Pod Save America - “Kevin at the Gaetz of Hell.”

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Kevin McCarthy is still trying to make fetch happen. Donald Trump belatedly tries to help his fellow loser. Joe Biden basks in the glow of bipartisan achievement. And later, Jon and Dan play a special edition of Two Takes and A Fake. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Kevin McCarthy is still trying to make fetch happen. Donald Trump belatedly tries to help his fellow loser. Joe Biden basks in the glow of bipartisan achievement. Then Elijah and Dan take on the undefeated champion of two takes and a fake in a special Fox News edition. But first, the Crooked store is having a post-holiday sale. Shop bestsellers and more and get up to 75% off. Just go to crooked.com slash store to shop.

Can I read you a text I got yesterday while I was preparing the outline for this podcast? Sure, yes, please. It's from the Crooked store, and here's what it says. We won't be restocking these yes we dan t-shirts are leaving the store for good i just have to say it's tough it's a weird way to find out that's a i was just using my yes we dan mug just the other day and i was about to say that um look we can't always get what we want from the cricket store, even if you started the company.

This Fueled by Negative Energy phone case I just got last week. I've been trying to get it for months. It's about offline. Look, the supply chain remains an issue. But it's great. Everyone should get one of these. Okay. Let's get to the news. Kevin McCarthy's

co-workers have now declined to give him the promotion he's been looking for seven different times over the last three days, but Kevin McCarthy is still in the race, maybe because he's got almost nothing left to lose and thinks this job is the only thing that will give his life meaning. This job is the only thing that will give his life meaning. McCarthy has 201 Republican votes. He needs 17 more to win a majority. But 21 Republicans have declined to vote for him multiple times now. He needs just about all of those no votes to flip to yes.

McCarthy's team has now made just about every concession possible. Last night, McCarthy's favorite super PAC agreed to stop spending money in open seat primaries and safe Republican districts. So long as the Freedom Caucus aligned club for growth super PAC would support McCarthy for speaker. Kevin then gave in to the holdouts completely on the motion to vacate, which he reportedly said is he's OK with just one person trying to fire him on committee seats on just about everything. It has thus far earned him zero votes. There was a lot of talk last night that all these reported concessions might flip a few votes today. That did not happen, at least on the seventh ballot. I think as we're recording, they're moving on to the eighth ballot. So Kevin's not speaker yet, but I will admit his team's message is compelling. McCarthy has now lost six times in a row. What's next?

Well, you can look at it that way, or you can look at it from the perspective that Kevin McCarthy won the vote among Republicans over 200 members to 26 times. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist or a mathematician to figure out that's a landslide victory within the Republican conference. That was not a rocket scientist, nor was it a mathematician. What's going on, Dan, how much of this is about my Kevin, uh, whose nickname you've changed to no one's Kevin, which I had a good laugh about when you sent the outline and how much of it is about the larger divisions within the Republican party? What is happening now is certainly partially about Kevin and his personal deficiencies, because this is not just he's struggling to get 2018. It is that he is engaging himself in a historic embarrassment for Kevin McCarthy, for the

country, for the House, the Republican Party. It's an absolute clusterfuck. And that is because of him for a couple reasons. One, as you guys talked about on Tuesday, these members don't trust him. And they don't trust him not because they think he lies. Republicans don't care about lying. Those people love Donald Trump. That's not the issue. They don't trust him because he stands for nothing. Kevin McCarthy has no ideological principles or policy preferences. John Boehner climbed the ladder to be speaker because he really wanted to help corporations. Paul Ryan

climbed the ladder to be speaker because he wanted to take money and healthcare away from poor people. Kevin McCarthy climbs the ladder because the ladder is there. He just wants to be Speaker. He has no idea what he wants to do with it. He doesn't care how much power he has. All he wants to do is update his LinkedIn page to say Speaker. And so why would you trust that person? He was for Trump when it helped him. He was briefly against Trump after January 16th. Then he was for Trump again for immigration reform, then against immigration reform. These members know that he cannot be trusted to abide by any deal he does. So that's problem one. Problem two is, and there's no nice way to say this, he's stupid.

And getting – I mean, he's a famously stupid. Everyone in Washington knows it. They talk about it all the time. It is well known. No one goes to Kevin McCarthy and asks him about policy or anything else. He's not a smart person. And he's sort of well known in Washington as an affable doofus. And he has lived on his affability in a party with this narrow or majority really does require figuring out how to thread the needle. And figuring things out is not his forte. So someone else might have done a better job or avoided this in some way. So Kevin McCarthy did not. There is a problem that is bigger than Kevin McCarthy that probably would have bedeviled any person trying to move from minority leader to Speaker. trying to move from minority leader to speaker.

And that is, and it's sort of, it is a microcosm of the problem with the party, which is you've got a bunch of DC establishment Republicans who want to pal around with lobbyists and raise money from corporations and pretend it's the Reagan years or the Bush years or whatever else, but they represent a party that is fueled by nationalism or populism that is really not about

any sort of ideology or anything else. It's about anger and grievance. And that anger and grievance turns on the establishment. It's how Donald Trump won and is why Kevin McCarthy's in trouble. And he's trying to, every Republican who has tried to have one foot in the establishment and one foot in MAGA world has been ripped in half. And that is what's happened to Kevin McCarthy on television on a daily basis now. Yeah. And it's not just that he's establishment, it's that he's been in leadership for a long time. And a lot of these people like your Lauren Boebert's and your Matt Gates's and all them, they just need a villain all the time. And it's easiest for them to have the villain be the republican leadership in the house that has you know uh screwed them over or or you know they're just going to blame them for all the

party's problems and so he just happens to be there the affable doofus yeah the affable thing is interesting because people in washington say that he's like broadly well liked within the party but like he's liked no one really is afraid of him no one really loves him so it's like when you don't when you don't have like a base of people who really really like you like like would go to war for you or who really hate you you're just like that's not the way to get ahead in this republican party yeah i mean we all have we all know people like this right right? They're fun to hang out with. You'd have a beer with them. You wouldn't call them when you're in trouble. You wouldn't start a business with them. You wouldn't ask them to be a godparent to your child. That's sort of

Kevin McCarthy. You don't, you don't want him to do anything. You just want to kind of hang around every once in a while and crack a joke. What, uh, what's your take on all these concessions? Like how much do they matter? They haven't moved the needle yet. Although, if you believe McCarthy and his allies, which why would you? They're saying like, oh, the votes today are obviously going to be the same as the votes the last couple of days, but we're still negotiating. We're hoping we're making progress. We're going to get something done over the weekend.

I think it is very possible that a deal like the one that you mentioned that's been outlined in all of the various tip sheets and news coverage this morning could move some of those 20 votes to McCarthy. But you have to understand that the opposition is not monolith. You have a couple of people who just have a personal vendetta against Kevin McCarthy. Bob Good from Virginia is one of them. McCarthy opposed him in the primary, was apparently a huge dick to him when he won the primary and then came to Congress. Bob Good is not voting. He has said this a thousand times. He's not voting for Kevin McCarthy. In fact, this morning, Bob Good said, don't ask me again if I'm voting for Kevin McCarthy,

because I will never vote for Kevin McCarthy. So I think this guy is not on the fence. Yes. Then there is Chip Roy, who is apparently a real person and not someone invented by. Who's Ted Cruz's chief of staff? I mean, which is obviously qualification enough. And who represents the Freedom Caucus. And his issues and the group he's issuing is they want more power, influence, and leverage

of McCarthy. They're the ones pushing for the motion to vacate. Some of these concessions could bring some of those people over. And then you have, and this is McCarthy's huge problem, is you have a group of people who are the MAGA media Republicans, Gates, Boebert, Gosar. These people are in it for the lulls. They don't care about anything else. Right. They just they want to get attention. This is good for attention. And if he can't get the MAGA media Republicans, he needs every single one other person to get there. And the math gets very, very hard. Now, dynamics could change if you get down to the point where there are only four or only five people left and there were one vote away. There's a lot you can do that's pretty sketchy with committee seats and super PAC funding as other things to get that one vote. But the math looks very hard, even even if he were to peel peel off the uh chip roy

chip roy roy chip whatever his name is chip roy faction of yeah so if you're if you're taking this from kevin mccarthy's point of view it seems like the play here is um give give away the store to chip roy and his gang of holdouts. So you make every concession possible that they want. Chip Roy brings about 10 people along with him. This is all the optimistic scenario. So now you get the first shift in the next ballot, or maybe this is 9th, 10th, 11th ballot, whatever it may be.

And now there's all these stories about momentum on McCarthy's side because he just brought over 10 holdouts. And now you put even more pressure on the never Kevins and you say, okay, all these other people decided to compromise and they got everything they want. And Kevin gave everything away. Why are you five or six still holdouts right now? But again, maybe you pick off one or two of those holdouts. I guess that's all you would need at that point with some kind of great job. And you just assume that those people

don't have principles anyway and aren't able to be shamed anyway. So what do they care if they drop their opposition that late after they've said they'll never vote for Kevin? I think that's probably his best. That's what he's hoping right now. doesn't get him to the speakership, it gets him momentum. Because if he gives everything away and makes no ground, we're not that far from the people who support him saying, we're stuck, let's go try someone else. Steve Scalise, Elise Stefanik, or someone else who can get over the hump. This is basically what happened to McCarthy the last time he tried to be speaker,

is he couldn't get there. And then they went to Paul Ryan and got Paul Ryan to agree because they thought he could get the votes. And so he's trying to just he's just trying to hold on through the weekend right now. What does the House look like with these rules and concessions in place, whether it's Kevin McCarthy, a speaker who's just given everything away and somehow got there, or you would assume that if they find an alternative speaker, that person will still abide by all these concessions and rule changes that the holdouts asked for.

I think it looks a little bit like a scene from Mad Max Fury Road. like a scene from Mad Max Fury Road. It's, no one's in charge. Kevin McCarthy is always one single vote away from losing his job. Anger, think about it this way, Matt Gaetz. Anger, Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz makes a motion and Kevin McCarthy, we have to do this whole shit show all over again.

And so this is, whatever, the speaker has got, every subsequent Republican speaker has gotten weaker than the previous one. And Kevin McCarthy will be the weakest speaker in American history and will have no capacity to serve as a bulwark against the most dangerous impulses of the most dangerous faction in American politics. And essentially, just he's like a revolving door. He's just not really stopping anything. It's just going around and around. And so on things like the debt, this is really only going to matter on two major issues substantively,

the debt ceiling and government funding. And everything else is a bunch of annoying marginalia around, are we investigating Hunter Biden, his laptop, the Biden pets, whatever it is. That's just all for show. They can't pass a law. They can't remove Joe Biden or a cabinet secretary from office. All they can do is make noise. And they're going to make similar amounts of noise, whether Kevin McCarthy is the speaker, whether there's five votes on the motion to vacate or six votes. But on the stuff that really matters, the stuff that could deeply damage the economy, that could hurt people, that's where it gets very scary very quickly. And what people should know is you need a majority in the House to obviously pass the government funding bill, to keep the government funded and

prevent it from being shut down, to lift the debt ceiling, because if you don't, the whole entire economy will crash. So you need a majority to do both of those things. I'm sure some people are wondering, like, well, what if all the Democrats and a couple of Republicans got together and said a couple of the more normal establishment institutional Republicans joined Democrats and pass a government funded bill? That could happen for sure. But Kevin McCarthy or whoever the speaker is would still need to bring that bill to the floor. And if they did that with most of the yahoos in the Republican caucus against it, they would not have that job for long is sort of the idea here. Right. And it would have to go through the House Rules Committee,

which McCarthy is just now promising to stock with Freedom Caucus, insurrectionists, legislative arsonists. So that creates some real problems. That brings us to something people have been talking about over the last couple of days. You hear it on cable. I've heard it on Twitter a couple of times. Should we entertain the Aaron Sorkin ending where Republicans cut some kind of a deal with Democrats? I mean, we're laughing, but we should. I have got this. I have received this question a lot on Twitter. We should sort of tell people why it seems unlikely that this will be the end result. Because the Republicans who would possibly agree to that deal are currently have just left Congress 24 hours ago and are currently negotiating their CNN and

MSNBC speaking deals. I mean, they're just other if to negotiate that deal. So you would need six or whatever it is, Republicans to vote with the Democrats, those people would be ending their careers on the first day of Congress. They would be primaried instantly and that would be that. Yeah. Kicked out of the caucus, done.

And so it's... Now maybe you have six people who are willing to take on a primary and they maybe they're looking at the last election. They're seeing all the election deniers who went down. And I don't know. Those election deniers didn't go down in the primary. They went down in general.

That's the problem. That's the problem. So I do think you'd have to have a wish never to be in Congress after 2024. And that's a pretty bold thing to come to on day two of the Congress. Right. And I hear a lot of people being like, well, why don't Democrats for the good of the country go to the Republicans? It's not Democrats. It's you can't find find a six Republicans who would do it. Yeah, it's the same thing. I mean, like one of the one of the Republicans who's probably seen as the most moderate, who's in a district

that Biden won by the most, Brian Fitzpatrick out of Pennsylvania, is like in all these negotiations with the holdouts on behalf of Kevin McCarthy trying to get a deal done. Like he's not he's not thinking about joining with the Democrats to do something here. Yeah. Even if you're in a district that Biden won in the general, you're in a district that Donald Trump won in the primary. Yeah, exactly. Right. So that's the problem with that. All right. So McCarthy has also begged the leaders of the Republican Party for help. Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, after staying uncharacteristically silent about the chaos in the House. Donald Trump truced up a lukewarm endorsement of Kevin McCarthy that has yet to move a single vote.

And the pro McCarthy congressman, Guy Reston Thaler, who might not be real, said to a reporter, quote, We'll see what happens when Tucker and Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro start beating up on these guys. Maybe that'll move it. Well, yes and no. Here's how it's playing out on Fox. A clip from Hannity's interview with Lauren Boebert and and Tucker Carlson is your final choice for speaker. and Tucker Carlson. What is your final choice for speaker? And if you can't get more than, let's say, 30 votes,

will you follow your own advice that you were asking Donald Trump and withdraw? There are certainly names that are being floated around. And hey, maybe I should nominate President Donald J. Trump tomorrow. But Sean, I did watch your show last night. Is this a game show? Like we're going to pick on this motion. Do we're going to pick Jim Jordan one day, Donald the other day, Trump the next day? Well, you've got reservations about Kevin McCarthy. You don't want to be ruled by a man who wears Ukrainian flag lapel pin and lives with Frank Luntz.

No problem. We get it. If you prefer democracy to oligarchy, if you prefer real debates about issues that actually matter, it's pretty refreshing to see it. Yes, it's a little chaotic, but this is what it's supposed to be. So good. We had so many more clips that we could have chosen from there, too. Let's start with Trump. So he originally seemed like he was backing away from McCarthy. He was he was quiet on truth social. He gave an interview where he said, well, let's see what happens. Why do you think he then decided to double down on his endorsement belatedly?

Look, everyone's got their thing and backing losers is Trump's thing. I honestly have no idea. I spent a lot of time this morning. You sent this question. I was thinking about it. Like, what would the strategy be? I was like, what am I doing?

It's like whatever, there's no, whoever the last person whisper in Trump's ear, it's probably some advisor of his who also gets paid by the McCarthy super PAC. Who's getting them to do it or something's getting paid. There's no logic in Trump. Why does Trump care? He backs McCarthy today. McCarthy loses. He backs the next guy. That guy loses backs the next one. They claims victory. Like it doesn't really for Trump. It doesn't really matter. He's going to back the winner in the end, no matter what. I think he also, it's like a reflection that deep down somewhere in that empty brain,

he knows that he needs people right now, that he's like, there's only five or six never Kevins for sure in the whole Republican conference. Like Marjorie Taylor Greene is with Kevin McCarthy right now. So I think that and Trump does not exactly have a whole bunch of endorsements from Republicans since he has announced his third run for presidency. So I do think it's a reflection that he thinks I probably need some of these people. The rest of that party is just OK. Right. So a few never Kevins and a lot of OKs. Exactly. So why do you think not one of the 20 holdouts seem to care that Trump weighed in for his Kevin? I think we are learning over the course of this past election and everything about Trump post-presidency is that he has a lot less

influence than we think. He can break a tie among two MAGA candidates with his base by giving that person attention. And if you're sort of like, well, I like the MAGA-sounding hedge fund guy from Connecticut, and I like the celebrity TV doctor from New Jersey, which one's Trump for? He's a tiebreaker. But in this situation, the movement has moved on from him in a lot of ways. And you see that here, where it's the incentives that have a lot of these people opposing McCarthy have very little to do with Trump. They are consistent with all of Trump's strategies and messaging and general way of operating, but they don't require Trump. And that's really probably Trump. The scariest thing is that he may now be ancillary to the MAGA movement.

And if that's the case, that's going to pose real, real challenges for him in a primary against some other candidates who can claim a MAGA-esque label. Yeah. And I would say, you know, Lauren Boebert was asked by Hannity later in that interview about the Trump thing. And she said, you're not going to split me from my favorite president. Like, we just have a difference of opinion here. And then Matt Gaetz on the seventh ballot, it happened just before we started, did vote for Donald Trump for speaker. Steve Bannon today called for people to make Trump the speaker on his podcast, which I did not listen to. I just saw the clips via Media Matters or someone.

Because you figured Tommy would give us the- Yeah, I can't wait till Tuesday to get a update on what Bannon's been saying. So I had to dig in. Gates did tell reporters just now that this all ends either with McCarthy deciding to, quote, withdraw from the race or agrees to a, quote, straight jacket agreement that fully constrains him as speaker.

That's actually probably the most positive piece of news McCarthy's received all day. I'll take the straight jacket. As long as I get the bust that it says that I was speaker and I get the office, I'll do it in a straight jacket. I could see it. At Georgetown University, my alma mater, in the old basketball gym, they put up a jersey for everyone who makes the NBA, even if you only make it for like one year. And I think McCarthy knows he's going to get a portrait. If he's just speaker for like six minutes, he gets his portrait up in the hallway. And then, you know, who's going to remember in 10, 15, 20 years that he was speaking for six minutes, right? He'll still be up there.

We can barely remember what happened in the second ballot. What do you make of the MAGA media split? Like, it seems like most of them are on McCarthy's side, Hannity, Ingram, Ben Shapiro, a lot of the Fox people, except for Tucker, but they don't seem to be moving the needle with the holdouts. This isn't really about people. It's not about voters. It's not about the Fox News audience. They're not going to pick up the phones and I use unique in the most generous sense of that word, who decide who the leader is or who decide what gets voted out of committee or whatever it is. And it's not about actual voters.

And sometimes when we're like mystified, we were mystified by things that Nancy Pelosi would do that maybe didn't make sense. It's because it was part of a process to bring her members along. And so that doesn't have, they can't, they're not going to be some sort of rallying cry. No one's going to march on the mall and it's for Kevin McCarthy. The interesting thing about that clip we played with Hannity and Tucker is two things. One, I had no idea that Kevin McCarthy lived with Frank Luntz. You learn something new every day. He did. You didn't know that? No, I missed that piece of information. Are you watching Tucker every night? No, that's been reported like so many times over the last couple of years because they're like pals. And that's

why like Kevin McCarthy, Frank Luntz is always saying nice things about Kevin McCarthy. It's a whole thing. Can I reveal a secret here? Sure. In 2008, Frank Luntz reached out to me and asked for tickets to the Obama convention speech. And I gave him, I gave him to him. Wow. All right. Elijah, we're clipping that one. So basically, Kevin McCarthy has been renting a room from a Democratic delegate.

All right. Speaking of Democrats. So whether or not McCarthy pulls this out, I think it's safe to say that Republicans have not handled themselves in a way that inspires much confidence. Joe Biden had something to say about this on his way to Kentucky this week. To be able to have a Congress that can't function is just embarrassing. We're the greatest nation in the world. How can that be? Now, Biden's message has been echoed by the incoming Democratic minority leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, a lot of other Democrats in Congress.

What do you think about this message? And what do you think are sort of the political implications of what happened this week? Do you think there are going to be consequences for the Republican Party beyond this? Or are we all just going to forget about this in a couple of weeks? I write this question every few months and I know the answer. I don't know why I keep doing it. Of course, we're going to forget about it. Obviously. I mean, I apparently forgot that McCarthy lived with Kevin Frank Luntz. So it's all, this is a good message and a good strategy because what we know from the 2022 midterms is that voters who are dissatisfied with the way things are going, perhaps unhappy

about the economy, concerned about inflation, maybe not super enthusiastic about President Biden or the Democrats in Congress will still choose a Democrat if the choice is between a Democrat and a MAGA Republican. And so it is very much in the Democrats' interest up until the moment we have a full-throated Republican presidential primary to make congressional Republicans, a body that is filled with the exact sort of people who lost their elections in 2022, the face of the Republican Party. And so whether it's this, whatever insane things they do in terms of investigations and subpoenas, bills they pass to try to repeal things, shutdowns, all of that is that you want House Republicans to be your foil.

And so this is a good way of doing it. This in and of itself- It's a fantastic opportunity to broaden the message about Republicans beyond Donald Trump. Yeah. We have not been as good at doing that over the last couple of elections. You know, by necessity, at least in 2020, we wanted to prove that Donald Trump was a different kind of Republican. And I think one of the consequences of that, though, has been that people see Trump is uniquely bad. And then the rest of the Republicans are just typical Republicans who are they're not favorable towards, but they don't think are as bad as Donald Trump. Now that Trump is sort of, you know, backstage, we can make the case that the Republican Party is still wholly owned by the MAGA wing and they are extreme and they cannot govern.

And, you know, we talked a lot in the last election about like, oh, well, voters care about arguments over democracy, stuff like that. The easiest argument to make to voters who even don't pay much attention to politics is that nothing is getting done in Washington because there's too much chaos and dysfunction. And now House Republicans are the face of that dysfunction. And now House Republicans are the face of that dysfunction. You know, some will say, well, Democrats control the Senate. And so isn't an argument against a dysfunctional Congress going to blow back on us? And we dealt with this exact same dynamic from 2011 to 2015 when we were President Obama. And all of our polling showed that even though Democrats controlled the Senate, voters overwhelmingly thought Republicans controlled the Congress, defined broadly. And so you definitely have to use the word Republican here. It's used the words MAGA Republican in particular. But dysfunctional Congress, if Democrats do their job, and they seem very intent on doing their job right now, will be bad for Republicans. Voters gave Republicans a chance to run the House,

and the second they got there, they broke it. The House doesn't even exist right now. It's a cat in a box right now. There was a Washington Post headline, does the House even exist? Because look, when there's no speaker, we said this last pod, nothing else can get done. If there was an emergency, when there's no speaker, we said this last pod, nothing else can get done. If there was an emergency, if this was an election, if we had just had an election, we were counting presidential votes. And we were in the situation we were at the end of 2020, the beginning of 2021. What would have happened if there's some sort of national emergency? Like there's no house right now.

There's no house. That's how bad they are at running it. They couldn't even get a day in. One day of governing. It's wild. So I mentioned that Biden was on his way to Kentucky. He was going there to celebrate the bipartisan infrastructure law with his good friend, Mitch McConnell, in front of a bridge that's finally set to be mended. Is there a metaphor anywhere?

It's very subtle. I don't know if anyone... Do you think the White House planned that contrast knowing that the vote for speaker would be a shit show? I'm sure no one imagined that it would be this much of a shit show or very few people imagine that. But do you think they knew that it would probably be some form of chaos in the House and that's why they did this?

Absolutely. I think they knew that at bare minimum, it would be a messy process for Kevin McCarthy to take over and that there would be a ton of attention on the incoming Republican Congress in this first week, as there always is when a new Congress starts. And so that is a perfect contrast between a president who gets things done, who delivers for people, who's willing to work with anyone if it helps create jobs and improve the economy, and this group of insurrectionist extremist yahoos. It's great. It's a really smart move. It's a great message. Like, I actually didn't see as much grumbling about, you know, Biden appearing with Mitch McConnell as I expected to. But like, yeah, of course, you're going to do that if you can. Right. I'm here with the people know that they don't get along. People know they're on different sides of things. But like, yeah, they got to come together to do this infrastructure law. Now they're building a bridge. Well other fucking yahoos in the House can't even agree on a speaker of their own party. They don't even need Democrats.

I'm sure it is the message that the White House probably wants to use through if Biden does run for re-election as is widely expected. They're going to have that message right through 2024, whether it's Donald Trump or whoever the Republican nominee is.

And use use Congress as a foil in the meantime, I think. All right, we're back before we go. All right, we're back. Before we go, Chief Take Officer Elijah Cohn is here once again, two times in one week, because today we're going to play not just Take Appreciator, but Two Takes and a Fake. And I believe we have a special Fox News edition for this. Elijah, take it away. Yes. John, Dan, welcome back to Two Takes and a Fake. It's our take on the classic game, Two Truths and a Lie. Recently, conservative media have been trying to cover anything but the chaos surrounding the House speaker vote. In today's game, I will read you two real stories they covered instead of the vote and one fake one. John is our current champion of two takes and a fake. John, do you have any

words before we get started? No, I'm just happy to be here and play the game. On this competitor, Dan i get before i jump in look i'm just honored to share a stage with this undefeated cannot possibly lose champion yeah we'll see about that i called on the power of our audience dan dan is the dan is the kevin mccarthy of uh two takes and a fake so far oh so that makes you Matt Gaetz? Really thought that one through. All right, let's play. Number one. I know we said Fox News.

We had to go a little bit further in conservative media here. So we'll start with Charlie Kirk. He focused on trans people this week, saying, quote, the same people that wanted to bomb Baghdad now want to blitzkrieg the female's, to change their nature from female to male. It's the same thing. Greg Gutfeld ran a segment about how the left-wing media hates America, where he asked the question, Emily in Paris, why not Emily in Pittsburgh? Daily Wire host Michael Knowles, number three here, Michael Knowles talked about George Santos saying, maybe he's got some Jewish blood back in his family line. Maybe, I don't know, maybe there was a Jewish milkman somewhere in Latin America or wherever.

Just a reminder that George Santos lied about being Jewish. Okay. Okay. I'm going to go uh number two dan so number one was blitzkrieg number two is emily and pittsburgh and number three was milkman in latin america yes jewish milkman and latin america yes and dan i think you should be able to pick the same one as John oh yeah oh I know I know yeah no that's for sure you shouldn't let him hector you out of

we're not playing for a tie here okay that's how we play for a tie I'm gonna go with number one John is correct two is fake shout out to Ponce of America listener Nick Jones for that one

that is uh that's good stuff that is good stuff i i thought that was very funny and and very real seeming by the way and greg outfield is uh a very famously funny person so that's why that's why right that's he's he's where i go to for all my my comedy america's number one late night host give me to it he's not really someone always supposed to point out round two uh some republicans did acknowledge the mess in the house which one of these acknowledgments is fake uh sean hannity said if republicans don't get their act together, we're going to be screwed because of their incompetence. Ben Shapiro said, People don't like Democrats, but there's a generalized feeling that Republicans are not capable of making their own breakfast.

People say, I don't like those other guys, but at least they're capable of making their own breakfast. Hugh Hewitt said, Hugh Hewitt said, Republicans look foolish at the moment, but they have a willingness to engage in debate and democracy versus an increasingly authoritarian Democratic Party. Which is the fake? Dan, you want to go first? No, I want you to go first.

Oh, you want me to go first? Okay. Yeah. Who was the first one? The first one was Sean Hannity. We're screwed because of their incompetence i'm gonna go with hannity i'm gonna go with hannity as well wow you both missed hannity is real oh wait should we so we're left with ben shapiro making their own breakfast and hugh hewitt republicans will engage in debate and democracy i I think it's Shapiro.

That's fake or real? That's fake. John? Yeah. You guys are wrong on both. Hugh Hewitt. It's Hugh. That's a real good Hugh fake.

Yeah, that's basically an example. Are you sure he hasn't said that? I know. Yeah. Did you just take that from somewhere else and just put it on this? It is from listener Ian. Thank you, Ian, for that one. Did you just take that from somewhere else and just put it on this? It is from listener Ian. Thank you, Ian, for that one. Did you fact check this one? Did you make sure he didn't say

that? Did Ian misunderstand the assignment? I think the best... I laughed out loud when I read it the first time. I think the best possible outcome would be that Hugh Hewitt actually did say that. I think there's a real chance that happened.

It sounds so much like Hugh Hewitt. Excellent job. Excellent job. All right. So John is up one to zero on Dan right now. We're going to go to the final round. These were segments on Fox News during the height of the speaker votes, which continues as we record this. Which is the fake?

Deep breaths. Fox News is the five ran a segment about how wokeness is causing a mass migration to Florida. Laura Ingram ran a segment about a high school in La Jolla, California that declared itself 100% sustainable and asked the students to throw away anything that cannot be recycled or composted at home. Jesse Waters ran a segment about how we were raised on the lie because of the food pyramid and we can't trust big food. Man, that is... These are all segments I ran early in those shows, too, which is awesome. Well, one of them didn't. One of them didn't, I hope.

I mean, but the real one is... Wait, wait. What was the Laura Ingraham one? A high school in La Jolla that declared itself 100% sustainable. And number one was Wokeness in Florida. Right. Wokeness is causing mass

migration to Florida it's not income tax or weather I'm gonna go with one interesting strong choice so high school I'm gonna go food pyramid you guys are both wrong too

La Jolla California excuse me it's fake fuck pyramid i'm gonna go food pyramid you guys are both wrong too la jolla california is fake excuse me it's fake fuck wow thank you listener at gp2k for that i lost john came in second elijah won are we oh i guess we're playing to get we're playing against that that's not really how it works but elijah i mean it's one i mean this is elijah's, I mean, it's one. I mean, this is Elijah's best. This is Elijah's best showing. I did beat Dan, but that's again, like, that's like, that's like Kevin McCarthy losing the ninth ballot, you know? Yes.

Congratulations on all the time you spent online. Thank you to the listeners who submitted such great fake takes. Wow. You know what? It's just, it's enjoyable. This is, I enjoyed this game a lot. Kudos to all of you. Even though I didn't do as well as I did in the past.

Except Ian's on probation until we determine whether Hugh Hewitt really did not say that. That's true. I'm going to be searching for that statement. Elijah, thank you so much. Everyone else, have a great weekend, and we will talk to you next week. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producers are Hayley Muse and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Thanks to Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Sandy Gerard, Andy Taft, and Justine Howe for production support.

And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montu. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash podsaveamerica.