The Space Laser Lady’s Rehabilitation

Hello. Welcome to the next level. I’m JDL here with my best friends, Sarah Longwell, and Tim Miller of The Bulwark, and Tim is having a day. So this show’s gonna be a wild ride. Let’s go do it.

In the meantime, Hit the subscribe button. Hit the thumbs up. Give us five stars. Leave a review all those things. The things are good and then go to the bulwark dot com.

And sign up to get all the great stuff we do there because I don’t wanna You know what? I’ll just say it. I have been on fire. For weeks now. And the the you know, when we did this show last week, I was getting a talking to about how I did not understand the way of the world and that these congressmen act out of peak, and they just don’t wanna stay in town on a Thursday night.

And I said, I don’t know. I have done my game theory, Mate six analysis of this, and I believe that Kevin McCarthy is likely to be speaker.

What are you getting and talking to? I don’t I don’t I don’t wanna call you getting and talking to. I think that we have disagreement about the the likelihood of the scenarios, but I don’t I don’t remember lambasting you.

Sarah, say it. Say the catch phrase.

I I also didn’t laugh at you. And I did talk about the fact that physically sitting there becomes a thing, and it did. And it helped Kevin McCarthy secure the speakership, but JBL. You are occasionally right, and this is one of those occasions. Congratulations to you.

On being correct, that Kevin McCarthy would eventually make it happen. He did.

Thank you.

And we’re happy for him. Is that where we landed?

I mean, we’re happy for me. That’s that’s the the key point of this is, we’re happy for me because I got to take a victory lap on this. I will say, did you see the pictures of Kevin McCarthy standing under the wooden sign with his name and pointing at it like, like goofy or something. I thought to myself, aren’t you supposed to act like you’ve been there or something? Like, it was a very weird meta moment where it was like, yep, I’m the guy who’s always been desperate to be speaker and I got it.

Look, I don’t know if you saw this video. I’m glad you mentioned is JV Alexander. I was the only one to notice this. And, you know, sometimes I feel I can just be a little too hard on old Kevin on Twitter. It’s etcetera.

That’s all. You know, I’ve got Kevin Derangement Syndrome or whatever, and then I need to dial it back so I didn’t tweet about this. But in that same video where he’s pointing up. One thing I noticed is he he he points up for the professional cameras, like the cameraman, CNN, AP, whoever. Is there.

And then he takes his phone out of his pocket, and he goes and hands it to maybe a staff for me one of their importers. And then has them take a picture from his phone of him pointing up at the thing. So, like, I guess, he can have it on his own device

I I felt

like that was a little tacky. I don’t know. I mean, Jeb we make fun of Jeb for kindly requesting that the audience clap for joke that he made for, like, seven years now. And it seems equally desperate at least at least at minimum really desperate to, like, want people to get photos of you pointing up at your sign.

I hate to break this to you. But Kevin got the thing he wanted, Jeff? Not.

Well, and and here’s the thing, whatever us cooks and naysayers and liberal media traders say, he’s got it. For forever. There is a page on on the congress dot gov and in Wikipedia with the names of all of the speakers of the House of this Republic of ours. And Kevo’s name is Extonair for history. It’s like winning the Super Bowl.

They can never take it away from him. That’s true.

But so at Liz Trust, Liz Trust, too, was Prime Minister, and she’ll go down as what the prime minister that lasted the least amount of time. Kevin is speaker until one of these clowns does the motion to vacate and wins

it. You know? Also, I guess I just in the broad scope of history, you know? It’s amazing how much things get forgotten. One of my observations during the whole speaker drama was how few speakers I I know.

And I’m like, you know, in politics. Right? When you’re going down the list of the guys who had the longest votes, and you’d like Paul Gillette and Bob Cross, it or whatever from the eighteen hundreds and you’re looking at those names, you had

a Dash Spring Feared.

Yeah. And it was just like so I get you know, I don’t know. And I guess in theory, Bob Gillette’s great, great grandson can go to the capital and clean up at the thing, you know, and they can then tell their kid who’s in second grade on a tour of the capital, like, that’s great, great granddaddy Paul. He was the speaker there and then the kids like picking his nose, wondering when he can go to the gift shop to get a Paw Patrol. And I guess there’s something to it, but it’s not like president.

Speaker of the House. It’s

second in line to the presidency. Yeah. You’re

second in line. I don’t think we need.

We don’t count. We don’t need speakers. We don’t have a competition. Live competition. How many speakers can you name in Escharities?

I don’t

think I could name more than five.

Trent Lot? Did Trent Lot the speaker? Trent

Lot was a sender There is a loss. There is a

loss. You are loss.

New Kingrich.

Jim Wright. New Kingrich. Danny Hastur.

Paul Ryan, John Vayner.

Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi — Oh. — the Democrats

too. Who

do we have back in the There was a Democrat who was defeated. It was Hasher, right? I think you

mentioned Hasher, but does is that like one of those national championships that get stripped from you? After it comes out

that you’re a pedophile, like, a secret from you. He’s, like, the John Calipari of speakers.

TIP O’Neil, you didn’t mention between Tim O’Neil and Tim O’Neil, sir.

But there was another, like, after Jim Wright. There was a there was another or after Tipponil, another Democratic speaker who lost a reelection fight. I’m I’m forgetting

Nancy Pelosi even speaker since Tipponil?

No. No.

What do you mean? Dude, you got all those hip on heels a million years ago. You

got all those Republicans in between the first democrat?

No.

I’m saying, Democrat. Yeah. Democrat. That’s

what I’m saying.

Democrat, Newell and Burke, everybody remembers Connie. He was the first speaker of the house.

The mule, as we called him. Yeah.

Okay. I just I don’t think we need to self sue.

Did I win this competition too? No.

No. I don’t think we need to self sue the Ron cabin. Kevin got the speakership. We did doubt that there was a path for him last week. We were drinking from the cup of Schottenfreud, but he eked it out.

He got it. And I think now we’re deep enough in this news cycle. Everybody was so focused on this that I’m not sure it, like, does that much to talk about why it happened, but I do think one of the things that struck me about the whole thing was, like, one of the reasons that last week’s episode was so fun and talking about with Kevin McCarthy is, like, the stakes on who a speaker were so low. Like, you got to just revel in the idea that, like, all the bad people were fighting with each other. But now, the bad people seem to have made up.

And I actually wonder. And I would like to know, there’s been, like, everybody postgame is, like, well, Kevin’s life is gonna be much more miserable. I’ve said this on TV, you know, one person can do motion to fifty eight. There’s all these rules, problems. Big fights are coming.

Right? The stakes were low for speaker. Steaks are really high when it comes to funding Ukraine, when it comes to the debt limit. But, like, is the fact that they had a knock down drag out and had to un pull those guys along and put them in their place? Because vacates did kinda look like he got put in his place through the fisticuffs and all that stuff, do you think that actually they’re less likely to try another one of those, at least in the near term, because of how bad that fight was?

Like, is it actually does actually create less strife against all of our prognostications that now it’s going to be nothing but strife. That

means and JBL’s take nobody mentioned Henry Clay, by the way, which is crazy. He called her before taking No. No.

Speakers. Who cares? No.

Lakeori.

Like to shout out Linden Chavez as well. Boy, we have a big fan, Chavez, Lincoln. I don’t know. I wonder I’d like to hear from Chavez after this. I wonder if he was named after Linden Chavez I I I think that Kevin gets a little bit of a a bump, a honeymoon, if you will, within his caucus.

I do think that. How long does that last? I mean, a minute, I think. I I just I I think that that he has a little bit of runway here. The big things that we keep pointing to, but all of us keep pointing to is potential threats, the debt ceiling, Ukraine funding.

That’s all middle of the year stuff. Right? And as of that one, I think, in summer, Ukraine is funded through September. Emergency could happen between now and then. Right?

But assuming there’s not an emergency, I I do think he gets a little bit of runway. I think there are some easy wins you know, we can dial up a investigation of Alejandro myortias, you know, and and hold a hearing down in El Paso. And, you know, fly everybody down there to investigate. You know, I think there are certain things that can be done that unite the caucus. Apparently, giving Jim Jordan complete control over the budget unites the conference.

There’s only one one person devoted against that. Tony Gonzalez, Dan Crenshaw kind of, I think, was stuck in his stomach and upstained even though he was in the building to because he was upset with the terrorist one. But that only one actually know folks. I think there are a lot of things that unite them. So I do think that there’ll be kind of like a false spring, if you will, for him, for a little bit here.

But eventually, I think that the predictions will come, you know, what we expect, I think, will probably come to pass, you know, at some

stage. That’s almost word for word what I was going to say, which is that we have a period now of like six to seven months where they don’t have to do anything serious. They can do all the grandstanding and show building that they want. They can have their Hunter Biden investigations. Their investigations of the Joe Biden VP document scandal in which Joe Biden had some classified documents in his vice presidential sort of vice presidential library or whatever that is.

Center that his lawyers found and then immediately called the the national archives and the national archives came and took possession of the next morning and how that basically saves you. You know, that’s and you people wanna go after Donald Trump. That’s actually I mean, it sounds silly when you say it that way, but I think it’s gonna make the prosecution of Trump harder. Totally. They’re gonna have their Church Committee.

Right? They’ve got a church committee coming where they’re gonna look at all of the the the FBI deep state, etcetera, etcetera, January sixth committee. So they can do all this stuff and they can stay out of each other’s lanes while they do it. They don’t have to work together. And so everybody can get what they want out of the next six or seven months without coming into conflict with one another.

And it’s only those those big votes which are gonna be difficult.

Yeah, you know, I was doing meet the press daily with Chuck Todd. And Chuck Todd asked me the question. He’s like, well, doesn’t this diffuse the impeachment bombs because, you know, Beacon’s not gonna go for impeachment or whatever. And I was like,

I don’t know.

Like, they’re still gonna impeach. They’re still gonna try to do investigations. Or maybe he said investigation bomb. It’s not impeachment bombs. But in neither case, I don’t think any member of this so called normal caucus or like the moderates, which by the way, just take a minute and talk about how bad the framing has been on this particular thing.

It’s making me crazy. It’s not the governing wing. It’s not the moderate. There are some governing people. There are a few of them among the Republicans.

But what you were talking about is the Magna establishment. You were talking about Kevin McCarthy, election denier, margery Taylor, green, lunatic, a whole bunch of other people who refused to certify the election. Like, it is the difference between the people who want to launch a bunch of performative investigations and the people who want to burn it all down, there is no governing wing and there are there’s no moderate wing. Like I said, there are a few moderate people And because of the narrow majority, you could maybe see some of them not going for certain things, like big ticket impeachment, but like Don’t get on board with the investigations because the overall, the caucus over the last however many cycles has gotten wildly more

extreme. Right?

It is still a very extreme. It’s a green caucus right

now.

I’ve also riled up about this and had a little rant prepared on this topic here. Oh, I

hope I didn’t I didn’t No. That sounds very

similar. Actually, we’re all we’re all on alignment. So it’s nice to all be in alignment. We gotta come up with some disagreements before our very exciting road trip together next week, which I’ve also been Unfortunately, I didn’t get to mention that at the top because I was so annoyed about the fact I couldn’t find my fucking headphones. I want to strangle some people on a school tour this morning.

But besides that. I do wanna talk about how excited I am to be in LA and Seattle. So we got a call with some disagree. We got a focus on areas of tension that before between now and then. But here’s an agreement.

Not only are there no moderates and and no governing wing of this conference, Like, the center of the conference is, like, the extreme magna candidates that everybody’s talking about how bad they were. In the senate races. Right? Like, I’m trying to think about, like, who would be a representative example of this because, like, doctor Oz and Hershel Walker were so weird, you know. But, like, blah.

Masters. Tim Michaels in Wisconsin to go on. Tim Michaels would be just right in the media center of this conference. We got lost at Wisconsin governor’s race. You know, people talk about and JBL mentioned this in the triad.

It was something I’ve been thinking about because I get this all the time from my still hanging on Republican friends. But on the left, it’s gotten so crazy too. The Democrats are getting so crazy. And and, you know, you asked them, it’s like, okay. Well, what what are you talking about?

And and they always bring up the same names if we’re in politics. Right? It’s Corey Bush, Rashida Tlaib, AOC. We can all name them. Anopressly, they’re six.

By

the way, stipulated. Stipulated. Stipulated. There’s

six. Bernie Sanders. Okay. There’s six. Alright.

But then if you just kind of like pick a random democrat out of the air, like, you just put them on a pot and, like, shoot, like, a little big bowl and you just magically, like, pull one up by their troll hair and just say, hey, I’d like to speak to you. Like, you get a person who’s kind of like a human most of the time. Like, somewhere in the middle of the, you know, you get a Jason Crow in Colorado. You just get somebody who’s just like a guy or a lady. You know, smart person.

The Republican side, like, before this week, Sarah, had you ever even heard of Mark Green or Jason Smith?

I did

not hear her of Mark Green. I’m I’m so glad to know of him now though.

Yeah. So Mark Green and Jason Smith, this isn’t like the Marjorie Taylor, Greene, the Lauren Beaubert, like the names you hear when you talk about a crazy party. Usually, just some guys in the middle of the conference. They built one competitive committee seats because just like the speaker raise all these community chairman chips had, like, little cluster fucks. So Dan Crenshaw, you know, gets gets the boot.

Sorry, Dan. Because he has too mean to the, you know, condom terrorists, too mean to the MAGA crowd. He gets the boot from the Homeland Security Committee that he was due. And instead it goes to this guy, Mark Green from Tennessee. Mark Green is concerned about Transvestites in the military.

He likes to use Lord Transvestites. That’s a key key term that he uses. Obama, Muslim, non citizen. Obama was a non citizen where he was deeply concerned about the bathrooms. Just

asking

questions. Yeah. I mean, this dude is a lunatic. Like, this guy would have just been laughed out of one of these swing state center races. Right?

He’s now the head of the Homeland Security Committee. You know, then we get Adrian Smith who’s like like on the normalish end of the Republican caucus. He gets booted out of the ways and means. If ever Jason Smith election deny or likes to call women females for some reason.

Probably because he respect them so much. Yeah.

Voted against the election. Right? So, like, this is now this is the ways and means chair. Is is someone that voted to and the speaker, is someone that voted to overturn the action. Like, that’s just the dead center of the conference is these people that are lunatics.

And I and I think that is a meaningful difference. In addition to the fact that when you started trying to get to five, and I was texting with some damn house people, modern damn house people. And they were hopeful, god love them, that they would get to five on the rules. And I was just like, are you guys talking to the people on the other side? I was hopeful that they were right now.

I was wrong. And that there were these secret normies out there who are gonna come forward. So I was like, I don’t think they exist. We all say the same names. Don Bacon, that’s Patrick.

Right? Now this Tony Gonzalez They’re

two impeachers that are left. Right. Like This

guy, Lalor, seems pretty normal out of New York. Right? We all say the same to you. That’s six You have to get all of them. They end up only getting one.

They get one. Right? To vote against this rule package that lets Jim Jordan negotiate, you know, the full faith and credit of the United States. I I that’s just the reality of where things are. And I think that commentators, like your French architect are just a little slow to, like, recognize the churn that has happened in the house because the more familiar names in the Senate, this churn has been slower in the Senate.

Right? It’s a six year term.

You know,

you got your cousins and your myths and stuff still in there. The churn is slower. Like, the churn has happened. I

gotta disagree with you there. Here, point of disagreement, Timothy. Thing. I love that. I think that the media has a very difficult time getting itself to accurately characterize what the median house Republican conference member is these days because it’s too crazy and to say it makes it sounds like you’re an activist.

Right. Right. This is because the truth is the two conferences are mirror image of one another. On the Democratic side, you can name the eleven crazies. And on the Republican side, you can name the eleven normies.

Right? I mean, that’s, like, that’s and, you know, like, that’s not how both sides journalism works. Right? I mean, both sides journalism just sort of takes everything as given, like, you have a dispute. You have some people who wanna raise the debt ceiling and some people who don’t.

And we let both sides have their say in our reported piece. And

that’s I don’t know,

man. I don’t wanna sound like Jay Rosen or anything, but that’s that’s a problem for accurately characterizing reality. Yeah.

I mean, there are some more Republicans than the ones we’ve I mean, the problem is is, like, the Nancy Mace or Gallagher or or crunch yaw. Like, there actually are these people, but what we know about these people is that and I think it’s it was part of our our shot in fried soup. Right? Which is you guys have tolerated this. Like Dan Crenshaw, are you sad now?

Are you sad that you’ve made excuses for Donald Trump and you’ve you know, talked about how the democrats are always worse and and it’s definitely not a problem with your own caucus. And are you upset now that so many of these people are crazy. Nancy Mace, are you upset that these guys are immediately gonna come out and talk about banning abortion? I was listening to her talk about she was a victim of sexual assault herself. She wants the exceptions for rape and sex life.

The mother thinks it’s crazy. She’s like, did you guys not see what happened in the midterms? I’m like, oh, well, Don’t use sound normal Nancy Mace, but then I remember that it was so recently that when she took some criticism in her primary, she ran to Trump Tower, to take selfie videos in Donald Trump Tower announcing how Donald Trump was the greatest, so we wouldn’t be too mad at her. And so, like, they they would be normal if the environment allowed them to be normal, but because they’re like human weather veins and the wind has been blowing the other direction and they only sound normal sometimes. I agree.

And

to that extent, there’s probably if you include the secret normals, you can get up to like sixty. But still in in a two hundred eighteen person conference, the dead center of it like Jason Smith, like voted against the election. No. I agree.

I’m not disagreeing. I’m just

No. I okay. I don’t wanna

overstate it. Fair.

Here’s one thing just so really quick about the Nancy Bateses of the world and and how they’re in a little bit of a political pickle. In in the same way the Biden was. Nobody navigated this. But, you know, there there was some argument I think it turned out to work out for him because mansion played ball. I think more than people thought might not end up working out for mansion in two years.

Like, you could have been argued that Biden would have been better off politically the last two years to have had a fifty one forty nine senate. Right? Wouldn’t have been as much pressure never had a lot of excuses. You know what I mean? Like, now you gotta do this sort of thing.

There’s like this inverse issue that now the Republicans the Republicans like Nancy Mace have in the House. We’re like, they might have been better off having a two person Nancy Pelosi majority because then you know, on bills that are already gonna pass, you know, the gay marriage bill, you know, you get fifty, whatever it was, forty seven Republicans. Right? Which is a pretty good thumbnail sketch of who the closet normals are. Right?

Like on something like that, you get everyone’s forty seven. So you can vote for that because it’s like, well, you know, no real risk here. You know, in my district, this is gonna be popular. I can do this. Alright?

Now the problem is you can’t do that with Kevin in charge because Kevin cannot pass a bill that is just Nancy Mace and Dan Crenshaw on the six regulars, plus two hundred two hundred twelve Democrats. Right. Because now he to cut this deal with ultra on ultraport. Right? So now it makes him a lot harder for these people than animations of the world to, like, get just get separation from the crazy caucus, they all have been locked step with them.

Like, in order to get separation now, rather than picking a few friendly issues to decide with Democrats on, they have to tell Republicans no. Sorry, I’m gonna vote against you on that one. And and then and then you start to and then you become Dan, you know, you you get put in the corner, people don’t like you, Fox makes fun of you, you’re voting to abstain, you’re sad about things. And so there’s not gonna be a ton of opportunity for for those fifteen Biden district Republicans to get distance in this next two years. I had a

question for the two of you. Do you have any guesses as to what the Republican majority is gonna wanna do vis a vis abortion? They’ve got a bunch show votes scheduled, I think, of the first twelve twelve votes, three of them are gonna be about abortion Ross Douthan, we’ll talk about this later. Things that it’s entirely possible. They’re gonna vote to really expand help for families and for mothers as part of their pro life package.

I gotta say I’m a little skeptical that that’s where their heads at. But on the other hand, there is a huge expectation among the Republican base that they’re gonna go out there fighting. And I don’t know. Like, this is the the one place where before we get to those three big votes, McCarthy, I think has a danger moment where he has to figure out how does he keep the conference from taking a vote that’s gonna, like, absolutely crush the party two years from now versus like keeping some of his people who are in R plus forty districts happy?

Yeah. I mean, we saw this with Lindsey Graham. Right? Last time. Where they went, you know, you get you you’re gonna get somebody that’s gonna get out ahead and wanna vote on a a federal ban, you know, at some level.

The Republicans in the past. You know, I’ve been more adept at pointless message votes than Democrats. I’ve been. Don’t guys do a little bit better at that. The end of the last cycle, and then the last two years go into the midterms.

And so,

you know, do think that they’ll probably do some third term bands, some stuff of that nature. But again, with such a narrow

majority, only a small group

of people will

be able to put a lot of pressure, you know, on McCarthy to want to wanna go further and push the envelope on it. So I think what it’s safe to say is that they’re not gonna do kind of like something that they think might get some damn votes. You know, maybe a package that bans partial birth abortion, but also gives help for moms and, like, you know, something that might be able to get some Like, that’s not worth it. No. I

don’t think they can do that. I I don’t think the base would let them do something like that. I think they want, like, real restrictions. They wanna fight. Right?

Yeah.

This is I mean, this to me is just Tim’s point again about, like, the travel little calls for the Nancy Maces. And I think this is where Kevin McCarthy, you know, like a strong speaker, like, and Nancy Pelosi would do whatever she could to protect her vulnerable members from those tough sort of votes and Kevin McCarthy is not gonna do that. And this is also it brings up the point that I think is the most interesting around this motion to vacate. Where any member can really, like, go after him. What is the thing that they didn’t trust him on?

Why did they feel like they needed to have control besides they’re trying to rest concessions from this guy. The main thing that they wanted was to keep him from cutting deals with Democrats. That is what that’s about. Right? And so his maneuver room now is, like, all within his own caucus.

Like, he doesn’t have a lot of opportunity to go across the aisle because that’s the whole thing, chaos caucus wanted to keep him from being able to do. They didn’t want him to be able to pull that lever. And that’s where all, like, the decent stuff is. Right? Then so They don’t

have any legislation passed. Well, this is what I was gonna

say. Like, the thing is is, like, what did they what did they promise their constituents when they were campaigning? Investigations, mostly, like, woke stuff that you’re gonna get not have the IRS agents, which by the way, did you see the CBO scored that IRS agent thing and it’s gonna raise the deficit by, like, I don’t remember the number, hundred and fifteen million or something like it or Billy. It’s like a net net increase because we’re not collecting taxes from, you know, big corporations. Like, the idea that these IRS agents were just gonna go around, like, busting the little guy, like, I don’t know what the rest of you took me forever to get my return.

Like, they have to do the job of people’s taxes I think this was such a weird hill to die on. Like, they the scarecrow Republicans

care deeply about death and deficits. As soon as they’re done with the IRS agent repeal. I do

care about debt and deficits. I

know. I know you do. Just to

be honest, in a different world, right, a more you know, bathe in the woods ish, Tim. You might have really get me an IRS agent thing. We don’t really need that many more IRS agents. We could target a little more. But the more you look into it, a lot of the it’s turnover.

Right? Like, this is funding that I asked for for ten years and and so, you know, we’re you’re placing a lot of existing folks. I I think that the democrats probably gonna done been done a better job of of messaging it. I mean, we don’t I’m not really I don’t think we need any additional audits on, you know, people people in the second quintile, third quintile, you know, scraping an extra couple grand out of those folks. But you can see why that resonates.

Right, as a message. Totally. No. Because it’s like, you know, it is it’s tied into the deep state stuff. Right?

It’s like it’s all united. Right? Which is, like, if you’re chipper you’re like, all I’m saying is, I’m not letting these fucking liberal elites do anything. I’m not letting them do anything. They’re not gonna audit you they’re not gonna collect your taxes.

I’m gonna be on their ass every time they let, you know, another sialy across the border. We’re not gonna let them investigate mister Trump. We’re gonna go look into the FBI. We’re gonna look into the DOJ. But like that so that is that is what their agenda is.

Right? Which is it it’s not like oh, you know, we wanna reform the IRS with the tax code in order to help maximize your earnings. It’s not that. Right? And so to that extent, these guys don’t need to do anything.

And I think that it’s really part and parcel with kind of the investigation agenda. Yeah.

I agree. Alright. We gotta move along a little bit. George Santos is in Congress. He’s running away from people all through the halls.

I guess the they’re trying to Try to open up the ethical stuff. Not be such sticklers as to every eye being dotted and every tee being crossed. Is there anything else to say about this other than, like, we’ll find out if he committed crime or not? Yeah. I

guess so. It’s funny to me how Margery Taylor Green and Santos already seem to have, like, found each other a little bit. And if passed as prologue, we can expect George Santos to be the key to the next speaker vote. That he will be, like, at the center, he will be needed in order to give credibility to the pathological liar caucus. Yeah.

You gotta pacify those guys. I’m

actually really impressed with March Taylor Green, she has demonstrated over the last year that she is not content to be a grifter that she wants to be a player and that she wants to to move up in Republican politics and she wants to be somebody and do something. And she’s doing all of the stuff, all of the little hard stuff like Coziness, fighting down on the stick and helping Kev Bo get his speakership. And She looks

perfectly thrilled about it. Yes. She does not look like it’s causing her heartburn. She’s she is all in. She is

assembling a power block within Congress that will belong to her And I did not believe that she had that in her,

but it’s

impressive. And I think it suggests that she is actually around for the long haul. I think Lauren Beaufort is probably gone after this. I I would be shocked if Republicans in her district don’t force her out and and beat her in a primary. She was super weak last time.

She bucked the bucked the herd this time. I think that she will not survive. But I think March is here for reels. Fair. Yeah.

Our

fair driver, Draper, has been on this on March. He sniffed out her skill, and and does keep on his book. I’m impressed with Mars and Santos. So we’re in the zag right now for different reasons. Just the level of sociopathy and fortitude to just sit there for a week.

You know, some people were saying that, like, oh, George Santos was the biggest beneficiary of this Kevin drama because it made a few other things to talk about besides him. I was like, I don’t know. I think it might have helped George Sandoz to not have seespan cameras running on his face twenty four seven. Like, dude, it just has to kind of sit there, have no friends, pretend to make jokes. And did you see the one image of him showing them showing people the meme of Kevin McCarthy?

It was it was going around. It was like, where you check all the Yeah. It’s like you don’t check Kevin. He was trying to make some friends, like, the awkward kid on the bus. And, you know, he is not cracking.

Dude is not cracking. He managed to get to Congress, making a completely fraudulent story. Everything about his life is a lie. And he’s managing to just stick with it and, like, game recognizes game on that front. That’s all I’m saying.

Like, he is skilled and I hope that he gets kicked out of Congress. I think he’s a poor reflection on our system that he’s there and on the people of this country and on that opposition research efforts by the Democrats and on the morals of the Republicans to work from. But, like, dude is riding this out. Like, a weaker person would just be like, you know what? I don’t

care about this. Yeah. But he

is comfortable in the heat. He’s walking over the hot coals. And and I’m impressed with that. I’m also impressed with March. And just really quick on March.

Matt Gates, I would add. I would love to see, like, a little heat chart of, like, news max viewers, fave unfaves, on various people. And I think that Mars is skyrocketing right now. I think that I I I do think that Gates kind of flexes his muscles. I don’t think he had a bad week, but I I think that if you just look at who both inside and outside game, I think Marj played it the best.

And

she’s getting a glow up. Right? Like, in order to preserve Kevin, Mona has a great piece about this in the bulwark today. But in order to preserve Kevin, they gotta rehabilitate Arch. Because she’s a key ally of his now.

And so they can’t have her be the space lasers lady. Mhmm. And, like, Mona’s got some great lines in there where, you know, you saw this Howard Kurt doing his best to just really help her put it behind her. He’s like, but you didn’t say a few things. Like, you were a a queuing on and hear it and she was like, that was so long ago and you’re like, that was twenty eighteen.

It only

feels like it was twenty years ago.

Yeah. This is not that long ago. It was how you ran. Forgot, like, the Parkland shooting, false flag. Like, this is a full on Alex Jones.

Figure, anti Semitic, through and through, sleeping with her cross fit and structure, like, just looney tunes. But no, Fox News has gotta rehab her. But I did actually want to say on Gates. I think Gates looks like he got spanked. I think he came out of this bad.

And and there’s a couple of those videos. Did you see the one where someone leans over and gets in his face, and they say something to him very very close. And he, like, can’t move and he’s kind of pinned in. And he kinda, like, nods. But, like, how to get him to he said never he was flexing all over the place.

No. I think he looks bad. I think he came away. And like Well, I I looked at his, like, Twitter when he said, I’ve you know, we should all move on, blah blah. And, like, everybody, his people were like, you sell out, you know because, like, you take a stand, you build your brand on that, and then you cave, that’s bad for you.

Yeah. Yeah. I agree. Let let me just make a confession to you guys. Mhmm.

I much prefer margarine to at least tphonic. And one of the things I’m hoping for is for green to overtake Alyssa in the conference. I hope that she comes for Alyssa’s seat. In the leadership. In

what way do you do you prefer March to Elise? Because it’s

more pure because March means it. Say whatever you want to whatever you wanna say about the tenets of national socialism, at least it’s an ethos. Right? And Elise is just just pure ambition. Do you think the New York Times piece spat her over the Christmas break with, like, literally all of her friends just saying, this is insane.

Like, she doesn’t believe any of this stuff. It’s not what she’s doing just because she wants the brass ring. And I don’t like that. I don’t like Phonies. I like people who actually believe the things they are saying.

That’s what we do with the bulwark. And, you know, we don’t believe in Jewish space lasers. Tend to believe in other things, but MARG believes it in the least doesn’t. And it would be the perfect irony if MARG winds up coming for a least. Staying

what you believe is freeing and it’s and you can sort of feel it in a person and their spirit. So I agree with you just if you put away all the consequences I find Margerytail Green to be a more appealing person than at least Defonic. Like, I don’t really find either than particularly appealing, but, you know, if I had go to St. Bart’s for a weekend with one of them. I’d probably go with March over Elise.

I think that Elise’s ugliness is really kind of subsumed her, like, in her ugliness of her soul, and I don’t like it at all. That said, we did just have to live through four years of the Donald Trump presidency. And I just Margery Taylor Green I don’t wanna risk Margery Taylor Green being any number of heartbeats away from a presidency, you know, eventually as a as a rank and file congressperson, your responsibilities aren’t really that great, but At the end of the day, I don’t think that Elise is like a, you know, if she was a heartbeat away from the presidency would be a fundamental threat our

survival. There’s

more of a large large on the other hand. A little bit more of a wildcard on that front. So I guess I have a I have a mixed views on your text. Sarah? Yeah.

I can’t. You’re

not gonna make me choose between two different types of vial. But, like, I find Marjorie Taylor Green to be repellent in the same way. I’ve always found Donald Trump to be repellent, which is, like, on a visceral level. Mhmm. And I do think there’s something about knowing that that at least tophonic would compromise any principle for any amount of gain.

That’s alarming. Right? You don’t want somebody like that anywhere in your power, but like Marjorie Taylor Green is actually crazy And I loved hearing her say, as she talked about QAnon and the space laser say, well, like many people, I was sucked into some conspiracies on the Internet. That’s something. So anything on the Internet can get Marjorie Taylor Game to believe it.

Like, I think that’s a problem. I think that judgment just people

thought Hillary was a baby eater. I mean, it was out on the front of magazines. It was that what there was that national enquirer that wrote about it. A couple other ones. A lot of people buy those.

They’re at the front of the grocery store? Yeah. Right? How is

any of us to figure out what’s really true anyway? It’s on the Internet. It’s on

the Internet. So I’m not gonna I’m not gonna assign more virtue to either of them. But I think it’s important to know that the two people you’re talking about that would be at that high level in the conference, including the speaker himself who was an election denier. Steve Skalise is also an election denier, people who did not certify elections. And then you’ve got marginal ease.

I mean, these are all just variations on the same really horrible theme. And so, I’m not describing. Betterness any of them. Well,

you cannot be in a leadership position anywhere in the Republican Party unless you deny the results of the twenty twenty election. Right. I

wanna talk a little bit about Trump in the role that he played as like an exogenous ghost presiding over this whole thing, but of those pictures of Marjorie Taylor Green, like waving her cell phone at people, and it says, like, d t, and it’s she’s, like, waving it at Roseendale being, like, you know, Trump wants to yell at you. Watching Kevin McCarthy very specifically at the end, and I wonder when this was negotiated. Like, if Trump said to Kevin, I’ll back you. But when you win, first thing out of your mouth better be, Donald Trump isn’t losing any altitude in the Republican party, and I gotta thank him for doing this. Because that’s what old Kevin did.

He didn’t just say, I wanna thank Donald Trump for all his help. He said, some people doubt his influence in the party, but they’re wrong.

Sarah? You are underestimating Kevin McCarthy because he is not very smart, but he understands those things. And I guarantee you Trump didn’t need to say anything to him. Kev Bo understood exactly what he was expected to do. Sure.

Okay. Right? And he he he knew the first thing he had to do was go tickle the pleasure centers of of Donald. Right?

So do we think Trump was playing a role here? Like, does he get credit? What do you think? I give him some credit.

Don’t you think? Damn. I

don’t think it was a call from I mean, I think that if Donald Trump’s lobbying mattered it would have mattered before vote fifteen. Mhmm. He could have sunken, though. Right. I mean, I I think Trump could have have killed the McCarthy speakership.

I think that’s true. I think if during that

overnight where it wasn’t clear, Kevin was like, oh, I talked to Trump and, you know, he reiterated his support for me, and we were all like, dibby, though. And then he had a tweet the next day, it was a very forceful. I’m with him. He he might be good, even great. And so I think that that did hold him steady.

I think if Trump had come out and torpedoed him and be like, it’s over Kevin, we need to look for somebody new. I do think that might have ended him. Yeah.

It would have given cover to people who wanted to leave. To bail. Right. Yeah. I think

that’s right.

Alright.

Did you

guys this is a boy’s a long show Did you guys wanna talk about any of the the hot fire that I have been spewing in my amazing newsletter, the triad, which people can subscribe to at the bulwark dot com. I’m not sure that

I could add anything to the matchbook club allegory during the podcast form. I think that you achieved perfection in the written form. I

think it

comes to the mass book allegory, and I just I’d rather direct people to that. Than try to, you know, adulterate

it with my my own commentary. People should go give that a read. I don’t know if we can put one of those floaty linked things linking to that piece, but but if we can, we should. Do you know how long I had

to read that piece before I was like, there’s no such thing as a match Thor’s Club. Like, talking about because

for a

while, I was like, did there used to be match throwing clothes? Well, this sounds like an old time thing that people would do. I’ve seen people throw matches. And then and then I was like, aha. Once they started blowing up the gas stations, it got pretty clear to me there was and very tortured, extensive metaphor.

It’s parable. A parable. There were

some good fires though. I mean, I just you know, the cleansing fire in Chicago really a section I did enjoy. I also did I I guess, Charlie wrote on this this morning that you, but the match throwing parable could have extended internationally. Also, after what we saw in Brazil this weekend, I think you could have written about how, you know, the match throwing club has now picked up, you know, some South American adherence. Why

was Bannon yelling about you? There is a symbiosis. As

you’ve heard on this podcast, between us and the never Trump world who speak honestly about where the party is and the people who honestly like the party to be crazy. Right. Right? And so I think that this is a situation where I was talking about how, like, how pathetic it is that they couldn’t ruffle together five governing moderates till, like, try to negotiate on the rules package on the other side. And Bannon was kind of gleefully pointing out that he called me a screaming banshee.

And I was I

didn’t don’t really feel like that’s

an apps metaphor for me. I don’t know. You’re more of a

pearl clutcher? Yeah. Pearl clutcher would

have at least been a little clever. But he was commenting on on that. I then tried to reply to him. He does this on getter on their on their platform, getter, which is owned by Jason Miller, who doesn’t pay AJ Delgado, child support. I think that he’s that the guy with no chin.

I worked for Trump, and I don’t remember him. Mhmm. And so my getter account name is pay your child support, Jason. And so I tried to reply to Bannon, but I don’t think he realized it was me. Mhmm.

That’s

too bad. You know, because it doesn’t

say Tim Miller. It just says pay your child support since I I need to figure out a different way to engage on that. I forget where this conversation is. So in terms of that JBL’s great deal. Oh, I’m just saying that I

thought it was fascinating the Bolsonaro knew that he should go to the free state of Florida to hide out there while his don’t call the coup was happening down in Brazil. Mean,

in fairness, there are a lot of Brazilians in Florida. I don’t know how much time he spent there, so it might not have been related to the Santos. It may have been. But

Is anybody else at all concerned that DeSantis is rubbing up against guys like Bolsono and our Hungarian friend, Victor Orban, like, if we’re supposed to believe, don’t worry, he’s secretly enormous. He is not authoritarian, curious. All this stuff about using the power of the state to punish private industry and and individuals and stuff. That’s just an act. And now he’s like literally buying off the Chris Ruffo’s and, you know, Mark Bauer lines of the world by giving them jobs in an attempt to which by the way, that’s the kind of thing that Trump ought to be paying attention to with his non campaign.

I mean, DeSantis is literally buying conservatism out from underneath him. Yep. Just one

of the things on this point. Let’s just say this simple scenario because this is another thing that we are free to mention that that people don’t like to mention another Republican types or or even mainstream media types, like, in a regular world, in a pre Trump world, like, the idea of just aspirational Republican presidential candidates throwing out there.

Like,

don’t love football scenarios doing. You know? Not great that there’s storming the capital down there in Brazil. Disagree with that. Like famously, like Bush and ninety nine, flew people down to Austin or Midland, whoever it was.

Right? Who were ex subject matter experts? And, like, the Democrats kinda made fun of them. Right? They had to get up speed and learn better zero butte’s name and things like this.

But he was trying to introduce the kind of thing that then the governor of Texas might have, you know, put out a little statement on. It’s like, troubling what is happening in Brazil. Right? Or or, you know, Bolsonaro had moved to a state would be, like, you know, not really thrilled with the authoritarian efforts. Nothing.

We stand against violence in democracies. Yeah. But they

can’t do that. They can’t do that

right now because they

can’t condemn it there because can’t get them in here.

Those are their voters. No lip service.

Not even

lip service to it. And and my my point is like, well, wouldn’t it even hurt them? Yes. Like like, they’re all so cowardly. Yes, it would hurt them.

No. No. You

wanna run for

president? If somebody

put out one tweet that’s like,

I don’t love what Bolsonaro’s up too right now. I, you know, I think you should go home to Brazil. Nobody’s gonna give a shit about that. No way. That’s putting a target on your back

from the entire bright part entertainment complex. Because I, you know, I bet you anything. Those guys are making money from Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro — Yeah. — I both narrow.

Why do

you? Because Anyway, I

I just think that and especially if you think you want a future in leadership in the Republican world, you cannot touch that stuff at all. There was no percentage in it for you. Yeah. And

also, like, they had CPAC in Hungary. Like, they brought Orban to speak. Tucker’s, like, all about Orban. Like, they are seeking out these authoritarians. And so Now there’s a wing of the party that has to be pacified or mollified or whatever, that DeSantis knows in a that’s how you you gotta choke those people off from Trump early.

And so he’ll play Footsie with them. Sure. Come to the Free State

of Florida.

Just a little girl talk

here

with a long chase little girl

talk though.

You mentioned our friend match that happened. Totally agree with what you’re saying on our ballot ballot ballot ballot. It sparked another thought. Did he see it this week that match that opened for Trump in Mar a Lago? He put on the Penguin suit went down to Mar a Lago and gave some remarks and Did he drive himself from the airport?

If I know anything

about Donald Trump, He’s the gossip. You know, it seems like the kind of thing he probably he probably brought up. Don’t you think? I mean, I I don’t know. I was intrigued.

I guess, I I don’t really usually care about the Palace in rig about what’s happening with the cougars and Mar a Lago and want the, you know, want the eighteen anonymous quotes to Michael Bender of New York Times about, like, who hate to right now inside Trump world. But I I’d be a little bit interested in in what kind of chat or Trump had about his but it’s opening air.

So I was surprised because do you do you remember how the conservatism in class turned Trump against Josh Mandel in Ohio. Right? Trump did not want to endorse JD Vance, but the he got turned off because they were like, you know Weird sex stuff.

The other guy is

into some weird sex stuff and tumbling. Perfect. Yeah. That’s like, a shark

week with hookers, not normal — Okay. — red blooded Americans just went to watch shark week with a hooker. Okay? That’s what Trump likes. I

am shocked that Trump didn’t view the slap stuff in Frank.

No. That’s what I’m saying. I think he had to. Maybe it was already scheduled. Understood.

I think that

there was probably some interesting chatter at the head table that he thinks it’s all I was saying. Well,

you know, I hear that Hungary is a good place to go find yourself. If you are a conservative who is just having some feelings and you know, don’t quite know how you could achieve certain sort of things, then you can go to Hungary and and you know, really do some explorations. Maybe Matt Schlep should go there. You know, that’s funny about Matt Schlep.

I would say it could be there haven’t been that many any big whigs in the Republican party who’ve wanted to hang out with Trump lately. You know, this weird floor fight where he was like, on the cell phone is the and like, truth thing, occasionally, is the most we’ve really seen of him and anybody paying attention to him. Right? There’s actually been a lot of distancing from him. So it strikes me as interesting that Matt Schlapp, in a moment of distress, might be like, munchikka down to Mar a Lago, and and Trump was like, Yeah.

You can come because nobody else is coming and Moment of weakness. Right?

I don’t know. Like

this. Don’t

pretend it’s

No. That no. We’re not

This is how this is how he did it the first time. You know what? He called the island of misfit toys to him. Right? Everybody who is weak went to Trump for literally because of their own weakness.

Right? And he gathered them together into his little troll army. And, you know, do people out there who think it absolutely can’t happen again? I don’t know that I would make that bet. I I’m not betting he’s a sure thing, but we have seen this movie before.

We have. Alright. Good show, incredibly long show. Go go read my news. It’s down in the description.

Go click and read it. It is a a work of staggering genius. And if you are in Seattle or Los Angeles, come hang out with us next week. It’s gonna be awesome. I’m really excited.

And do either of you have anything else before we get out of here today? No. Calm down away. I’m so

excited. We’re gonna have

so much fun in LA in Seattle. I’m getting with Antis a patient. And one other thing really quick, if you are going to a school tour and you’re a parent, you get two questions. Can you get two or three questions? Alright.

That’s it. K? Have some respect for the rest of the group.

This seems unrelated. It’s just

something that’s

been on my mind today. I was on a two hour walk school tour where the parents were asking people how they decide to the songs of the class music. This is named,

like, a college tour. This is for, like, six year olds. Gander Garden. Gander Garden tour.

Alright. The questions are, do they learn their letters? Do they learn their numbers? Is the teacher nice? Yeah.

Wait.

Kindergarten. That is not what I experience. Right? That’s all. What is your grading system like?

Are you waiting their grades at class rank. Where do your kindergarteners go on to? Can I have a list of the first grades that they are accepted to after this kindergarten, please? What is your syllabus? When do you start them on the ancient Greek?

Bye. Bye.