The Bulwark Podcast - Dana Milbank: Fools on the Hill

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

The current Congress is the most do-nothingest since 1861—when the Union was falling apart right before the Civil War. Speaker Mike Johnson is completely beholden to Trump, Republicans used Russian propaganda for their sham impeachment effort against Biden, and a clown car of Santos-style fakers are cruising to reelection. Plus, the prospect for chaos post-election is high if Trump loses. Dana Milbank joins Tim Miller. show notes Dana's new book, "Fools on the Hill: The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House" Will's piece that Tim mentioned

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. It's Wednesday, so remember I'm also doing political hot takes over on the Next Level feed. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. But our guest today I'm very excited about, nationally syndicated op-ed columnist for the Washington Post. His most recent book was published yesterday, Fools on the Hill, The Hooligans, Saboteurs, Conspiracy Theorists, and Dunces Who Burned Down the House. It's Dana Milbank. I thought my subhead of my book was obnoxious, but that one is really, you just really go for it there. I just, I want to leave people guessing as to where they, where I might land on the subject. Dunces. Yeah. You know, I went with the Republican road to hell, which always tickles interviewers when they get to read them. We have the same subtlety. But dunces and hooligans

I like. Well, thanks for coming on the pod. I want to spend most of the time here today talking about the house GOP because there's a lot there and it does sometimes fall out of the radar because of you know what's happened on the top of the ticket right there's there's so much crazy you can't even concentrate on at all exactly so i do have one donald trump item though i do have to start with before we get to the house i was reading politico this morning in my i got my dander up there's an article about how people around Trump are concerned that he's not focused. Steve Wynn, the advisor. Now, this isn't noted in the Politico article, but for our listeners, you should know that Steve Wynn was a serial sexual assault, allegedly committed serial

sexual assaults, people that worked for him in Las Vegas. He's still in good standing in the Trump inner circle, though. And apparently that doesn't merit mention in this article. But Steve apparently told Trump that you're off message, you're distracted, it isn't helping, and you should focus more on policy. How are we still doing this, Dana? Yeah, no, no. And I bet now Trump will hear that it'll go take it to heart, and it'll totally do the trick. We had a piece in the Post last week saying whatever was left of Trump's discipline is completely gone, which I totally agree with. I just think it probably could have been written several months ago. Or years. Was there some golden age of discipline in this campaign? You know, it's like La Civita was

going to come in there, and it's going to be a tight ship. But of course, you can run a tight ship, but the captain's, you know, constantly overboard. So many political reporters I love and hold dearly in my heart. So, you know, don't get don't get too hurt by this. But it is kind of one of the political reporter fallacies where like, if, if you're winning in the polls, then like, then that means things are, you know, that the campaign is running well, right? And sometimes correlation doesn't equal causation. Like, you know, when Trump was calling him, was vacillating between Meatball Ron and the sanctimonious and, you know, lashing out about all that, that was the golden age, I think. But, you know, because since he was winning in the polls, since Republican voters liked him, you know, his weird behavior and conspiracy mongering and,

and rants, you know, weren't, you know, weren't affecting him. So that means he must be disciplined. That has been the case for as long as I can remember, you know, yeah, there are various ideological biases in the press. The biggest bias is towards the polls. If you're up in the polls, you walk on water. And if you're down in the polls, they're going to find a causation for that in whatever reporting they can do. This is why Biden got such awful press. I don't think it was like some personal animus towards Joe Biden. Like, how could you have that? It was that he was doing poorly because he looked old and doddering. Yeah, he's just getting crushed. And so that is, then you have to backfill that with reasons. I do think that's right. I just, I get frustrated. I get frustrated with

the stories about the fact that- Well, I'm sorry your dander is up. I'll see if I can calm it back down if at all possible. I don't think our topic today is going to calm me back down. But at least you're clear eyed about what's happening in the house. And that's like, well, if only Mike Johnson would pivot back to the issues, then things would be really right. If Steve Wynn would just have one little conversation with him, I think it would all be fine. Yeah, I think that he would resolve the James Comer problem and everybody else. Okay, let's just take the biggest picture of the book, just people understand like what the conceit was. And then I want to go through several of the items. But what was the purpose here in focusing on this House GOP class of 2022? Well, I made a gamble. It was actually

even before the election. I just saw this incredible lineup of candidates. You remember the woman who said they were alien lizards controlling the government and she hit her ex-husband with an alarm clock and tried to run over the other ex-husband with an alarm clock. Then there was the guy in Ohio who painted his whole lawn with 250 gallons of paint into a big Trump banner. I said, these guys are going to be interesting. And the ones who made it, I mean, I had high expectations. They exceeded all expectations. You know, I just had one line about some guy named George Santos back then. And, you know, it turns out he was a gift that, that gave for an entire year. So I, I had a feeling because of the exotic characters and because we've been seeing it,

you know, through the Trump era, year after year, you'd get a few more exotic characters and a few more that sort of grownups would leave. And, you know, as I said, I had no idea quite how bad they would be. And now we can sort of run the numbers and they are on course and there's not a whole lot of time left. So we're pretty sure of this, to be the least productive Congress since 1860, when the Union was unraveling. So at least they had an excuse for being a do-nothing Congress. I mean, that is truly historic. So yeah, I didn't know this would be the Congress that would kick out the Speaker midterm for the first time in history, that would impeach a cabinet officer for the first time in 150 years on specious grounds, which shut down

the House for 22 days as they defeated candidate after candidate, you know, they would have McCarthy's 15 ballots and just all the mayhem and madness, the fisticuffs in the caucus meetings, in the basement, the hurling of obscenities, each other, insulting each other's private parts. And, you know, of course, the lunacy of the Biden investigation and the weaponization panel that conservative commentators were panning it, say, come on, please give us something, guys. And they, you know, they came up with nothing but, you know, like Ron Johnson's conspiracy theories with an assist from RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. There are a couple of news items this week that sort of draft well with your book. With regards to the Do Nothing Congress,

I was reading an article in Notice this morning, and it quotes several members of the House GOP. And you've got Bob Good saying, from Virginia there, on every significant piece of legislation, we have surrendered to the White House and to the Democrat-controlled Senate. We don't have anything to show

for having to control the House for two years. So that's supporting your thesis. Then you had Chip Roy and James Comer pushing back on that, saying that simply keeping the government funded, passing GOP messaging bills, and exercising some oversight through committees are achievements for the party in a divided government. I love this sort of fight there. You have the wing of crazies that are like, we haven't advanced our crazy nonsense that there's no chance of advancing. And then you have the other crazies that are like, actually, doing nothing is a victory. There's nobody in the conversation that's like, you know, I don't know, maybe we should try to compromise with Democrats on some things and, you know,

try to actually achieve results working with the other party. Like that, that faction doesn't seem to be existing in the conversation. No. And the fascinating thing about that, that Chip Roy quote is he's done a total flip-flop. I mean, he was the guy who stood up and said, one thing I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing, one that I can go campaign on and say we did. And of course I haven't done anything since then. So now he said, okay, well, actually, I'm pretty good with this, doing nothing at all. One of my favorite parts was just this long compilation of self-loathing quotes from House Republicans about themselves. Like, you don't have to take my word for it. Like, you know, how often do you get to say, I agree totally with Marjorie Taylor Greene. Our Republican House majority has failed completely.

Maybe she believes that for different reasons. But yeah, I mean, nobody has been more savage on House Republicans than House Republicans, including the current Speaker of the House, who says he spends half his time as Speaker and half as a mental health counselor. While you mention it, though, I had a couple of favorites of the House Republicans on House Republicans. This is Mike Lawler from New York. When you keep running lunatics, you're going to be in this position. Here's Tony Gonzalez out of Texas. Again, for listeners who are not familiar with Tony Gonzalez, this is a Republican member of the House, Tony Gonzalez. I work with some real scumbags. These

people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they walk around with white hoods in the daytime. People say we have TDS at the bulwark. I mean, like that's worse than what you'll hear at the bulwark most days from a sitting Republican congressman. And you wonder why they're throwing punches, why McCarthy gives Tim Burchett the kidney punch from behind and they go after Gates on the House floor. They were, you know, in fisticuffs in the caucus room as well. You know, it's interesting because if you look at the true crazies, you know, like let's take a proxy for that as maybe the House Freedom Caucus, there's only about 40 of them. The problem is there's the vast majority of the caucus are cowards. So, you know, two thirds of them voted to overturn the election even after the insurrection on January 6th.

Did they all believe that? No, I'm sure they didn't. thirds of them voted to overturn the election even after the insurrection on January 6th. Did they all believe that? No, I'm sure they didn't. But at some point, it doesn't matter whether they believe it or not, because they're too afraid to stand up. So they wind up letting the cowards run the show again and again. Well, and this is another insight on that, that that group, like the crazies versus the cowards versus the people that are like are trying to responsibly govern, but aren't standing up to trump to the degree that i would like them to but you know behind the scenes are trying to at least do some legislating that balance of power like the window is has moved a couple of standard deviations towards the crazy right in the lab in this group in 2022 and and i think that like well it's hard for people to understand is that, you know, even though Trump was gone in 2022, like he was this overhang over all of these primaries.

And so like the types of people, the Mike Gallagher's of the world, like the types of people that, you know, accomplish something in their lives. Maybe they were in the military or their community leader, a business leader in the community. They weren't volunteering to run in 2022 as Republicans because they didn't want to do what you had to do unless you're like totally shameless like Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. If you're like a normal business guy, you don't want to have to go down to Mar-a-Lago and suck up to Trump and pretend that Haitians are eating dogs. You don't have to do that. So you don't. So there's no supply of those people running. And I think that the party has self-selected a lot of these crazy people that you profile in the book. Right. And that's why you mentioned Mike Gallagher was essentially drummed out. Even a guy like Ken Buck, I mean, you don't get a lot more conservative than Ken Buck was drummed out for daring to say, hey, guys, you're being a little nutty here. Gone. You know, there's no room for him here. And the Ken Buck is a prime example for just for me, because I'm from Colorado.

So in 2010, I was still working in Republican politics then. And I was always kind of like talking with Colorado people about maybe I'd go home and work on a campaign back at home. I hadn't worked on one since my very first campaign in 02, which was a i didn't have very wins after that so i like to mention my wins when when they happen but uh in 2010 that guy that i'd worked for bill ellens his lieutenant governor was jane norton who is this sort of just generic republican you know i kind of uh maybe not quite as moderate as susan collins but what you know the kind of generic type republican that you got during that era. Ken Buck challenged her from the right, and was a lunatic. And everybody's like, this guy's insane.

No, that's right. He was the poster child for sort of Tea Party extremism, at least, you know, from my point of view. And now he's the voice of reason. And so now he gets drummed out. You're right. That's how, you know, with each passing election, it just changes. And you lose the grownups and the lunatics gain more power. You know, I think it's a structural thing in a way. Of course, you know, the primary, what, there are two dozen competitive seats in the House. The rest of them are strictly decided in a primary.

Of course, there's a problem on the Democratic side, but there aren't enough liberals to dominate the way the right dominates within the Republican primary. So, you know, and I think Tom Massey from Kentucky said it best when he was trying to figure out what the primary voters wanted. Were they looking for the libertarian or the, you know, this ideology or that? And he said, no, they're looking for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And that's the problem. We may sit back and say, this is irrational, this behavior of, you know, burning down the government. But they're not appealing to the 800,000 million people who are their constituents.

There's 10,000, 15,000 people who they have to appeal to in the primary so they don't get primaried from the right. So this is just, it's happened over and over again and cycle after cycle. And you no longer have a john bainer or even a paul ryan you know somebody with even a little bit of uh spine to uh stand up to it and the democratic situation as a moderate myself is even better than what you're saying like the the only democrats to loot get primaried and lose this time they were primaried from the middle it's berman bush right like there's not really an example of, I mean, I guess Manchin retires, but it's not like Josh Gottheimer in New Jersey was like

getting primaried by a DSA socialist and losing. Like, I don't know, maybe that'll happen sometime in the future. That's not happening now. Right. It has happened a couple of times, to Eliot Engel or whatever. I use the squad as the equivalent as the House Freedom Caucus, but it's really not an equivalent thing. They're much smaller. They don't have the same kind of influence, but also they're not as contrarian. I mean, they said AOC generally goes along with what leadership wants. And, you know, I don't think this is because like Democrats are savvier or smarter. It's just a fact of life that there are more moderates in their primary electorate. So you just don't have as much luck coming at people. In certain urban districts,

you can do that. But by and large, you don't win by being the craziest son of a bitch in the race. Yeah, it's a supply and demand thing. I mean, Joe Pertico, my colleague, has this yesterday, has a newsletter people can check out on the blog.com. But he interviewed Jerry Moran, who used to run the NRSC. And Jerry, you know, Jerry should probably take some more responsibility. Certainly, there have been some Republican leaders, many, many who have not acted with integrity or with the authority that they could have to try to, you know, steer the ship. But that said, his point is like, it's not even Trump. It's not us. It's not us it's like the voters keep picking these people and so if the voters want crazy if you're going for a job

and in this case it's the primary voters who are the ones that get to review the resumes and if the best thing you can have on your resume is not like your volunteer service or your success in private business but like the best thing on the business it's like how crazy you are how good you are at insulting libs and how and how good you are at sucking up to trump then you're going to get crazy people right in fact you can fake your resume like andy ogles or anna paulina luna or santos you don't doesn't matter what you did just say whatever you want that's crazy i should talk about that i hadn't even really thought about that there were three members of this class that were wildly exaggerating their resume. military record. It's a Trump phenomenon that, you know, he can get away with saying whatever

he wants. Well, maybe the rest of us can get away with saying whatever we want to. Now, there are limits to this, as we're seeing, for example, in the gubernatorial race in North Carolina, or the certain congressman's payroll on Long Island. But by and large, I mean, Trump has done such a brilliant job at extinguishing any sense of shame from the electorate that I think a lot of others are following in this mold. So you had Santos with, I mean, the most brazen lies I've ever seen in my time in Washington. But he turned around and he did the same thing. You know, the party establishment is out to get me. The media is out to get me.

And the party leaders, they weren't enforcers of any sort of moral or ethical standard. They needed his vote. I mean, Kevin McCarthy has said they knew something was off with this guy, but they figured, all right, and they gave him party money. They made appearances with him. And even after it all came out, they kept him there for a year. And even on the day after a year when Santos was finally expelled, the House leadership was still fighting to keep him in the position because they needed his vote. In the lead up to the 2024 US elections, more people than ever are wondering how our electoral process actually works, what systems are in place to ensure secure and accurate

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Democracy Decoded for sponsoring this show. There's some pretty concerning actual news this week with this group. Also, I think that we should talk about which we saw at Mike Johnson's press conference. There are two clips from the press conference I want to play you. Let's listen to them back to back. I'm not I'm not defying President Trump. I've spoken with him at great length, and he is very frustrated about the situation. His great concern is election security, and it is mine as well. It is all of ours. We are really seriously concerned about this, and we got to do everything that we can to ensure it. Speaker, do you commit to observing regular order in the certification process of the

2024 election, even if Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump? Well, of course, if we have a free, fair, and safe election, we're going to follow the Constitution. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Yes. It's kind of ominous. It's a pretty big if in there, and if we decide that it was fair. I was at that news conference yesterday. He's been saying various versions of this all along, as I think you were suggesting a moment before. In a sense, he has to do it. He is hanging by a thread. One mean tweet from Donald Trump, he's done. Maybe not done today, but his future in the speakership is over. The House Republicans did more than any other group to revive Donald Trump. You know, it wasn't just McCarthy flocking down to Mar-a-Lago, you know,

when he was down and out, these guys built him up. They were the first to rally behind him after each of the indictments. And the power he holds over this caucus is just extraordinary. So when people talk about, you know, Mike Johnson trying to use what the 12th Amendment to, you know, to reject the results and allow the House to decide, assuming like there was a Harris won the presidency and the Republicans kept the House. Now, the whole idea is fairly far fetched, and it almost certainly wouldn't work. But I have no doubt that Mike Johnson would try such a thing. This is, after all, the guy who led the legal effort in the House to overturn the results, the legal argument as opposed to the actual

insurrection. So there can be no doubt that he would be happy to do it again this time around, and that is ominous. Let's unpack that, because before you became a columnist and, you know, kind of big man on campus over there, you were a Hill reporter, right? And so you know how this sometimes works, right? Where some of these guys, they're saying what they have to say in front of the cameras, but behind the scenes, they're talking to you. And, you know, the story's a little different. Have you been able to spend enough time with Republicans to get any sense for that?

And Mike Johnson did end up kind of doing the right thing on Ukraine. Took him a while. Yeah, five months. And so he has a couple of times demonstrated, maybe overstated to say backbone, but like a little bit of authority. Do you get any sense that some of this is like just for show? Or do you really think that they're preparing for and laying the groundwork for another challenge in the period between the election and January. I mean, I have no doubt that they're laying the groundwork for that. I mean, certainly Trump is, you hear it, you hear it from him every day. And so they're faithfully echoing

that. I mean, I, I suspect in their heart or hearts, they may hope it doesn't, it doesn't come to that. But I've gotten beyond this notion of wondering what they, you know, if you gave them truth serum or woke them up in the middle of the night, because their actions are the same regardless. So it doesn't even matter what they believe or what they don't believe. I mean, you know, look, Mike Johnson has voiced the great replacement, you know, the racist conspiracy theory. There he was, you know, what is just a week or two after he won the speakership going to address this group of Christian nationalists with the most out there views. And of course, saying that God had made him the Moses of the House

Republican Party. I guess they're still in the apparently still wandering in the wilderness, but maybe he'll get them there at some point. I mean, he's very much a true believer in that sense, certainly more than anybody before him. I mean, he has let there be no daylight between him and Donald Trump. I mean, think about the current spending showdown. Okay, he surrendered and punted so that they can have the fight, you know, after taking another six-week vacation on top of the six-week vacation they just came back from. of course he only did it after doing trump's bidding and saying all right we'll put this uh election legislation on and let his own people kill it the element of just like listening to him talking about all that you know like the whole thing is fake like this whole like oh we're deeply concerned about the you know

it's like they're setting the pretense for this well we'll only challenge it if we don't believe it's safe and secure. That's why I put both clips together because the other clip is like this whole like, oh, Trump is deeply concerned about election security and we're deeply concerned. Nobody's deeply concerned about it. I met with Chris Krebs last week who was working at DHS on election security in 2020 and did the right thing and, and spoke out about the stop the spiel records and corrected the record. And he's like, there are groups out there that are genuinely concerned of are not concerned, but are genuinely focused on, you know, making sure that the process is smooth, that the you know, that all the machines are secure, that you know, ballot handoff,

that's not what these guys are doing. Like, like, they don't actually care. No, I mean, they're genuinely concerned that they might lose the election. So they're figuring out, you know, a plan B. I mean, the absurdity of this, I mean, remember the big complaint, and, you know, maybe there was some legitimacy to it last time was that there were last minute changes, you know, early voting and how the electioneering was done. Okay, well, there were. But these same people who are complaining about that are now saying, all right, let's see, let's see if the

last minute we can get Nebraska legislature to change the whole electoral college thing. Let's see if in Georgia, maybe we can switch the whole thing to a hand count and, you know, bollocks up everything for a month. Not that there was a whole lot of integrity going into the process, but they're actually doing the exact same thing that they said was the problem last time yeah will salatan wrote about that very thing this morning for us like the other thing about this kicking the can on the cr is now like they're setting up a situation where conceivably harris wins narrowly let's just say they are spending november and december doing stop the steel 2.0 right and trying to undermine it in every way imaginable and then there's a government shutdown hanging over at christmas time right and having all of that stuff be happening together at this

time where you know we should be once again you know to use your words bollocksing up like what should be a clean and peaceful transfer where you know preparing for a new president i mean like they're really setting this up for for the winter to be you know for them to have a lot of leverage to create trouble absolutely i mean the the odds of a shutdown i would say are extremely high in December. So there'll be some price that Mike Johnson will ask for. Now, what will that price be? Well, they're not going to be interested in the SAVE Act anymore. It'll be something related to whatever happened in the election. The deadline for the shutdown is what, December 20th, I think it is.

On January 3rd, he's got to get, you know, if he wins, he's got, well, I mean, if they lose the House, he's done anyway. But if he wins, he's got to get reelected as speaker. He can't afford to do anything that pisses off Trump, win or lose, or any more than a few members of the Freedom Caucus. So basically his only play at that point is to shut the government down with some, with some peace. I mean, I love how we always you know at any moment he said well there are two issues before us and they're totally two different issues from whatever they were were last week but these are the most obvious things the government must do at this point so he will say there's a very obvious thing that we must do or shut down the government yeah i don't i mean i like the

prospect that we don't really have a speaker that there's not like during this whole period uh as you're as you're pointing out like it's dependent especially depending on how close the house ends up i just think that they have kind of laid the table here for a very a lot of chaos so all you who have called you know made vacation plans for after the election i would consider a postponement yeah i know i was planning on taking a week off from the podcast between christmas and new year's i don't know that that seems like that's probably not going to be happening. Sorry. Sorry, Katie and Jason. No, no, you'll be in a bunker somewhere. At Catholic Charities Agencies Nationwide, we are there is more to help families and communities recover and rebuild.

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Join them at wearethere.us. That website again is wearethere.us. What else do we have? Diaspozito this week. I haven't mentioned that yet. I talk about this. This is one of the New York Republicans, there's this kind of group of people call them moderate based on nothing, I guess they are not as visibly crazy as Marjorie Taylor Greene, I guess. I think the real word is nervous, you know, because they're in swing districts. So it's not that it's not they're not ideologically different, but they're always worried that they have to worry about more than a primary, they actually have to worry about actual voters. Yeah, their rhetoric is a little different. So you've got Lawler, you've got Lolota, who our friend John Avalon's running against. And then you've got D'Esposito here, who I guess had his

fiance's kid on staff. What was happening there? I think it was the fiance's kid as well as the mistress in the same office. So I mean, it's potentially problematic or, you know, in an earlier time, that would have been a career ending sort of thing. And now it's, you know, just another, another news cycle. My favorite part about this, of course, Desposito was leading the charge to get santos expelled from the house because of his ethics problems so here's santos doing a victory lap on social media with some obscene tweet about uh what desposito has been doing with his genitals what has he been doing this is a this is an r-rated podcast i missed that what has he been doing with his genitals i think uh santos's tweet was you know i where does D'Esposito put his dick for

$10,000 or something like that. So something to that effect. Everyone, that's all, guitar, ravage, George Santos. Yeah, no, I'm going to miss him. I mean, it looks like he's going to the pokey for somewhere from two to six years. We'll find out in February. But at least, you know, if all does go to hell between the election and the inauguration, we will still have George Santos to comment on.

I just want to kind of go through another low light reel, some of these guys that I feel like don't get enough attention. So, you know, we might as well raise their name idea a little bit. Andy Ogles, Tennessee, you mentioned him earlier, he did a GoF fund me for a children's burial garden and then just pocketed the cash he did go fund me in that case and not the and not the barely and he also sort of made up what colleges he graduated from suggested he was a police officer and he hadn't been voters are very concerned obviously because he's coming back heck of a job by the Tennessee GOP there. Then we've got Anna Paulina Luna. I interviewed Whitney Foxx, who she's running against, who I think is a little bit of an underdog.

That'd be a good campaign to support for listeners that are looking at racism. And Anna Paulina, she was a Turning Point USA activist that got popular on Steve Bannon's podcast. Is that right? Right. And Mike Lindell was very key there as well. She, as my colleagues at the Post wrote about, shall we say, was quite creative in some of her resume too. I mean, I'm very impressed by her record in Congress. At some point, she had introduced,

I think, 10 pieces of legislation and like nine of them were trying to punish Adam Schiff. So, she came there for one purpose. I think wasn't the other one trying to arrest Merrick Garland? She wanted to fine and expel and censure Schiff. And then, yes, she was the one who wanted the inherent contempt of Merrick Garland. So not only would they hold him in contempt of Congress, they would actually send the sergeant at arms, you know, hustling down to find the attorney general somewhere and lock him up in a cell in the basement of the Capitol. So, I mean, there's still time left, right? I guess. And if you're in Tampa, St. Pete, and you're like, you know, I just want to make sure we've got representatives that are focused on, you know, making sure they're responsive to

the issues here. We have a hurricane potentially come in our direction here this weekend. They got to feel nice knowing that Anna Paulina Luna will be there. And it's just laser focused. Right. I mean, if you've got Merrick Garland under lock and key, I think you're going to be okay when the hurricane barrels through. This guy could actually lose. Derek Van Orden.

This is a race in Wisconsin. Another one that I'd flag for people. He was at the Capitol during the insurrection. And we'll talk about the yelling at the pages. Yeah. I mean, he's got a history of yelling at kids and librarians and his in his in his home state and that sort of thing but he was the one i think punchbowl reported it uh at the time these teenage pages from the senate

were down taking pictures in the rotunda and they got down on the ground like many people do to take pictures of the rotunda and he he comes in there late at night screaming at them to get the fuck up and other things like this, frightening children. Now, he's a rather excitable fellow. But I mean, he's got nothing on Ronnie Jackson for excitement. I mean, Ronnie Jackson will do that to a police officer. Was Ronnie Jackson class of 22? Or is he 20? Yeah, no, we I, he's, he's, he, he goes back when I, I do sort of group them all together at some point. Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, you just,

you have to make sure who, you know, sort of gets like when you're doing a, what'd you call it? The end of the year superlatives, you know, when you're doing superlatives for each class, that's one of the, you know, I want to make sure that Derek and Ronnie aren't competing, you know? No, no, no, they shouldn't be. I mean, and I say the class of 22 is easily the craziest since the class of 20, because of course then you had MTG and Boebert and just that right there. The only fool in my book that got more mentions than MTG was Kevin McCarthy.

I've just spent so much time on my Kevin here that I think we're just going to give him a pass. I guess it is fun. The saddest thing I think that I've maybe have ever seen in politics is this McCarthy getting expelled by his own members. And then rather than just going to get paid or whatever, going home to California, you know, open an auto dealership. He has decided to stay around and like unsuccessfully try to primary all the people that expelled him and like make fun of Matt Gates. I mean, sometimes he, you know, lands a punch on Matt Gates, but like the whole thing is very pathetic and sad. It is a bit sad, right? And he's always like looking for, you know,

a chance to be a commentator on cable news and he lost in that entire uh revenge tour it's easy i suppose to pick on kevin mccarthy but i will i'm not like an access journalist who gets a lot of scoops but i did a very important scoop in here and that is that he did in the dark of night soon after winning the speakership have a bidet wheeled into the speaker's office so he could have that he this is a man who really likes the trappings of the office like each time he had a news conference he'd go to a different part of the building and you could hear him on the microphone and steve scalise said hey boss this is a really great site and stefanik

would say oh yeah no this is a perfect site love this one. So it was all about, I am the speaker. And I enjoy the trappings of the job, even if I can't actually work in this job. And that brings me a lot more joy for his defenestration also, that he did enjoy the trappings so much that the trappings are now gone. And I think that's why he's running around trying to get himself on, you know, on television or whatever else it is. He needs that. Yeah, he floated himself for VP also in the Wall Street Journal. I enjoyed that. The bidet is just something to really think about,

just like how high of a priority that was for him. He spent a lot of time in the office, I guess. We got to finish with the impeachment effort. I do think that this has just been a utter failure of all of us i guess that the media class and the the imbalance between how democrats get treated and how republicans get treated like this sham impeachment was so embarrassing and like they literally were using sources who are russian intel to try to get joe biden with lies they put out press releases that were like had spelling errors and were factually wrong and like it seemed like they were written by

like cartman from south park like it was this like they had no evidence they had no they spent hundreds thousands of man hours and resources on this sham impeachment. And I just, I don't feel like it got the attention it deserved, just like how shameful the whole process was and continues to be actually, because it's not, it's not over. I did try to remedy that a bit in the book by devoting quite a bit to it. But yeah, I mean, you mentioned the one whistleblower is under indictment, who apparently collaborated with Russian intelligence, as you mentioned. The other, well, another whistleblower was involved with the Chinese, you know, this arms dealer who's still on the lam, as far as I know. Gal Luft, are we talking about Gal Luft?

Yeah, yeah. Another one that Gates and Green were trying to bring in. Well, she, Tara Reid, I think she actually defected to Russia in the middle of all of this. Poor Jamie Comer, you know, who's easily excitable getting into fights with Jared Moskowitz and calling him a smurf and just sort of, you know, being outclassed. He seems to be a bear of very little brain. So it was sort of painful to watch at each step. He'd tease his next big revelation, and then nothing would come out of that revelation. And then even when they finally have the impeachment hearings, and you've got Jonathan Turley saying, guys, I don't think you

got anything here. Come on, if you can't get Jonathan Turley to say your case is sound, then you're a Republican. It's really problematic. But, you know, they did get to show the nude pictures of Hunter Biden, you know, lightly blacked out, but not so much that we couldn't tell what was going on there. So, I mean, right. So they achieved something. They have the president's son's genitals out there in a hearing room. Nudes, I guess. I mean, the Hunter nudes were's genitals out there in a hearing room. Nudes, I guess. I mean, the Hunter nudes were kind of already out there, though. I think that anybody that wanted to see Hunter nude could have already seen it without the help of James.

Oh, come on. You're not even going to give him that. I won't. I can't even give him that. Those nudes have been lighting up text change across America for years now, Dana. They investigated his art dealer. I'm not sure that would have come to light. That's true. That's true. The whole thing is like, I mean, it's a little bit repetitive of Ken Buck point, but I just think it's important to state that like as extreme as like the Gingrich Republicans were

or as the Tea Party Republicans, like there is not really a pair. I mean, even like the Benghazi thing was clearly overkill like the number of hearings based upon what actually happened but like there was some underpinning thing that happened at benghazi right like a bad thing a bad thing that merited investigation just not to this like degree that republicans did i focused on it like this was all like it was totally based on nothing it was a clown car they were tools for the russians and just like the idea that these folks would just get put back in congress and that it's just kind of like oh we'll just laugh at the silly republicans i mean it's

just it speaks pretty ill of uh for the low bar that we have for Congress, like, is not being passed here. Yeah, and it does, I mean, making it up out of whole cloth is one thing. But as you point out, this wasn't, they're not the ones who made it up. In many cases, they were actually following Russian propaganda here. And this isn't the first time this happened. Obviously, during the Trump impeachment, we got a lot of that. And, you know, and the backdrop, of course, is Trump himself is coddling Putin. And these House Republicans, I think they voted, was it 111 or 102, against aid going

to Ukraine. And this was even after the five-month delay that allowed Putin to seize the advantage over there. So they're using Russian propaganda, but it's not just in a vacuum. It's part of a rather disturbing change in the republican party from internationalists to please vladimir have have your way with our nato partners well well at least you get some laughs out of it it's a depressing turn of events but the book is fools on the hill the hooligans saboteurs conspiracy theorists and dunces

who burned... They're burning. I'm changing it. They're burning down the house, who are currently burning down the house. Thank you so much. There's still a few embers that haven't gone out yet. You're right. Exactly. Thank you so much to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. Come back soon. Everybody else, we'll see you back here tomorrow.

We've got a guest with some very good words. We'll see you then peace I ain't got a house Hold tight Wait till the party's over Hold tight We're in for nasty weather There's got to be a way I ain't got a house

Here's your ticket back your bag Just don't put your bag on the floor Transportation is here Close enough, but not too far If you know where you are Right in front of the fire Always Maybe you might need a bigger shaker Dreams walking in broad daylight.

365 degrees. Burning kind of hot. Go ahead. The Borg Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.