we see and hear more from you? We've got a show in Snapchat called Not My Party.

We have a podcast at the Bullwark every day, the Borg podcast. We do a once-a-week next-level podcast of the Bullwark. I'm on MSNBC from time to time, flapping my jaw. On Twitter still, even though Elon's trying to ruin it, I'm doing my tweets, and so, you know, I'm a multi-platform content man. Well, make sure to follow Tim. Thank you so much for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Thank you. It's so good we got to do this in person. This is awesome. Thanks again to Tim. 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.

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