The Daily Beast Podcast - Kevin McCarthy Is Proof You Don’t Negotiate With Terrorists

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Kevin McCarthy is being held hostage. Sorta. Kurt Bardella, a Los Angeles Times columnist and former House Oversights Committee staffer on the Republican side, joins this episode of TNA to chat with Danielle Moodie all about the GOP Speaker of the House shit show happening right now, starting with a big question from Danielle: How the hell did we get here? Bardella has some ideas, including very colorful language to describe the “bunch of ass clowns” leading this charge. Plus, Rep. Mondaire Jones also joins the pod to discuss the so-called “Never Kevin-ers” like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert—and the real reason he thinks that Republicans are embarrassed by George Santos. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. We're still easing our way back from the holidays, but that doesn't mean we don't have a great episode for you today.

We're going to be joined by Kurt Bardella, a contributor to the L.A. Times, a Democratic strategist, and a former staffer for the House Oversights Committee on the Republican side. But first, we're going to talk to Mondair Jones, a former congressman out of New York's 17th District to help us try to make some sense of what's going on exactly in the House and to get a little bit of a better understanding on who exactly is, Iron Donalds. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal former Congressman Mondare Jones, who represented New York 17th Congressional District, which one of the reasons why we are, have been experiencing the nightmare. A circus edition of the 118th Congress is because of the redistricting that happened in New York that removed the 17th congressional district.

So, Congressman, I want to start off first with asking you, that question about the redistricting that had New York lose four seats. And we are at a place where the Republicans have a razor-thin majority by four votes. They need 218 votes to secure a speaker. They need 218 votes to pass legislation. And that just happens to be the number that New York lost with redistricting. So can you speak to that a bit? Well, when you put it that way. You're welcome. It is surreal to know that the failure of New York Democrats in particular has directly resulted in, ironically, the minority leader who was from New York, not being the Speaker from New York in the House of Representatives. We have seen what happens when you have Republican control of the House.

We see that they can't do the first order of business, which is simply, electing a leader. And I don't see this situation getting any better in the coming days because a lot of what this group of 20 or 21, if you include Victoria Sparts of Indiana, as of the recording of this, our feeling is a personal animus for Kevin McCarthy, not rooted in substantive grievances that can be resolved through a simple rules change. You know, and look, we are. We are. We are, understand what gets people activated. And by people, I mean constituents, the voters, the electorate, active. To want to participate in democracy is recognizing that the politics are personal, right? But in this instance, what the Freedom Caucus has done is decide to hold hostage our entire government

and our democracy. What does it say to you that 20 people can hold up the will of over four, to get work done. What does it say about our systems and how we have seen so many cracks since the appearance of Donald Trump in our body politic back in 2016? What does it say that 20 people can do this? Well, it says a few things. As an initial matter, it says that the Republican party is not serious about actually governing. I mean, they campaign in ways that oftentimes are better than my Democratic colleagues, but when they actually get the reins of government, it is or should not be surprising to people that the same folks who increasingly don't believe the federal government should exist don't really care about resolving the question of who's

going to lead their caucus and be the next Speaker of the House. Now, systemically, to your point, this is also an indictment of a system of partisan gerrymandering. The vast majority of these 21 people, who identify as Republican, but are voting for someone other than Kevin McCarthy, these people are from deeply red districts that have been tailor made for them to win their primaries and then to coast to victory in general election contest, regardless of how crazy they are. You know, I want to stick on the gerrymandering for a minute because that is a term, right, that folks inside the Beltway, I worked on Capitol Hill. I was a lobbyist after I worked on Capitol Hill for a New York member of Congress,

Yvette Clark. And what I realize is that when we talk about voter suppression, when we talk about gerrymandering, the average person, right, who by virtue of how our public school systems are set up to, you know, not create civic engagement, to not really teach history in a way that is going to produce citizens that are aware of their power and their purpose, what I realize is that people don't really understand what that means, what Republicans are doing. Why a Lauren Bobert, why a Marjorie Taylor Green, why a Jim Jordan exist in the first place? And so can you just, can you, in elementary terms for us, express what it is that Republicans aided by our judicial system

have been able to do to districts and to the vote? Absolutely. Every 10 years in most instances, following the completion of the census, the different states in this country are allocated a set number of congressional districts. In many Republican states, the Republican-controlled state legislatures are able to draw what those districts look like, specifically to ensure that they are overwhelmingly Republican. The goal is to maximize the number of Republican seats. Now, this also happens in some Democratic states, but it doesn't happen nearly as much because in Democratic states, we tend to have things like increasingly anyway, independent redistricting commissions, which is what happened in New York State. Then a judge ended up drawing the map here, and it happened to be a Republican judge.

So go figure how some of these districts, including my own, got destroyed and now are going to be represented by a Republican when they should not be, when you consider things like compactness of districts, communities of interest. So whereas Democrats in states like New York and California have been dealing with independent redistribing commissions, which tend to draw fairer maps, you've got states like Texas, Florida, with the aid of its state Supreme Court, which allowed the legislature to draw a brutal map that reduced, by the way, the number of majority minority districts like Al Lawson's seat, are in a situation where they've got these deeply red districts whose residents watch Tucker Carlson and other Fox News TV hosts all day and believe what they see in here

and buy into the idea that Kevin McCarthy is the antichrist and at a minimum are going to vote for a Republican regardless of whether they vote for Kevin McCarthy for speaker or not. That is a situation. There are no actual electoral repercussions for people like Lauren Beauret. It's so infuriating, right? Because when you, when we talk about getting people out to vote and we talk about these historic numbers that are needed, and we talk about waking up the electorate, I think that it's really important for people to understand what we are up against. It isn't just about getting people registered to vote and then making sure that they actually get to the polls, but making sure that we have districts that make sense, that don't look like pretzels

in order to allow for more Republicans, more insurgents, which is what they are acting like, to take over our government. I want to shift gears now to what we are seeing over the last couple of days play out on the House floor. Particularly what has happened with the, what I'm going to call the faux nomination of Byron Donalds and the invocation of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. by Republicans. And they're wanting to applaud what they believe is going to be, you know, this historic nomination, which we all know is part of their larger game. So can you speak to, oh, I don't know, maybe the nausea that you had when you saw that come up or what you think about their puppetry? The whole thing was crazy. Byron is a friend. He has a lot of different talents,

but on policy, he could not be further from where Frederick Douglass was. He is ultra-maggot in the way that the president describes and has aligned himself with law and boge. and others in the far-right Freedom Caucus. The fact that he is black does not absolve him of culpability with respect to the positions that he holds. You know, it's interesting to hear Republicans talk about how race doesn't matter, but as soon as they get to nominate a black person, that's all they want to talk about.

So it's, you know, the latest in hypocrisy. But I do wish him well because I want him to succeed and opening the eyes of his colleagues to the importance of the black experience and how that's not something that should be glossed over, but rather interrogated. Because we know that the black community, and Byron grew up in New York City, and so he knows this. And in fact, was a Democrat for a chunk of his life, is different from the experience of white Americans. And that's something that I think should impact policy as we try to resolve, you know, hundreds of years of systemic discrimination. But I suppose that if you don't see that as an issue, you would not be the person to be advocating for that, definitely, surely not inside of the Freedom Caucus.

You know, one of the funniest tweets that I think that you put up, Congressman, was we thought that the biggest scandal that was going to happen for Republicans was going to be George Santos. And I cackled because I'm from. New York from Suffolk County, Long Island. So George Santos is not a part of my congressional makeup, thank God. But what does it say that they are willing to, let's say, shun this grifter and charlatan. But the reason why George Santos was even able to come into the body politic is because of Donald Trump,

because of their embrace of the fact that who cares about an emoluments clause, Who cares about foreign aid? Who cares you don't give up your tax returns? What does it say that, oh, this is a person they're willing to draw the line for, but not really because they need his vote for Kevin McCarthy. But he came to be because of their embrace of Trump and Trumpism. The only reason Republicans on the House floor are embarrassed to sit next to Jura Santos is because he lies a lot worse than they do.

I mean, you know, he obviously can't tell the truth for his. life. The scandals are legion. But think about all of his Republican colleagues who lie about President Biden, who lie about the Democratic agenda for working families, who lie about basic statistics, facts and figures, who, in fact, lied about the free and fair election that occurred in 2020 that got us President Biden. And, you know, they did this by voting. not to certify that free and fair election, just hours after nearly dying alongside me. So these people lie all the time. It is in their DNA. George Santos is just really bad because he keeps getting caught in spectacular fashion.

And that is why they're embarrassed, but not so embarrassed that they won't accept his vote, that Kevin McCarthy and his supporters won't accept his vote in exchange for cover. Kevin McCarthy hasn't said much of anything about George Santos. No. And there's a reason for that. It's because so long as you can do something for Kevin McCarthy, specifically to make him speaker, which again, I'm not certain at all is going to happen, even after all the concessions he's made, then you're good with him. And the rest of the country, be damned. Let's talk about Kevin McCarthy now, which is Kevin McCarthy is not an ideologue, right? Kevin McCarthy is not a person that embraces any strong feelings or causes whatsoever.

He is a politician. He is a politicker. He can raise millions of dollars by telling people exactly what it is that they want to hear exactly when it is that they want to hear it. What do you see as the real causation of this 20 who are never Keviners? Because Kevin, we watched him right after the insurrection happened for about a hot minute, get on the House floor to condemn violence, to condemn Donald Trump. And then we watched him jump on a plane to go to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring of Donald Trump. So we know that Kevin will give people what they want so long as he gets what he wants,

which is to hold the gavel, even if it's hollowed out from the inside because of his own horse trading. So what is it that is causing these people to say never Kevin when they know that they can essentially ride this man like a donkey? And in fact, many of them should feel gratitude towards him because I look at someone like Matt Gates, who's probably the biggest never keviner, as you say, in the House GOP caucus. When Matt was under investigation by the Federal Department of Justice for child sex trafficking, among other things, Kevin wasn't out here criticizing him. So I'm thinking to myself, what more did you want from Kevin? But I think it's that they don't respect him as a person. They view him as someone who will tell them whatever they want to hear in exchange for their support for the speakership.

The speakership is something that Kevin has wanted for decades. It was denied to him back in 2015. He was the heir apparent to John Boehner after he resigned from the caucus. after, by the way, the Tea Party Republicans ran the last speaker route or the second to last speaker route. And then they skipped over Kevin McCarthy and went with Paul Ryan, who they now hate, right? And who left the Congress because he was tired of how right-wing the Tea Party slash Freedom Caucus types have become and how they are now ascendant in the party. You know, I actually take issue with people describing these 21-plus individuals.

as fringe, they are representative of the base of the Republican Party. And just because people haven't yet defected from supporting Kevin McCarthy doesn't mean that they are not sympathetic to what Chip Roy and others have been saying on the House floor as a critique of the way Kevin McCarthy has been running the caucus. So, Congressman, by the time that this airs, we could be at vote, votes eight, nine, 10, 12. 51, as Beyonce was saying. Yeah, exactly.

5011. Where do you see this 118th Congress going? We have allowed, what I kept saying on Twitter and in other spaces is that Kevin McCarthy deserves everything that he gets. This is what happens when you invite the monster to dinner. You become the meal, right? And so this is what has happened with the Republicans embrace of insurrectionists, white domestic terrorists, racist, misogynist, this is what has happened. They are now unrecognizable

even to themselves. So if and when they finally elect a speaker, what do you think the 118th Congress looks like for the next two years? I think it is a catastrophe. Even if Kevin McCarthy were to become speaker, he has, at least as of the reporting of this morning, agreed to a rule change that would allow one person, one member of the House of Representatives, to move to vacate the chair, which is a procedure that allows for a vote on replacing the speaker. And you know that Democrats are down to replace Kevin McCarthy as speaker under such circumstances. So there are so many ways in which Kevin McCarthy's tenure can be short-lived and will be short-lived to say nothing of his inability to pass actual legislation. If you can't even get nearly all of your Republican members

to vote for you as their speaker, how can you corral them to vote to avert the debt limit crisis, which is looming, or to reauthorize things? Or to, by the way, pass the next omnibus appropriations bill so that the federal government doesn't shut down after September 30th of this year. These and so many other things like constituting committees are extremely important. And I know that a lot of Americans, for understandable reasons, are not as attuned to them as I am as a former member. But these have material impacts in the lives of everyday folks. And Republicans in this 118th Congress have shown no competency and no willingness to grapple with just the day-to-day responsibilities of being a good. governing party in the house. I mean, it is quite extraordinary. And I, you know, while,

while people are popping popcorn and, you know, and popping bottles as we watch what we perceive to be the implosion of the Republican Party, we also have to recognize that this is catastrophic for the sanctity of our democracy, that something like this has not happened in 100 years. And so what does that say about our ability to govern? What does it say about our standing in the world? And so why? Why do that say about our standing in the world? And so why? while I think rightfully so, we can revel in some many ways to say this is what happens when you let the toddlers run the show. They run it off of a cliff. At the same time, how do we maintain our democracy and keep it on track is going to be, you know, up for debate for the next two years. Congressman Mondair

Jones, thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal. We really appreciate you. Thanks for having me. Friends, I am excited to welcome to the new new abnormal, my friend, Kurt Bardella, who you all should know at this point in time if you're following politics of any kind. Kurt Bardella is a contributor at the LA Times. He's a Democratic strategist and formerly a House Oversight Committee staff member on the Republican side for which she was a member until 2016. And so, Kurt, you wrote a piece this week in the LA Times, which I tweeted out, as many of our friends and colleagues did, because it was just so spot on. And the piece is entitled, Kevin McCarthy's Speaker Election Fiasco has been brewing in the GOP for years.

So before we get to the 5011 vote that is happening on the floor right now to embarrass Kevin McCarthy, talk to us about how Republicans got to this point to begin with. Yeah, you know, it's interesting because as we watch this, you know, complete and, utter humiliation of Kevin McCarthy unfold day by day here. I think it's important that people understand that this isn't something that just happened overnight, that was spontaneous that you couldn't see coming. This was, you know, as I wrote, years in the making. And the moment that I believe that this began was on June 10, 2014, when that night, the sitting house Republican majority leader Eric Canter lost his primary to a right-wing challenger named Dave Brat. No one saw this coming.

one could imagine that someone as powerful as a sitting house majority leader would be in a situation where he would lose his seat. Cantor was part of the trifecta that was dubbed the Young Guns. They were going to be the next generation of leaders for Republican. And the three that made up, that group was Cantor, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy. But that night, and I remember being on a conference call that Steve Bannon was on, gloating that they had, quote, finally gotten the scalp that they needed to propel their movement forward. And what we would see after that was just a string of stinging defeats by the Republican establishment at the hands of this kind of ban-in-led, almost insurrectionist-type movement within the party. John Boehner,

the Speaker of the House, would a year later resign from being in the House altogether. He took his ball and went home. Paul Ryan would take over. He would then take his ball and go home. and all the while McCarthy would try to replace them, but found himself on the opposite end of what we call the House Freedom Caucus, just like we're seeing now, it's the same type of members that blocked them before. They're blocking him now. And each time, what I find the most interesting about this, and there's been a lot of discussion,

and we've had these discussions over the years, Danielle Yodai, of how did the party get this way? How did Donald Trump hijack them? And the answer is very simple. Every single time there was a confrontation, a conflict, the Republican establishment just rolled over. They just literally said, yes, sir, may I have some more as Trump smacked the crap out of them all over the place. And that's why these 2019 insurrectionist love and extremists felt like they could successfully hold hostage an entire confidence of 222.

I mean, it's insane, Danielle, to think that right now, less than 10% of the Republican caucus is holding the entire thing hostage. And what is McCarthy's response to it? It's to give them more. It's to try to negotiate. There's a reason why the official policy in the United States of America is we don't negotiate with terrorists. It's because of a shit like this that's going on right now on the House floor. I want to read this part of your piece, right, which is what you're speaking to right now.

It says time and time again, we've seen a vocal minority within the Republican conference exert an inordinate amount of influence over the majority. Each time, with each conflict, the response from the Republican leadership was to back down or fold that reflex to pander to the most extreme voices within their party is what allowed President Trump to hijack it. So, Kurt, you know, here's the thing. It isn't as if we hadn't received warnings about Donald Trump, about the Tea Party, about Steve Bannon and Lauren Ingraham. And every single time, we were told, mainstream media told us, oh, they are the fringe. They are not the mainstream. Oh, don't worry, there are going to be adults in the room. Here the fuck we are,

because there have been no adults in the room, or we have overestimated, right, the fortitude of those adults in the room. So talk to us about how you have somebody whose name was not a part of political lexicon like a Steve Bannon become one of the architects of the current amalgamers. of the Freedom Caucus Tea Party and Maga Trumpism movement. No, it's funny because I've heard Steve many times in the past talk about people like Kevin McCarthy or Paul Ryan or even John Bainer back in the day. And he would say very openly, there are a bunch of pussies. And he calculated that through sheer force, through sheer personality, that he could basically

stare them down and that they would blink. And frankly, over the course of time, that theory, that hypothesis. would be proven correct. They would blink. They would back down. The Republican Party has made it so clear that they are terrified of their own voters to the point where they are willing to take the most extreme positions, run the most extreme candidates, even if it results in what we've seen time. And again, electoral defeat, they know that if they in any way try to stand up, that it could cost them their seat. And so what's happened is they, you know, this is a prison of their own making. They've put themselves in this position where those extremists who have now successfully

found themselves to be a member of the House of Representatives can band together and just make their life a living hell. And it's just mind-numbing to me to watch that their response to this, Kevin McCarthy right now, is to negotiate rules and procedures that will make it easier for more extremists to become part of Congress and to exert more influence over them. I think a lot of people in the Republican Party right now need to be asking themselves is the price that Kevin McCarthy is willing to pay to obtain even the appearance of power, because let's be honest, he won't have any power. He's a hostage right now. And even if he gets to speakership, he will be their hostage and their puppet. Is that price worth paying to make sure that Kevin's speaker of the house? Because they're giving

away every piece of leverage, every ounce of power they could possibly have. And you have to ask what the fuck is the point of this? Like, what are you guys doing for everyone right now who cast these people as rebels, the 20 that are holding the House Representative's hostage right now. They're not rebels, by the way. Let's just be clear about that. That's almost an insult. I cannot stand that this is what they're being referred to. For them, it is a badge of honor. As each and every vote would go, we're watching the smirks on Lauren Bobert and Matt Gates' face get wider and wider. And I'm like, they're not rebels, right? They're idiots. They're insurrectionists. They're domestic terrorists that have taken whole. and hostage of our government and our democracy. And I think that I think here, Kurt, words matter.

What we call these people, what we refer to them as matters because it sets a tone for what it is that we're going to tolerate moving forward. And to your point, as it pertains to Kevin McCarthy, they keep telling me that there are moderates that are left within the Republican House. They keep saying that, you know, the moderates and the centrist won't stand. for this. You tell me, who the fuck are they talking about? Yeah, I don't know. Because I'm confused, because these are the same people, right, that after that same chamber that they can't elect a speaker in that was ransacked by their own MAGA mob, right? A hundred of them still voted to decertified the election against Joe Biden. So I'm confused about who the moderates are

and what the ideology is that they're fighting over. Because in my mind, there isn't any. Yeah, because when you have on the other side of the Matt Gates, Lauren Bobart push here, when you have Jim Jordan, Steve Stelis, Marjorie Taylor Green, that's not moderate, folks. We all need to have our heads examined if we think that that's what moderation is, is to line up behind people who didn't think twice about abandoning democracy, who didn't think twice about casting the domestic terrorists of January 6 as political prisoners who are being oppressed by their own government and all that bullshit that we hear them spew, Tom and again,

if there were truly moderate in the Republican Party right now and the House of Representatives, they would be banding together themselves saying, Kevin McCarthy, if you get into these lunatics, we're not voting for you either. Fuck that. No one's doing that. For all of the theater that we're seeing play out right now,

my biggest disappointment, which has been a source of disappointment for years now, is that the so-called grown-ups in the room who do know better, who have professed to care about the institution are letting this happen and not standing up saying, hey, if you're willing to give away the store to Lauren Bobart and Matt Gates and Paul Gosar,

we're not voting for that, Kevin. We'd rather you step down and us pick somebody else who can at least ensure that we have a chance at getting shit done this year. Because let me tell you something. The way that this is going, this is the high point of the year right now, Daniel. Let me tell you.

This is as good as it's going to get for the Republicans in Congress. We're a handful of days in, and this is the high point? Oh, my God. If you allow these people to get all of these concessions so that one person can hold the entire Congress hostage every day with a vote about the speakership, let me tell you something. Have they thought this through? What do you think Adam Schiff and Eric Swaller are going to do when you kick them off all their committees? If I'm them, I'm walking to the floor every day and holding the floor hostage to have a vote on the speakership. Because that's what these idiots, these morons, are going to allow to happen by negotiating for this speaker and name only, Kevin McCarthy.

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music for your music for no you're your business will be a a good exitio with Shopify. even if Kevin successfully negotiates his way out of this, he will be, A, the weakest speaker we've ever seen,

showdown that could result in the full faith and credit United States going underwater. Outside of the one vote vacate of the speakership, right? Let's talk for a moment about these other concessions because some of them are about your former committee that you served on, the oversight, right? And we're looking at this and what some of these Freedom Caucus members, they want more Freedom Caucus members on the Oversight Committee so that, that they can turn the next two years into Benghazi on crack, right? So that they can do as many hearings and waste as much taxpayer dollars on pulling in Hunter Biden's laptop and maybe some, oh, I don't know, some people from the geek squad at Best Buy and maybe, maybe, you know,

maybe folks from the Apple store to talk to them about how you can hide certain files. Like, I don't know. But talk to us about some of these concessions and what, a committee hearing could potentially look like with the likes of Marjorie Taylor Green or a Lauren Bobert or folks that are put in positions of power that essentially leapfrog over those that have been actually doing the work and waiting in line. You know, it's interesting because there was a point in time where committees like the House Oversight Committee had very serious members on it on both sides of the aisle. You know, you had Democrats like like Henry Waxman, Dennis Kucinich.

You had Republicans like Tom Davis of Virginia who even led the NRCC at one point, but was a very moderate member of Congress, who took the job very seriously and who felt very strongly that after the Comedy Act that was the Oversight Committee during the Clinton years, where Dan Burton would launch witch hunt after which hunt after President Clinton, that there needed to be a reset and it needed to be a more responsible place. To go from that to a place where a Marjorie Taylor Green could be dictating what the government should be investigating, where these lunatics could have subpoena authority, deposition authority, where they can, very kindly, they can use the instruments of power to wreck a lot of lives.

It's dangerous. It undermines the credibility of the Congress even further, and it is already. Let's even set aside the fact that for the last two years, Republicans and Congress, have been ignoring congressional authority, have been undermining congressional subpoenas via the January 6th committee, that some of these very members who want to serve on this committee were targets of the investigation because evidence surface that showed the role that they played in helping choreograph the domestic terrorist attack in January 6. I mean, imagine if after 9-11, the United States government thought it was a good idea to put members who help plan and scout

that attack on a congressional oversight committee. You know, some people might say, Oh, that's an extremist thing to say, that Fox News will lose their mind if they get wind of that quote. But guess what? That's the fucking truth. I'm so sick of people trying to tiptoe around what the right vocabulary is for this stuff. One of the emails that came out that was released over the holiday break, flat out sad, I think it might have been a Hope Hicks email that said, they're going to call us domestic terrorists now. Because you are. I mean, I'm sorry. But when you help plan, execute, cover up an effort to sack the capital, hang the vice president and stop up. a democratic election. Guess what? You're a fucking domestic terrorist. If that happened in any other country, we'd call you that. It's time that we started using that vocabulary here to apply to these situations. And the idea that we would put domestic terrorist sympathizers at the very

least on a congressional oversight or judiciary committee to investigate the President of the United States and this family is fucking insane. Let's pull back from the Beltway insider, you know, caring about what is going on and the watching this with with popcorn. and cocktails. Do the average American people, right, are they looking at this and they're thinking to themselves, if they cast a vote for Republicans during the midterm elections, are they scratching their heads and saying, what did I do? Or are they cheering this on and they think that the Republicans are actually doing something? Because I got to tell you that, you know, I'm not one to give a fuck about going inside the minds of the Republican voter, because I think that in all honesty, again,

that if you are naming yourself a Republican in this day and age, then you might as well be akin to the clan. I really see there is no difference. Whenever I see a Trump flag or a Trump sign in a neighbor's yard out on Long Island, I'm like, yeah, so you've just identified yourself as a racist and a homophobic and a transphobe, and the list goes on. But do you think that these people, do they look at this circus and they think that, oh, this is right? because they want the demise of government so bad that this implosion is what they voted for? Yeah, that's interesting because I go back to something that Steve Bannon once said, which was his goal was to burn the whole place down.

Right. And this is someone who is a self-described Leninist. And if you don't know what that means, look it up. It's not good. And we're seeing that vision brought to life every day by these people. When you look at the people who voted in this election, And I think Republicans seem to be completely blind to this fact. But they barely won the House representatives.

This was not an overwhelming mandate, a clean sweep of government, a red wave. It was barely a ripple. To the people who voted for Amendment Oz or Kerry Lake, yeah, you probably love what's happening right now. Because you fundamentally don't give a shit about governance and the welfare of this country. But if you're a voter who took a pass on those type of candidates, which was overwhelmingly the majority of this country, That's every single election denier that ran for the United States Senate, that ran for secretaries of state, that ran for governors, they all lost. If you're one of those voters, you're looking at this one, what the fuck are you guys doing? If you're a Republican voter who put in a Republican in your ballot because you believe what they said they would do, which was passed legislation to deal with inflation, to deal with crime, you're wondering, this shit show is not what I voted for either.

The first impressions matter. The reason why I remember when Obamacare was implemented and they launched healthcare.com and it was just a shit show, let's be honest, it was not good. That first impression painted public perception of Obamacare for a good two to four years. The first impression of Republicans in power is this shit show that's unfolding for the last couple of days that might go into the weekend and beyond. You are taking a giant billboard out every day right now, telling the American people that you are not equipped to govern. there is no reason why you should ever be given the keys to government ever again. If you give your kid keys to the car and he crashes it like six times in a row, you're not going to give him the keys to the car anymore.

This is what I think the American people are seeing right now because most of the time, most people, they don't know the ins and outs of parliamentary process. They don't give a shit. But everyone right now, every paper in America, you look at the Bakershield, California, in front page, Kevin McCarthy's District, they are calling them out. And it is very clear. This isn't a both sides thing. This isn't a Republican versus Democrat thing.

This is a Republican versus Republican situation. And they look like a bunch of ass clowns right now. We're recording this. And folks, this is right before the seventh vote. Day three, vote seven. Yeah, day three, vote seven. This is how we're counting life right now, is supposed to happen. And, you know, we don't know.

But I have two questions before I let you go, Kurt. One is, do you think that Kevin McCarthy is wounded to the point that he needs to pull out? Or is it that his ego and thirst for power, which at this point is so fucking hollow, like the Republican's heart, that he won't let it go, that he is a dog with a bone. And he's going to just keep going. He said that he wants to beat the record, which is over 100 votes to get to. the speakership, I can't imagine that the Republican conference, even as little as I think of them, will stand for this. So do we go through the weekend if it's not solved today? Yeah, we do. Because here's the thing about McCarthy. He has lusted for this position for more than a decade now, really. And if he doesn't get it, he's done. I mean, I think that he'll

leave Congress altogether if he doesn't get the speakership. So for Kevin, this is all or nothing. This is win or go home time. It's also, where do you see your, do you want to go down in history as the guy who got ran out of Congress this way? Do you want to, you know, without even getting the prize, even if you only have it for a week, a month, six months, do you really want to go down as someone who will be not just a footnote in history, but a laughing stock in history? If you're going to endure this kind of pain and humiliation, you better damn well get something out of it at the end of the day. Otherwise, what was it all for? I mean, why even put yourself through that if you don't get the prize at the end. So Kevin has a lot to fight for personally. Whether or not his conference has an

appetite to put up with that, I don't know. I do think it helps him that the face of this movement is a Lauren Bobart of Matt Gates, people that the colleagues don't really feel very highly of in the first place. Nobody, I think, in Kevin's side wants to feel like they gave in to Gates and Bobart. No matter what they think about Kevin, this fight for them, I think is a little bit bigger than that. So I could see them digging in. I can see Kevin digging in for a long time. I can see Kevin digging in for a time because, you know, the only thing more dangerous than someone fighting for something is someone who has nothing left to lose. And in Kevin's case, if you take this away from him, he's got nothing left at the end of the, at the end of the road here. So it's every incentive to keep fighting

because if he loses, he's done. He'll leave. He'll end up like Boehner, like Paul Ryan, he'll have to take his ball and go home in humiliation. And I don't think that's in his DNA. You've given this much. You've got to get something out of it. I think that's where his heads at, at least right now. Whether or not the rest of the conference has an appetite for that, I guess we'll see. I do think that this will go into the weekend. I think the important thing here is we start, you know, day three, vote seven coming up here is he needs to show some progress. He needs to at least get a couple of these folks to come his way. If the deals that he's been making, the concessions have been making makes that number of 20 and it brings it down to 15 or 10,

that's going in the right direction and that gives him at least cost to keep fighting another a day or two or three or four. So we'll see. Last question for you. Byron Donald's. And the fact that the Republican Party just can't seem to help themselves when it comes to puppeteering a black person or a person of color. This performance that they did invoking Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. had me want to jump through the screen and slap all of them. I don't believe in violence, folks, but that was the feeling that was conjured inside of me. What do you make of this? Well, I mean, that's exactly what we have seen from the Republican Party time and again here, right? It's, oh, you know, we're not racist. Look, we have this black person on

our side. How could we possibly be racist? It is a disgusting display of, of, you know, tokenism that isn't serious. I'm appalled by them parading around a person of color like that, frankly, when everyone knows it's not a serious effort to make this person speaker of the house. But that just tells you the worldview of how these people view people of color, they're mascots to them. They're not real human beings. They're disposable. They're dispensable. And they only want to bring them up on front of the stage when it suits them. And it's par for the course of this racist party. Everything that these guys do day in and day out just further shines a light on their

flagrant and blatant racism. They aren't trying to hide it. They don't wear hoods anymore because they don't feel like they need to. They can just be openly, brazenly racist. And everything that they are fighting for right now, it needs to be seen through the lens of racism

because everything they do is seen through the lens of white nationalism. Their attitudes on crime, their rhetoric on immigration, everything is about people of color taking something from us. And that goes back to, you know, Charlottesville, there's a reason why almost every single insurrectionist that we saw on January 6 was white. It's part for the course for these guys. Yeah. Kurt Bardella, I appreciate you so much,

folks. The op-ed is in the LA Times. If you want to know more about the history as to why we are at this point, check it out. Is it entitled? Kevin McCarthy's speaker election fiasco has been brewing in the GOP for years. And if you're not following Kurt Bardella on Twitter, you are missing out. And you can catch him all the time. I don't know when you sleep, dear friend, on MSNBC, because he is a contributor there. Appreciate you, Kurt, and, you know, maybe you'll come back for the 50-11 vote. Who knows? I think this is something we're going to experience together, my friend. I appreciate you. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the

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