No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Republicans' Speaker choice backfires in brutal fashion

Episode Date: October 29, 2023

The Republican Speaker situation backfires in spectacular fashion. Brian interviews Congressman Jared Moskowitz about what the vote for Mike Johnson will mean for those 18 Republicans currently sitting in Biden-won districts, whether there’s any acknowledgment from the GOP behind the scenes that they screwed up, and the impact that Johnson’s election will have on the House certifying the election results in 2024.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 the Republican speaker situation backfired on them in spectacular fashion, and I interview Congressman Jared Moskowitz about what the vote for Mike Johnson will mean for those 18 Republicans currently sitting in Biden-1 districts, whether there's any acknowledgement from the GOP behind the scenes that they screwed up, and the impact that Johnson's election will have on the House certifying the election results in 2024. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So the Republicans are now saddled with their most extreme speaker in history, in what's probably become the blunder of the year for a party that traffics almost exclusively in blunders.

From a political perspective, I 100% think this will backfire on the GOP at the ballot box in 24. Here's why. Now, there was a faction of Republicans who were so desperate to avoid Jim Jordan becoming speaker that they did the impossible and actually managed to sprout some small semblance of a collective spine by voting against Jordan on three-seventh ballots. And of course, the explanation they gave was that Jim Jordan was far too extreme, certainly too extreme to represent some of those members sitting in purple districts or Biden won districts. And when it became clear that Jordan wasn't a viable candidate, he eventually dropped out. But then the perfect storm of two different things happened at once.

The first was that the embarrassment of not being able to do the bare minimum by electing a speaker started to settle in. And you had Republicans all over the news conceding that their own party wasn't fit to govern, that they shouldn't be in the majority and on and on. So at that point, it was becoming clear that just by virtue of sheer exes, exhaustion, Republicans were going to coalesce around someone, if for nothing else, than to put an end to their misery. But the second thing is that they figured Mike Johnson, being a relative unknown, was a safe

bet, at least safer than Jim Jordan, right? And they learned almost immediately that there is some benefit to having their candidates for major positions of power being vetted. Mike Johnson was not, and what followed was a barrage. I'm talking an avalanche of past comments and interviews and footage and audio and tweets and ads of this guy espousing the most far-right bile you could cook up. This guy was the architect of Trump's efforts to overturn the election in the House. He was the lead author of an amicus brief for the Texas lawsuit,

seeking to overturn the election results in four other states. He authored at least three bills to ban abortion nationwide. He is an outspoken opponent to same-sex marriage and LGBT rights. Here he is suggesting that we don't live in a democracy, but rather some type of biblical republic. You know, we don't live in a democracy because a democracy as two wolves and a lamb deciding what's for dinner. Okay, it's not just majority rule.

It's a constitutional republic. And the founders set that up because they followed the biblical admonition on what a civil society is supposed to look like. On issue after issue, Mike Johnson is as far right and extreme as it gets. And so as a result, those same Republicans who are so desperate to protect themselves by voting against Jim Jordan are now saddled with Mike Johnson, who is the face, the face of Christofascist extremism in the United States. And so while Mike Johnson is relatively unknown right now, he won't be for long.

He will lead the House the same way that he's governed as a lawmaker, which is as a dangerous theocrat hellbent on imposing his religious doctrine onto a country that is not interested. In effect, what Republicans have done by voting for him unanimously is saddled themselves with the burden of owning whatever he does in the next year. His fascism is their fascism now. And if you don't think that Democrats are going to get mileage out of that, take a look at how Republicans made Nancy Pelosi the boogeyman in every district across the U.S. for decades. And Nancy Pelosi doesn't cosplay as a commander in The Handmaid's Tale.

So I get that Republicans were exhausted by failed vote after vote. I get that the optics were bad and getting worse by the day. But all of that is leagues more preferable than what they've ushered in now, which is the biggest albatross around their necks that they could possibly find. And look, maybe that's what they wanted. Maybe they all want the fascism and the abortion restrictions and the hurdles for LGBT and same-sex rights and just didn't. want Jim Jordan. Either way, they're about to find out why you probably don't want the second

in line to the presidency to be the worst possible reminder to voters, why not to elect Republicans, especially as we head into an election year. Next up is my interview with Congressman Jared Moskowitz. Now, I've got the congressman from Florida's 23rd congressional district, Jared Moskowitz. Thanks for coming back on. Thanks for having me. So, I guess right off the bat, are there any concerns among the Democratic caucus about what Mike Johnson, the new Republicans, speaker, about what his speakership could mean for the election certification in 2024? Well, so, I mean, listen, you know, the answer to that is, first, I'm willing to give everybody an opportunity, right? I mean, he just became speaker. I had a very similar story

that he told, which is, you know, he got, his dad passed away from cancer for a couple of days before he got elected. The same thing happened with me. So I'm willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. But obviously, if we look at his record, right, anti-gay marriage, anti-women's rights, you know, doesn't believe in elections. It's not looking good. And the first couple of days, we have a mass shooting. And his first statement is, I think what we really just need is more prayer. So listen, since the shooting, I have been praying for mentally ill people to not be able to buy AR-15s. And to no avail, the prayer has not changed anything. But we'll keep at it, Brian. And by the way, he got rid of thoughts. It used to be thoughts in prayer. We don't even

want thoughts anymore. Well, you know what? In this economy, in Joe Biden's economy, what can you expect? Just prayer. He also said that, hey, you know, look, if you want to know where his policies are, just pick up a Bible. The problem is for my people, the Bible is the Old Testament. And so I don't know that we want to be looking at the Old Testament to figure out what Mike Johnson's policies are going to be. Well, why do you think that the same moderates, the so-called moderate Republicans, who claimed that Jim Jordan was far too extreme, then turned around and voted unanimously for someone like Mike Johnson, who is even more extreme? A couple of reasons. First is, Congress is like high school. Don't think everything is about

politics. It's personal first. Okay. I mean, so the Jim Jordan thing, there was a lot of personalities there. There were a lot of folks that were trying to whip votes against that. And so there's a reason why Jim Jordan didn't happen. He's also the poster child. for all of that. Quite frankly, Mike Johnson was just the last man standing. And the most important thing that was clear, even from some of our moderate friends, the most important thing was that this did not end in a deal with Democrats. They did not want to have any deal where the pro tem got powers to give them more time because they didn't want to deal with Democrats. So bipartisanship, the threat, the threat of working together, the evil that that is, of working together,

that is what forced them into the last man standing. And the last man standing was Mike Johnson, somebody that most of them don't have relationships with, don't know a lot of the moderates that are especially freshmen. And Mike's a nice guy, right? He's personable. And it's a different packaging. But I actually just think they were exhausted.

They realized that they were losing. The polling showed that they were losing, the chaos that they created, and they eventually settled on the last option. Yeah. Do you think the goal here was to actually get that extremism without the bad optics that would come from, you know, electing a flamethrower like Jim Jordan? Well, there's no doubt that I think Matt Gates and the others, the goal was

to replace Kevin McCarthy with someone from the Freedom Caucus, someone who was MAGA, right? And so it was about getting rid of Kevin for personnel, again, personal reasons that they had, but also some policy reasons. But they wanted one of their own. And now they got a, they got a straight up election denier, someone who still will not say that Joe Biden, won the election. And someone who worked really hard last time to keep Donald Trump in office, even though he won the election. So again, listen, I'm willing to give Speaker Johnson a honeymoon period. Let's see what he does as speaker in the next couple of days. Because look, sometimes leadership does give you an opportunity to moderate yourself. When you're an outsider, when you're throwing bombs from the

minority party, you know, and you're given a leadership position. Sometimes logic sets in. But the last couple of days, so far, I guess if I didn't read it in my Bible, then it won't happen or it's not going to happen. What is your message to those 18 Republicans who are currently sitting in Biden-1 districts after this unanimous vote for Mike Johnson? Well, look, they know they're in trouble, right? I mean, I talk to these guys. You know, they know that they're in trouble, let's get to a core reason why the Republicans got rid of their number one fundraiser. Kevin McCarthy was their number one top dog fundraiser, not just their fundraising. He was the number one fundraiser of all time. He raised a half a billion dollars for them

last time. So they get rid of him and they go with someone else who, you know, has $83,000 in his leadership account. You know, Kevin McCarthy has tens of millions of dollars there. Yeah. And so that's a big problem for those Biden folks. The other big problem is now, now it's not just Marjorie Taylor Green that's going to be the poster child. It's going to literally be Speaker Johnson, who was out of touch with the mainstream of these Biden districts. And so look, if you're if you're them, yeah, this is a big problem. But I think quite frankly, it was a bigger problem for them not to have a speaker. The chaos continuing to go on and go on and not have a speaker, that was actually worse than settling on this guy.

Yeah, although, I mean, the argument can be made for the exact opposite now, which is that instead of just being enmeshed in the same dysfunction that everybody kind of expects at this point from Republicans, now they're saddled with a guy who is anti-LGB rights, anti-abortion, anti-free and fair elections. And so, you know, the argument can be made. But remember, the Republicans who were doing this for nine months. Like, the last nine months, these moderates were taking terrible votes anyway. I mean, these guys voted for a C.R.

are to cut government funding by 30%. Now, look, I'm a Democrat who believes government should spend less, right? As the American family is spending less, government should spend less. I do think we should look at pre-COVID spending, right? Where can we lower spending? I also think we should be raising revenue at the same time. So when we talk about the budget deficit, Republicans only just want to cut. They don't talk about raising. We need tax parity. I'm not interested in increasing taxes. I am interested in having tax parity where, you know, are the richest billionaires in America are paying a lower percentage than, obviously, you know, folks that, you know, work minimum wage. And so, you know, tax parity and, and watching where are spending. I think that's important.

But these guys voted for a 30% cut across the board. They didn't come with a scalpel. They came with a hatchet. And all the moderates voted for that. So there are so many votes, Brian, that they've already taken, quite frankly, that they're going to have to defend, let alone, you know, Michael Johnson's The Ten Commandments is the first couple of bills we're going to pass. Yeah. You know, given what has come out about Johnson in the day since he's been elected, has there, and you alluded to this before, but has there been any acknowledgement from any of your colleagues on the right that they might have shit the bed on this one? Oh, no, they know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They know they shit the bed on this one. And you heard it.

You heard it in all of their comments leading up to this, right? They started embracing Democratic talking points. We were saying it's chaos. We were saying, you know, they can't govern. We were saying that this is going to lead to the Democrats taking over the House. And then you started seeing Republicans saying that. You even started seeing that on Fox News. Why?

Because it was true. It was tough to deny your eyes of what you were watching. But by the way, not all is kumbaya. I mean, you know, you already have Matt Gates and the chairman of ways and means fighting publicly. All that personalities that we've seen over the last couple of weeks play out. This is going to continue. This is there still. It's bubbling under the surface.

Sure, they're going to have a honeymoon period with Mike Johnson for a little bit. He'll have a little runway. But they're going to have problems passing rules. They're going to have problems keeping the government open. They're going to still need Democrats to do that. They're going to have problems on Ukraine funding. They're going to have problems on all sorts of areas. And so this is not over.

We're in a pause. We're in a little halftime, if you will, with the Republican chaos and the infighting that they have. Because unlike Nancy Pelosi, who showed America how you govern with a small minority, there is not a single Republican that can do that, quite frankly. Just building on one of the points you made, the Ukraine funding point, is there anything that Democrats will be able to do to ensure funding, to Ukraine, given that they're in the minority? Or is it just, and this is a little bit like procedural here, but is it completely up to Mike Johnson to determine what comes to the floor?

So we can do a discharge petition, which is if you get a majority of members to do it, to sign onto the discharge, then it has to come to the floor. The speaker can't stop it coming from the floor. Also, the speaker said in his speech, he plans on empowering his chairman. Well, if his chairman want to bring this to the floor, then it should also come to the floor. So there is going to be a vote on Ukraine. And I think he actually, Mike Johnson said that. He said a majority of the members support Ukraine. He then said, obviously, he wants to look at the numbers. He wants to have spending controls. He wants transparency. So, yeah, they're going to put some stuff in there that, quite frankly, some of it might not be objectionable. I don't think Americans have a problem with transparency

and auditing of dollars we're spending. I think that makes sense to me. So long as we support Ukraine and so long as we understand that we can't have Putin win. And by way, even Mike Johnson said we can't have Putin win because that would also be helpful to China. So I think he's there that it has to happen. I just don't think he's figured out the path yet. Yeah. Well, to the flip side of that question, right now we do have Democrats who control the Senate and the White House. But what can a far-right Republican majority still accomplish in the House unto themselves? Nothing. I mean, they can't accomplish anything. I mean, let me look at the first nine months when they were more unified than they're going to be in the next 12, 13 months.

Are you suggesting that the gas stoves bill didn't have a massive impact on American society? There are people who are medicated now because they did this gas stove thing. I mean, it was a joke, okay? I mean, anyone who's listening, has anyone come to your house and taken away your gas stove? By the way, not just your gas stove, they did a thing on ceiling fans. Has anyone come and take in your ceiling fan? Right. I mean, this is all the messaging nonsense that they try to do.

These bills are going nowhere. There's no legacy of this Congress other than the chaos that they created. That's what people are going to remember. They're going to remember they remove their speaker and stalled a MAGA guy, a Trump guy, and the Senate's not going to take any of this nonsense. It didn't take any of the nonsense the first nine months. So they can say, oh, we passed the most conservative this. We passed the most conservative of that.

None of it is law. None of it. And so, you know, nothing's going to change. We'll have more messaging stuff. It'll be more anti-Biden, Hunter Biden, you know, it'll be more of the same. They're going to go back to their greatest hits. Well, given who Republicans just elevated to the highest job in their party, what message are they sending to voters ahead of 2024, given some of Mike Johnson's positions?

Trump controls the party. I mean, the message that I think everyone should recognize is that Trump is in full control of the Republican Party. control. And if Donald Trump were to become president again and have Republican majorities, Donald Trump will be able to do whatever the heck he wants. There will be no guardrails. There will be nobody asking questions. It will be whatever Trump wants. Congress will become irrelevant. The legislature will become irrelevant. They will just rubber stamp whatever Donald Trump wants to do. And so that is something voters should really consider because I do think it's healthy

when maybe the president and the legislature doesn't always agree. Even if it's Democrats, It's okay if the legislature, the Democrats in those and Joe Biden don't agree all the time. That's okay. You get to a better product that way, right? But what's going to happen here is the first thing that comes out of Donald Trump's mouth will become law is what will happen if Republicans have full control. And that's where it's dangerous. To a similar point here, James Comer, the Republican chair of, I believe is. Yeah, the deep thinker, James Cooper.

He recently came out with a brand new smoking gun. The head of the intelligentsia caucus. He recently came out with a brand new smoking gun against. Biden in the form of a loan repayment that Biden received from his brother in 2018 when he was neither in office nor a candidate for office. So I'm hoping that you can take a few minutes here and point me to the illegal part. So here we go. Here's the stories. I'm going to do the story even quicker than you just did it. Two brothers loan each other money. They pay it back. Not in office. End of story. One brother gives one brother money. The other brother pays it back.

No one is elected at all. They're both private citizens. What are Are we talking about? Yeah. Okay. Oh, well, it could be this. It could be that. We think it's this. We think that.

No evidence. We're back to the same thing. Listen, James. This is your friend Jared talking to you. Don't make me continue to embarrass you in committee. I mean, I'll bring the board again. I'll start drawing things. Okay.

Don't make me do it. Like, I actually feel bad when I make you look like a fool because I'm just exposing what you're doing in committee. And by the way, you don't, you don't listen to me. Even the Republicans that serve with you on committee, they think you're a jackass. They've told me that because you've embarrassed not just yourself. You've embarrassed them. That impeachment hearing was embarrassing. Your own witness said there wasn't any evidence.

So do yourself a favor. Take a breath. Take a breath. Right? And don't come to a new, don't have a new hearing over two brothers loaning each other money when nobody was in office. And that's my, that's my, the more you know, James, the more you know. I feel like that was perfectly put.

And also, it kind of goes without saying. But when you've lost Jonathan Turley, it might be time to take your ball and go home. Just, just. By the way, it happened in the first two and a half minutes of the hearing. Yeah. And it was almost like the chairman forgot for a second that like, oh, yeah, half the time of this hearing, Democrats get to talk. It's like we weren't going to tell the American people exactly what was happening.

Well, it didn't even matter what the Democrats had to say because the Republicans were doing the Democrats job for them. All those Republican witnesses were like, hey, man, there's no there there. It was so bad that when I tell you that I had half a dozen members that I served with on that committee come up and tell me how bad that went for them. And then members on the floor came up to talk to me that they watched it. Fox News even panned how bad it was. Steve Bannon said it was terrible. It was a complete, it was failure theater. So look, you know, look, some of the Republicans really like going to the theater. So if James wants to have more failure theater, we'll be there. I'll bring my playbill, okay, and we'll have at it. But he better

find something on the president of the United States that meets high crimes and misdemeanors, which, by the way, again, there's been no evidence that that happens. But if they want to continue this nonsense and this continue Hunter Biden nonsense and try to put that onto the president, it's going to continue to fail. Okay. Look, they've spent millions of dollars telling the American people that Hunter Biden has problems. And he does. He clearly does. And he's probably broken the law and he's been indicted. And if he's found guilty, then he needs to go to jail because that's how the system of justice works, just like we feel about Donald Trump. He's innocent until proven guilty. But ultimately, if a jury or his peers or a judge finds him guilty, then he goes to jail.

But there's nothing on Joe, not a single solitary thing. And they've spent millions of dollars. They've had 10 months to find one shred of evidence. And the best they have is an innuendo and that his son's got issues. Yeah. You know, you mentioned that this was failure theater. Somehow this was only the second worst news of theater that Republicans have dealt with in the last couple months. So we'll just, we'll leave that there. With that said, Congressman, thank you so much for taking the time today.

I appreciate it. You got it. Thank you. Thanks again to Jared Moskowitz. 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 Briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.