The Daily Signal - Why House Republicans, and Maybe Some Democrats, Want to Remove Speaker Nancy Pelosi

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Conservatives who make up the House Freedom Caucus last week forced a meeting of the House's entire Republican conference to discuss a motion "to vacate the chair," which is a push to force Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to step down. The Freedom Caucus has worked on this effort to remove Pelosi since July. What was the deciding factor in going ahead now? How does the motion to vacate work, especially given the House's Democrat majority? Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., chairman of the Freedom Caucus, joins The Daily Signal Podcast to discuss. We also cover these stories: The New York Times publishes an article detailing President’s Trump's income tax returns.   Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham says that confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett will begin Oct. 12.  Chris Wallace, host of “Fox News Sunday,” will moderate tonight's first presidential debate tonight, but doesn't plan to fact-check either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, September 29th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Dahl Judis. Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona, who is also the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, will be joining me on the Daily Signal podcast to talk about why he, along with the House Republican Conference, is discussing the motion to vacate the chair, which is a push to get Nancy Pelosi to step down. Don't forget. If you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcast.

and encourage others to subscribe. Now onto our top news. The New York Times released an article Sunday detailing the president's latest tax return information. The Times says that they gained access to President Trump's tax returns dating back two decades and reports that the president only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and again in 2017.

The Times added that Trump had paid no income taxes, at all in 10 of the previous 15 years, largely because he reported losing much more money than he made. In response to the report, Trump tweeted Monday morning, the fake news media, just like election time 2016, is bringing up my taxes and all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information and only bad intent. I paid many millions of dollars in taxes, but was entitled like everyone else to depreciation and tax credits. The president also noted on Twitter that he is the only president on record to give up my yearly $400,000 plus presidential salary.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham told Fox News Sunday morning futures that confirmation hearings for Amy Coney-Barritt will begin on October 12th. During an interview Sunday, Graham said, More than half of the Supreme Court justices who have had hearings were done within 16 days or less, so we'll start on October 12th. Graham also added that Barrett would have a day of introduction, two days of questioning, followed by a markup and that the Senate Judiciary Committee would report her nomination on October 22nd, less than 14 days before the November 3rd presidential election, Fox News reported. Connecticut Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal

and Democrat Senator Maisie Hirono of Hawaii said they both refused to meet with Barrett. On Twitter, Blumenthal said, If Judge Barrett's views become law, hundreds of millions of Americans living with pre-existing conditions would lose access to their health care. In the middle of the pandemic, Russian confirmation of an extreme jurist who will decimate health care is unconscionable. I will refuse to treat this process as legitimate and will not meet with Judge Amy Coney-Barritt. Chris Wallace, host of the Fox News Program Fox News Sunday, will be moderating the first presidential debate tonight, but he will not be. fact-checking either President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden. Frank J. Forrenkoff Jr., co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates, told CNN, we don't expect Chris or our other moderators to be

fact-checkers. The minute the TV is off, there will be plenty of fact-checkers. Forin-Koff added that the moderator is the facilitator. When we choose moderators, we make very clear to them that there's a vast difference between being a moderator in a debate and being a reporter who is interviewing someone. Now stay tuned for my conversation with Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona on why Republicans and even some Democrats want to oust House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It's because of support from listeners like you that we can continue to produce podcasts like Heritage Explains and SCOTUS 101.

And you can help us keep it up by going to www. dot org slash podcast today to make your tax deductible gift. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona, who is also the chairman of the House of Rima Caucus. Congressman Biggs, it's always great to have you on the Daily Signal podcast. Thanks, Rachel. Good to be with you. Well, thanks for making time to be with us. Well, on Wednesday, the House Freeman Caucus forced a meeting of the entire House Republican

conference to discuss the motion to vacate the chair, which is a push to get how Speaker Nancy Pelosi to step down. Can you tell us about what's going on here? Yeah. So when Nancy Pelosi became speaker, because she had the majority, she changed the rules to make it very, very difficult to remove the speaker. Wonder why. That's not a coincidence. And one of the things that we have to do is we have to get our minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, to make the motion. In order for him to make the motion, we have to go through the rules of our body. So we were able to, the House Freedom Caucus, get enough signatures on board of people who want to see a change in the speaker to force the debate. So we had the debate last Wednesday.

The Speaker Pelosi should be removed. We know that. We all know that. The question is, was it the timing appropriate? And we had a very good discussion within conference. Well, the House Freedom Caucus has been working on this effort since July. Can you talk about what was the deciding factor to go ahead with this right now? Well, we've been pushing at it, as you say, for months, even with a draft resolution to remove her done.

But what really kind of pushed everybody over the limit is this notion that she would even allow the suggestion of impeachment of the president for engaging in his constitutional prerogative, not just a prerogative, but his obligation. I mean, the American people elected him to be the president of the United States for a full four years. And part of his duty is to fill Supreme Court vacancies. And so this notion that you had impeached him for doing a constitutionally required duty was just a step too far. And then her rhetoric in the recent couple of weeks has just been absolutely abysmal and demeaning to the institution. So that was kind of the last straw. Well, Congressman, that was actually one of my next questions just talking about how Pelosi is threatening to again impeach the president for the second time this year for doing his job, as you highlighted, which is nominating a justice to fill the vacancy that was created by Justice Ginsburg. So what is her motivation here when he is just trying to fulfill the dictates of his role?

Well, what she said is that they want to do anything. And the Democrats and the Senate have said the same thing. They will do anything to stop this nomination. That's an outrageous statement in and of itself. I mean, you have a really, really qualified individual. But what she's wanting to do is, even though the House has virtually nothing to do with the advice and consent, we just are observers, she wanted to, and she said it, basically, that she wanted to create a distraction, a distraction for this administration. So while they're in a very contentious confirmation process, she wanted to,

tie down everybody that she possibly could in the White House by impeaching the president. And then secondarily, she's also said she wants to impeach the Attorney General Bill Barr. So when you hear that type of thing, you say, this is a raw abuse of power. And it can't stand. So we're a majoritarian country, the rights of the minority, which in this case would be Republicans in the House, need to be protected. And so that was one of our goals is to say, look, she needs to be removed. And some people said, in fact, I would tell you that there's largely consensus in the body that she needs to be removed. And if she actually does try to go through with any of this, the minority leader has said that he will make that motion post-haste, which is a privileged motion.

So it would get immediate attention. It's despicable that they would attempt to use impeachment. I mean, what they did last time was impeachment because they don't like the president. This time they would use it as a distraction because they don't like the fact that he got to appoint Amy Coney-Barrant. Well, can you talk a little bit about how the motion to vacate works, especially given the Democrat majority in the House? The way it works is the minority leader would file the motion. with a clerk and bring it up immediately that when we were on the floor, they would have to recognize him. They cannot not recognize him. They must recognize him. And he would make a privileged motion

to vacate, which means to remove the speaker. What would happen at that point is that we anticipate anyways that Democrats would move to table or to set that motion to vacate aside. And we would then have a motion on that. And that would be the telling motion. That would be effectively saying you support Pelosi or you don't support Pelosi. You support the removal or you don't support the removal, all in that motion to table. And we anticipate that there could be as many as 15 or 20 Democrats that would cross over and vote with the Republicans. And if that's where the case, then you would have a good chance of actually removing Nancy Pelosi. I was actually I'm going to ask you, too, are there any in her own party, and you did allude to this in your answer,

mentioning that you think 10 or 15 Democrats might cross over and vote to remove her. But do you think there are those in her own party who are frustrated by her leadership? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, they are. They're quiet publicly about it. I know that they've had some very contentious conference meetings, but moreover, some of my colleagues who are friends from the other I have expressed to me their frustration with her. Some believe that she's not far enough left. Others of me believe that the left, the Marxist, more Marxist side of the Democrats have co-opted her speakership.

But what she has, Rachel, and this is important for everyone to understand is she raises just bucket loads of money. And so she's so effective at keeping her conference together because she does. raise an awful lot of money. Well, as we look at the situation and, you know, potentially Congress removing her, the House removing here, who would you all want to replace Pelosi with? Well, I mean, there's so many people that I think would probably do a job of being fair, but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody like a Clyburn would come into play,

because I think that he would have the support of a fairly broad number of the Democratic conference and I think that he would also be a fair broker. I don't think that he would ram this stuff down our throats. And I think that he would also encourage his chairman instead of to violate the rules to follow the rules and understand. I mean, to violate the rules when you're the majority is silly because you always have the votes. You know you always have the votes. And so when you try to prevent members of at least one of the committees I sit on from actually raising a point of order or discussing issues, what you're doing is you're saying, you know what, not only do we have the majority, but we're not even going to follow the rules.

We're not going to have decorum here. We're not going to allow you to even have your say and represent your district here. And that's what's happened here. And that's how this whole body has been denigrated is because the speaker has allowed that to go on. Switching gears just a bit here. Last week, you have a special order on the House floor to find out about who's been funding the recent riots we've seen. all across this country. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, so we were able to control the floor for an hour and bring in people, many from

the Freedom Caucus, but others from around the body as well, to come in and talk about a couple of things. Number one, the police have been mercilessly attacked, and number two, even Democrats who run some of these cities have acknowledged that these riots are coordinated. And so if you have coordination, then you know you've got organization. And the RICO statutes, for instance, are very, very broad and allow for prosecution of a RICO, a civil RICO case, just on a conspiracy type of issue. And so we wanted to forward the questions about the organizations, who's out there? Who is coordinating these riots?

Who is coordinating and giving material? I mean, over the last week, You've seen U-Hauls coming to some of these locations filled with tools of rioting and causing mayhem. Somebody is organizing. And with somebody's organizing, we need some people to come in and investigate, make arrest, and prosecute. And the best place to do that, which we're all very frustrated about, is not necessarily Congress, which has some authority and some power to investigate, but is the Federal Bureau. of investigation. That's who should be conducting these investigations.

We're not seeing that. And it's been very, very frustrating to us. And so that's why we did the special order last week. Well, on that note, Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez recently did some investigative reporting himself. And in an exclusive commentary, he did last week for the Daily Signal, he wrote that Alicia Garza, who's one of the three founders of the Black Lives Matter organization, had partnered with a left-wing San Francisco group that's known to carry water.

for China, which is the Chinese Progressive Association. I'm just curious, did you happen to see this? And what is your perspective? I mean, we just talked about the FBI. Should Congress get involved? Who should investigate this? What should happen? Yes, Rich, I did see the piece, and I saw several other, what I would call, more

attenuated discussions of something similar. But the point is it was a great piece. But it also begs the question of when will we see the Federal Bureau of Investigations, Again, I use that term. That's what they're supposed to be doing, investigating these people and bringing them to bear. And so Congress should, so we leave that there. That's the executive branch that armed that's supposed to be doing that.

But Congress also has a duty and an ability to conduct investigations. The problem that we have, Rachel, and without getting political, I'll just say that the other side controls and the other side doesn't want to have investigations. You have to understand that my, colleagues across the aisle, they don't even want to acknowledge that these are not peaceful protests. They, it is, they've stood in, allowed reporters to stand in front of burning buildings and saying these are peaceful protests or mostly peaceful protests and that they've been co-opted. Well, who's co-opting them? They don't want to find out who's co-opting these ostensible,

peaceful protests. And Congress does have committees. The Judiciary Committee is uniquely set up to, conduct some of these investigations. Homeland security could. Government reform could. Even intelligence could. If those chairman were willing and interested in getting to the bottom of this and bringing order and stability and security and safety back into our country. But they're not interested in that. They're very comfortable with the discord that's going on because they have a political agenda. And it's a shame to me. That's a shame to me because Congress should be doing that, we should be bringing these people and we should be helping get to the bottom of this and forwarding what information we attained through our investigations to the Department of Justice.

And that's simply not going to happen under a Pelosi regime. Well, I know we talked a little bit about this at the beginning, but I didn't want to circle back to this at the end. Realize all the action is in the Senate, but I wanted to get your thoughts on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett and how you hope the Senate proceeds as we ramp up to confirmation hearings? Well, the first thing I'll tell you is, is I hope the Senate proceeds with alacrity. They need to move swiftly on this.

I think they've committed to doing that. The good news is a lot of the Democrats don't want to even meet with Amy Coney-Barritt. That's fantastic. And that'll make the process go a lot swifter. And a quick confirmation would be good for the country and be good for Amy Coney-Barrant personally. That'd be good for the United States Supreme Court.

She is a marvelous pick. When Kavanaugh was, before he was appointed and she was on the list, I looked very carefully at her opinions, at her writings or speeches. I looked at her character. She is a person with an unassailable personal character. She is a person of integrity and compassion, and she is a great human being. The left can't attack her on that. But she's also unbelievably qualified.

They can't attack her on her qualifications. She graduates summa cum laude. She graduates number one in her class. She is published. She gives speeches. She's consistent. Her opinions are well-reasoned. She's applying the law.

She is an originalist. She is an exceptional person and jurist. And she worked at a highly rated law firm. She's an excellent lawyer. She's been a top-rated law professional. professor type. This is a uniquely highly qualified individual. And so by golly, if you're going to be objective about it and you would say we need to vote for her. We can, the advice and consent of the Senate would be to confirm. I don't think you'll see that. I think already we've seen that

they've attacked her her Catholic faith last week. Representative Cohen from Tennessee basically intimated that there's President Trump's appointed too many Catholics. That's disparate. That's despicable. How despicable is that? And there is no religious test constitutionally either. So that bigotry is awful. They've attacked her for that. They've attacked her for adopting children of color from Haiti for Pete's sakes. How despicable is that? I mean, it's just outrageous. And then when they can't find anything with her legal background to attack or her character to attack, then you have Bill Maher just that just basically throws ad hominem attacks filled with expletives in it. And really what it boils down to is the question really is more, is Bill

Marr capable of expressing himself without expletives and without ad hominem attacks on somebody who is an excellent pick for justice? That is where we are today, Rachel. I'm sad to say we've reached a point where somebody who was incredibly well qualified is going to be attacked personally for simply not having any personal defects that would prohibit her from being confirmed. And so it's going to be a real hellacious battle, but I think it will be swift, and then I think she'll be confirmed. And then she'll go on to have a stellar career for many, many years. hopefully several decades as a Supreme Court justice.

Well, Congressman Viggs, thank you so much for joining us today on the Daily Signal Podcast and it's great to have you. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast. You can find the Daily Signal podcast on Google Play, Apple Podcast, Spotify, and IHeart Radio. Please be sure to leave us a review and a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to

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