In order to understand how dumb the Republican leadership class is, we have to go back in time to when Newt Gingrich was the speaker of the House of Representatives, and how he was the most brilliant man in the country. And how dumb is the current leadership class, and why is it so bad? And what are the real reasons why the party leadership is so bad right now? And why are they so bad that they have to kick themselves over and over in the balls until they win again? And how can we stop them from doing that? Well, the simple answer is that they don t have a leader. They have no idea what they're doing, and they don't know how to do anything about it. And that's why they're not even trying to do something about it, because there's nothing they can do about it except kick themselves until they get a new leader who can fix it, and then they'll get it back on track. And they'll have to do it the same way they did it the last time, and that's not even close to as good as they used to do things the way they do things, and it'll be much better than they did them before. This episode is a mashup of a few of my favorite things I've ever written about, and a bunch of other stuff I've written about as well. I hope you'll listen to it and tweet me what you think of it. Tweet me and let me know what you thought of it! if you think it's good or bad, and if you have any thoughts on how dumb it is, tweet me! or don't have a problem with it or if you agree with it, I'll be sending it to me :) :) Timestamps: 5:00 - How dumb is too dumb? 5:30 - What do you think about it? 6:15 - What would you think? 7:00 8:40 - What's the problem? 9:30 11:10 - Is there a better way to understand it? - Why does it matter? 10: What are you dumb, right or wrong? 12:15 13: Is it better than it matters? 15: How dumb, or not? 16:10 17:40 18:00 | How dumb? 17:30 | What is it better? 19:40 | Why do you need a leader?
00:00:00.000So what if I told you that the GOP had pretty much every systemic advantage going into 2024?
00:00:05.000They had a deeply unpopular president of the United States with approval ratings in the high 30s, low 40s.
00:00:11.000A president of the United States with approval ratings on the economy in the 30s or 20s.
00:00:15.000What if I told you that the GOP had an economic edge on the issues that is their biggest since 1991?
00:00:22.000Well, what if I told you that going into the election, there was a very solid shot that Joe Biden's economic policies were going to drive America directly into a recession?
00:01:28.000Well, maybe the reason for that is because Republicans are strategically inept.
00:01:32.000Maybe it is because Republicans have essentially decided that protest votes are more important than actual votes.
00:01:38.000Maybe they've decided that dousing themselves in gasoline and setting a match is probably the best strategy.
00:01:43.000I don't know what it's a strategy for, other than maybe feeling good for a brief moment in time, because if we show frustration to our leadership class, then for sure we'll get a new leadership class.
00:02:08.000Republicans have now replaced, in the last few years, Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House, John Boehner as Speaker of the House, and now Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
00:02:31.000But apparently, we tend to be operating under the wild delusion that if we simply replace one speaker with another speaker and leave the incentive structure exactly the same, Then everything will be, you know, better.
00:02:43.000The incentive structure right now in the House of Representatives, just to take the latest example, because yesterday Kevin McCarthy was ousted as Speaker of the House for no reason I can discern by eight Republicans who joined with all Democrats to oust McCarthy, which means that 96% of the Republican caucus voted in favor of Kevin McCarthy, and McCarthy is no longer the Speaker because of the eight House Republicans who decided that McCarthy had to go for a reason that no one can actually discern or specify.
00:03:07.000The incentive structure right now Unfortunately, for a huge number of people, is get famous, run for a higher office, win or lose, it doesn't really matter, clean up, pick up some checks, start a pack, start a non-profit, move into a different area of your career.
00:03:24.000This is a different incentive structure.
00:03:26.000It used to be, when parties were more powerful, that they'd actually have the ability to punish their members.
00:03:30.000Now, that was bad in some ways because it meant that party leadership actually mattered an awful lot because the party leadership could decide the direction of the party.
00:03:37.000And because of that, the party structure was weakened.
00:03:40.000Well, the result of that is that there is a massive collective action problem whereby a few people can hold hostage the entire Republican caucus for no reason that anyone can explain.
00:03:50.000Again, in order to really understand how dumb all of this is, what you have to understand is that Kevin McCarthy was, by pretty much any measure, the most conservative speaker that Republicans have had since Newt Gingrich.
00:04:03.000He achieved actual wins against Joe Biden.
00:04:07.000The last continuing resolution that the people who ousted him are very angry about, he proposed a better one two weeks ago that they scuttled.
00:06:38.000The possibility of recession is very much on the horizon right here.
00:06:44.000Again, according to MarketWatch, banks are now bracing for a recession.
00:06:49.000Quote, bank stocks might be on pace for yearly losses as sharply higher interest rates take a
00:06:53.000toll. The industry's reserves are at the highest level in three decades. Bank shares have come
00:06:56.000under more selling pressure since the Federal Reserve in September signaled it could keep rates
00:06:59.000higher for longer than earlier anticipated. The tough talk has dampened the years of rallying
00:07:03.000stocks and reignited a dramatic sell-off in the roughly $25 trillion Treasury market.
00:07:07.000Right now, there's nothing standing in the way of higher Treasury yields, said Kathy Jones,
00:07:11.000the chief fixed income strategist at Schwab Center for Financial Research.
00:07:14.000It's fairly obvious it's not good for banks.
00:07:16.000The rise in yields has just been relentless.
00:07:18.000Higher yields on newly issued treasury bonds erode the portfolios that include lower coupons that issued when rates were lowered.
00:07:23.000Again, what happened at Silicon Valley Bank is they invested in American bonds at a certain facial rate, and those became absolutely worthless the minute that the Federal Reserve issued new bonds at a higher rate.
00:07:34.000So this sort of stuff is going to have dramatic follow-up.
00:07:36.000So, Republicans are in historically very good position to win back more seats in the Congress.
00:07:40.000They don't have a tiny majority, they have a big majority to win back the Senate.
00:07:43.000The map Senate, the Senate map in 2024 favors Republicans.
00:07:46.000They're in very good position to win back the presidency.
00:07:48.000So naturally, why not distract the American people by having a useless speakership fight?
00:07:56.000The G20 or Group of 20, is an international forum for governments and central bank governors.
00:08:00.000It was established in 1999 in response to the financial crises of the late 1990s with the aim of promoting international financial stability.
00:08:07.000Well, last month, that G20 announced a plan to impose digital currencies and digital IDs on their respective populations.
00:08:12.000Central bank digital currencies essentially allow the government to track every purchase you make.
00:08:16.000It could even allow officials to prohibit you from purchasing certain products or freeze your accounts altogether.
00:08:20.000Well, even if you don't follow international economic policies all that closely, you should be concerned.
00:09:16.000Matt Gaetz had been threatening this for a few days after the passage of the Continuing Resolution.
00:09:20.000It's a clean Continuing Resolution that only takes them 45 days into the future, so there was more room for negotiation.
00:09:26.000But Matt Gaetz decided that he'd had enough of Speaker McCarthy.
00:09:30.000Now, the predicate for this was set back in January, because McCarthy had basically pledged that anyone, at any time, could bring what would be a no-confidence vote.
00:09:41.000And so what that meant is that anybody at any time could make national headlines and become an international political figure by going up against McCarthy.
00:09:49.000And Matt Gaetz was just waiting for his opportunity.
00:09:51.000So what that meant for Matt Gaetz and for some of the people who surround him is scuttle a better continuing resolution a couple of weeks ago.
00:09:59.000Then, a new continuing resolution goes forward.
00:10:01.000McCarthy has to pass it, because otherwise we're going to go into a government shutdown, with no prospect of actually passing a bill, because Gates has already suggested he won't support, really, another bill, anything that's actually passable in a Senate controlled by Democrats.
00:10:13.000And then Matt Gaetz says, how dare McCarthy work with Democrats on this bill, after helping scuttle a Republican-only bill?
00:10:20.000I'm going to file a motion to vacate the chair.
00:10:23.000And then he, along with seven other Republicans, votes with the entire Democratic caucus to get rid of McCarthy.
00:10:28.000So just to get the logic here, Matt Gaetz is very, very angry that a majority of Republicans voted with some Democrats to pass a continuing resolution.
00:10:35.000That only happened because Matt Gaetz and his crew decided not to vote for a Republican-only version of the continuing resolution a couple of weeks ago.
00:10:42.000And now, he and his friends voted with all Democrats in order to oust McCarthy.
00:10:55.000And it makes no sense unless what you actually believe is that this has nothing to do with strengthening the Republican caucus or making the House more conservative.
00:11:01.000It makes sense if what you believe is that it's really about grandstanding and getting headlines and raising money and sending out text messages.
00:11:11.000Again, to go back to Sowell, this is all about incentive structures.
00:11:15.000Yuval Levin is a really good political theorist.
00:11:17.000He has said for quite a while that one of the big problems right now in the modern era is that our political class are incentivized to use Congress and political power as a platform for other things.
00:11:26.000It used to be that the institution of Congress shaped you.
00:11:29.000You went in, you learned how the game was played, how the sausage was made, and then you participated in that process.
00:11:35.000Now, you go into Congress, and basically, your job is to comment on everything that is going on, and to grandstand for the people back home, and to not get anything done.
00:11:43.000And it's not about getting things done, it's about whether those things are good or bad.
00:11:46.000But the incentive right now is to simply yell at things, and then get a cable hit, and then portray yourself as the most conservative guy in the room.
00:12:24.000Matt Gaetz, okay, back when Paul Ryan was Speaker, he opposed ousting Paul Ryan.
00:12:29.000And here was Matt Gaetz, speaking on Fox News at the time.
00:12:32.000If we take Paul Ryan off the field right now, instead of being able to finish strong in the 115th Congress, we will shatter into a bunch of factions fighting against each other for power.
00:12:42.000We got enough of that in Washington already.
00:12:44.000Paul Ryan can be a caretaker of the speakership.
00:13:00.000The answer to what changed is pretty much nothing, except that Matt Gaetz realized that you get a lot more credit among a certain group of people for shouting and ranting at the wind and making moves like this than you would for, you know, actually getting things done in Congress.
00:13:15.000Again, I'm all for people trying to exact more conservative concessions from the Speaker of the House.
00:13:47.000I mean, Democrats know that they're likely to get somebody in that Republican seat next time who is probably going to be the head of another weak caucus, going to be very difficult to negotiate with because, again, it's too fractious.
00:14:00.000The rules of the caucus don't make for the ability to consolidate policy.
00:14:06.000McCarthy had basically worked with them in good faith on a couple of issues, but they don't care.
00:14:12.000I'm not going to put this on Democrats.
00:14:14.000If the shoe were on the other foot and Democrats were busy ousting Hakeem Jeffries and he were the Speaker of the House, I wouldn't be saying the Republicans ought to save him.
00:14:21.000So I don't blame Democrats for doing what Democrats do.
00:14:22.000I blame Republicans for voting with entirely Democrats in order to oust their own speaker for no reason again.
00:14:35.000And in the end, The eight Republicans who voted along with all Democrats to oust McCarthy from the speakership were representative to Andy Biggs of Arizona, who is a wild and crazy character, Ken Buck of Colorado, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, Eli Crane of Arizona, Bob Good of Virginia, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, and Matt Rosendale of Montana.
00:14:54.000And again, it's amazing because their complaints were sort of vague, to say the least.
00:15:03.000Bob Good got up and he said the Speaker fought through 15 votes in January to become Speaker but was only willing to fight through one failed CR before surrendering to the Democrats on Saturday.
00:15:10.000We need a Speaker who will fight for something, anything besides just staying or becoming Speaker.
00:15:42.000What it really is is an act of personal peak and also, you know, personal political benefit for Matt Gaetz.
00:15:49.000And when the incentives are not aligned, when the stars aren't aligned, when your personal political benefits run directly against the interests of the party at large or the movement at large, the incentive structure right now says there are going to always be rogue actors who are able to do this sort of thing.
00:16:09.000That does not mean the fun has to end.
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00:17:15.000So then he was forced to bring to the floor, according to the deal that he had made with these Republicans, the motion to vacate the chair.
00:17:22.000And here was McCarthy defending himself.
00:17:46.000You know, he would have done it if we were in shutdown or not.
00:17:49.000I firmly believe it's the right decision to keep government open, to make sure our military is still paid, our border agents are still paid.
00:17:57.000And if that makes a challenge based upon whether I should be Speaker, I'll take that fight.
00:18:10.000He was assuming that in the end, even the rogue actors would have enough, would have enough wherewithal to assume that voting entirely with Democrats was a bad look and that they would come back into the fold.
00:18:22.000It turns out that the personal incentives did not align with the rest of the Republican incentives, so 4% of the caucus takes down the other 96% of the caucus.
00:18:30.000McCarthy said keeping the government open was the right decision because we had no alternatives.
00:18:34.000The bill that I tried to advance was opposed by the same people trying to kick me out of the speakership now.
00:18:39.000I had a lot of Republicans that wanted me to do it.
00:18:58.000At the end of the day, if I have to lose my job over it, so be it.
00:19:01.000But I'm going to fight for the American public, and I'll continue to fight.
00:19:04.000Now, as you will see, people in the Republican caucus, from the right side of the caucus to the left side of the caucus, supported McCarthy in retaining the speakership.
00:19:12.000So Representative Elise Stefanik, who's a very Trumpy congresswoman from New York, but she's more on the left wing of the Republican caucus.
00:19:18.000Yesterday, she said, I don't understand why we're going after McCarthy.
00:20:26.000As the only member who's serving here who took every chance to vote against Speaker Boehner and to vote against Speaker Ryan, I can tell you that this chamber has been run better, more conservatively, and more transparently under Mr. McCarthy than any other speaker that I have served under.
00:20:45.000As a member of the Rules Committee, one of three conservatives who were placed there out of trust, the Speaker gave us a blocking position by putting three of us on there to keep an eye on the Rules Committee to make sure the process was fair and even.
00:21:03.000I can tell you it's been fair and even.
00:21:06.000None of us are voting against the Speaker today.
00:21:09.000It's only eight Republicans who voted against the Speaker.
00:21:11.000But all it takes is a few to throw the rest of the house into chaos.
00:21:15.000And we'll get to more on this in just a second.
00:21:16.000I'm gonna get to Matt Gaetz's argument against Kevin McCarthy.
00:21:20.000First, if you run a small business, you need to plan ahead.
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00:22:32.000It wasn't that he's siding with the right wing of the party on this.
00:22:34.000Chip Roy, Thomas Massey, they wanted McCarthy to be Speaker.
00:22:39.000By the way, you want to talk about disloyalty in American politics?
00:22:42.000How about the fact that McCarthy has been incredibly loyal to, for example, President Trump, and Trump is nowhere to be found in any of this, just completely absent, not weighing in with Gaetz, not weighing in with anybody, just like he took a breather on this one.
00:22:55.000Meanwhile, Gaetz gets up and he assails McCarthy and gave a speech assailing him.
00:22:59.000Again, he didn't convince anybody, but he did have enough of the kind of An unaligned caucus to topple him on the basis of whatever this is.
00:23:11.000The problem with my friend from Ohio's argument is that many of the bills he referenced as having passed are not law.
00:23:18.000We are on a fast track to an omnibus bill, and it is difficult to champion oversight when House Republicans haven't even sent a subpoena to Hunter Biden.
00:23:28.000So it's hard to make the argument that oversight is the reason to continue when it sort of looks like failure theater.
00:24:10.000We didn't use sufficient leverage in the debt limit or in any other thing to actually get results on the border.
00:24:15.000The border is a disaster, really something I don't think you're going to be campaigning on that you've fixed the border.
00:24:20.000And when it comes to how those raise money, I take no lecture on asking patriotic Americans to weigh in and contribute to this fight from those who would grovel and bend knee for the lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership, who have called for all you want, who have hollowed out this town and have borrowed against the future of our future generations.
00:24:44.000Olly, this is such greasy, stupid garbage.
00:25:58.000This is about the idea that you can make money and you can make hay in the Republican Party right now by losing and pretending that you are winning and fighting the establishment, whatever that means.
00:26:09.000There have been establishment politicians.
00:26:10.000I'm just wondering, is Chip Roy, is Thomas Massey an establishment politician?
00:26:17.000And if I'm going to take lectures from Matt Gaetz on fiscal irresponsibility, you know what I noticed?
00:26:22.000I noticed that Matt Gaetz was a big backer and continues to be a big endorser of a presidential candidate who refuses to touch entitlements on principle.
00:26:30.000Virtually all debt in the United States is driven by our entitlement programs.
00:26:35.000So again, he's just assuming you're a moron.
00:26:37.000He's assuming that when he shouts about spending and how he wants to lower it, that you're going to ignore the fact that he's endorsed candidates who spent $7 trillion more money than any person in the history of America and has vowed never to cut entitlements.
00:26:51.000When he talks about how he's going to raise money and he's not going to take lectures from anybody else raising money, I should point out here at this point, Kevin McCarthy, for all that people are saying about him, Kevin McCarthy aligned PACs, spent millions of dollars supporting various members of the caucus that ended up ousting him.
00:27:08.000His majority committee contributed $10,000 each to the campaigns of Matt Rosendale, Nancy Mace, and Tim Burchett in the last election cycle, gave $5,000 each to Eli Crane and Bob Good.
00:27:19.000The majority committee also contributed $10,000 each to Victoria Sparks, Warren Davidson.
00:27:23.000They were all in favor of voting to vacate McCarthy in the first place.
00:27:27.000So again, this is like, it's just, it's, it's such, it's so obvious that there is a group of Republicans in power and in the media who think you're an idiot and are not going to tell you the truth on any of these matters because they believe that if they just tell you that somebody is insufficiently conservative, then that is enough.
00:29:08.000If so, would you like to say something about that to the candidate who you've endorsed for President of the United States who on principle says he will not do anything about it?
00:29:15.000Again, all these people who are complaining about spending, I don't remember them complaining when there was a Republican President of the United States and when there was a Republican Senate.
00:30:53.000Nancy Pelosi was able to wield her power with tremendous authority because the Democrats at least understand that in the end, you vote with your party.
00:30:59.000And the reason you vote with your party is to get things done.
00:32:12.000You have a Democratic Senate, largely thanks to the personal intervention of Donald Trump in Georgia Senate races, losing two Senate seats that should be Republican.
00:32:18.000You have a Democratic President of the United States because Donald Trump lost to a dead man.
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00:35:51.000Distracting from Joe Biden being a horrifyingly bad president.
00:35:55.000But the Republican Party seems bound and determined to distract from that by having a primary with too many candidates in it.
00:36:01.000Tim Scott continues to run an absolutely quixotic campaign.
00:36:05.000There is no reason for him to be in the campaign.
00:36:07.000As I've said before, if you want to have like a true interesting fight inside the Republican Party over who is best poised to take on Joe Biden, you need to get rid of some of these candidates.
00:36:15.000There is no reason he should be on the stage.
00:36:17.000Tim Scott is not breaking wind, let alone 3% in the polls.
00:36:21.000According to Politico, Tim Scott is struggling to break through in Iowa and New Hampshire, but a top campaign advisor is privately lobbying donors to stick with him until the primary reaches his home state of South Carolina.
00:36:33.000He's not even outrunning Nikki Haley in South Carolina.
00:36:36.000He's not outrunning Trump in South Carolina.
00:36:38.000So what we will get is just a bunch of candidates staying in until South Carolina.
00:36:42.000Trump will win by default, and maybe that's what you want, but that doesn't seem like a legit nominating process to me in terms of giving Americans a real choice.
00:36:50.000You need to consolidate the field, pretty obviously, but again, the incentive structure for every candidate is to stay in as long as humanly possible, rather than simply saying, my candidate has no purpose, I'm out, and go back to being a successful senator, Great guy from the state of South Carolina.
00:37:10.000He's being prosecuted for no apparent reason in New York.
00:37:13.000They're prosecuting him for fraud despite the fact that the people he supposedly defrauded say that they did not rely on his assertions of value in order to issue loans, for example.
00:37:22.000So he would say, yeah, my apartment is worth a bajillion dollars and it's three times the size it is.
00:37:27.000And the loan officer would then say, okay, you know what we're going to do?
00:37:36.000And I mean, you can see how drummed up all of this is.
00:37:40.000And there was a pool camera inside the courtroom the other day.
00:37:44.000And honestly, the optics of this are so awkward and weird.
00:37:47.000You've got Letitia James, who's in the background.
00:37:50.000She's the AG of New York, who's been pledging for years to go after Donald Trump.
00:37:54.000And she's glaring at Trump in the background.
00:37:55.000And then the camera makes its way around to Judge Engeron, who is the judge in this case, who is a liberal Democrat, who starts mugging for the camera.
00:38:51.000And again, it's not Trump's fault that he's being dragged into court in this particular case.
00:38:55.000But if the entire campaign is going to revolve around this stuff, he's not going to win.
00:38:58.000If the entire campaign is about Donald Trump's legal troubles, he is not going to win.
00:39:02.000Well now, he's been told to watch what he says and posts or risk ending up behind bars for up to a month.
00:39:07.000In the second day of the former president's financial fraud trial, Judge Arthur Engeron just issued a limited gag order against everyone in the civil case to stop verbal and social media related posts, posted swipes at members of his staff.
00:39:18.000Personal attacks on members of my court staff are unacceptable, not appropriate.
00:39:21.000Engron made clear Tuesday after Trump took a partisan swing at the judge's principal law clerk, Allison Greenfield, on Trump's Truth Social platform.
00:39:28.000Calling what Trump did, quote, a disparaging, untrue, and personally identifying post about a member of my staff, Engron only cited one of the defendants as the one behind the post, but it was obviously referring to Trump.
00:39:38.000The now-deleted post showed Greenfield in a picture standing next to Chuck Schumer and called her Schumer's girlfriend.
00:39:44.000With his long history of going on offense, today is the first time any judge has put the restraints of a gag order on Trump that's according to deadline.
00:39:50.000And by the way, Engron would love nothing better than to put Donald Trump behind bars for a month.
00:39:55.000It would be his favorite thing in the entire world.
00:39:58.000Trump, for his part, he is campaigning against the grossly incompetent and fraudulent Letitia James, who I noticed is not the current president of the United States.
00:40:05.000I'm not blaming Trump for going on offense on this stuff.
00:40:08.000My point is, if the entire race is about Donald Trump's legal troubles, he's not going to win.
00:40:37.000So, we should all contribute to Donald Trump's legal defense fund, and then we might want to think about nominating a candidate who isn't going to spend the next eight months in the courtroom, spending every dollar that goes into his campaign fund on legal fees.
00:40:49.000Now, here is Trump yesterday going after Letitia James.
00:40:52.000But he's been given false information, misleading information, and corrupt information by a very corrupt and incompetent Attorney General, Letitia James.
00:42:03.000Where the economy is going, people are holding their money in cash.
00:42:05.000Every investor I know right now is waiting to see what happens with prices, because essentially, when the economy goes down, that's when everything goes on sale at the store.
00:42:12.000So there are a lot of people who are waiting to buy up assets when they hit the skids.
00:42:16.000Right now, they've been artificially bubbled by inflation.
00:43:17.000Republicans lost at least four Senate seats they should have won in the last election cycle, which would have given them like a 53-seat majority in the Senate.
00:43:23.000Republicans should have had a House majority not of four or five or six votes.
00:43:28.000They should have had a House majority of 20.
00:43:43.000Okay, meanwhile, one of the things that maybe Americans might want to talk about is the giant crime wave that is now engulfing the nation.
00:43:49.000Again, in cities all over the United States, you have mobs of roving criminals who are doing criminal things.
00:43:54.000And now, there have been at least two left-wing journalists, social justice advocates, so-called, who have been legitimately murdered in major American cities.
00:44:03.000Ryan Carson, according to CBSNews.com, a social justice advocate on a mission to make New York a better place, was stabbed to death on the streets of Crown Heights on Monday.
00:44:10.000People who knew Carson, 32, said he dedicated his life to trying to change things.
00:45:22.000And then Corinne Jean-Pierre, this is... Democrats have no comeback to the fact that these crimes are occurring in their cities, on their watch.
00:45:28.000Here is KJP, Corinne Jean-Pierre, world's worst press secretary, trying to blame Henry Cuellar's carjacking on Republicans somehow.
00:45:37.000If a member of Congress is not safe on the streets of the nation's capital, who is?
00:45:44.000Look, we're grateful and relieved that the congressman is unharmed.
00:45:49.000We understand what communities are going through across the country, not just in D.C.
00:45:54.000That's why the president took action very early on in his administration to get the American Rescue Plan done, without the help of Republicans.
00:46:01.000It was the American Rescue- Republicans voted against the American Rescue Plan, which passed, by the way.
00:46:06.000And so it's Republicans' fault that people are getting stabbed to death on the streets of New York.
00:46:17.000Obviously, that means it's time for Republicans to set up a circular firing squad and go to town.
00:46:22.000Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
00:46:25.000So, just as Democrats can root for chaos inside the Republican Party, I can root for chaos inside the Democratic Party.
00:46:30.000Gavin Newsom announced a woman named LaFonza Butler, who is actually a Marylander, for United States Senate.
00:46:37.000He put out a tweet saying, I'm proud to announce California's new United States Senator, LaFonza Butler.
00:46:41.000As we mourn the enormous loss of Senator Feinstein, the very freedoms she fought for, reproductive freedom, equal protection, safety from gun violence, have never been under greater assault.
00:46:48.000LaFonza has spent her entire career fighting for women and girls, and has been a fierce advocate for working people.
00:46:53.000She used to be a union leader, and she's also the president of EMILY's List, which is a pro-abortion group.
00:46:59.000But most importantly, says Gavin Newsom, she will make history, becoming the first black lesbian to openly serve in the U.S.
00:47:04.000Well, slow clap for diversity, man, because that's the thing that really matters.
00:47:09.000And sadly, she's not a little person with, and as far as I'm aware, no Native American heritage.
00:47:14.000But if she had those things, she'd be like, perfect.
00:47:16.000We should just make her the president by default.
00:47:19.000She says, Newsom says, I have no doubt she'll carry the baton left by Senator Feinstein, continue to break glass ceilings and fight for all Californians in Washington, which will be good since she's been fighting for Marylanders for quite a while now.
00:47:29.000Again, Maryland, now the only state in the union with three U.S.
00:47:34.000Well, because again, in California, this is going to cause extraordinary chaos.
00:47:39.000In his first public remarks about his Senate appointment, Gavin Newsom said Monday, it's completely up to LaFonta Butler whether she runs for the seat previously held by Dianne Feinstein.
00:47:47.000He had said that he would appoint an interim senator as opposed to like a permanent senator.
00:47:52.000And so there was speculation that he had said to LaFonza Butler, I'm going to actually appoint you, but you can't run next time.
00:47:57.000So it'll be an out and out war between Adam Schiff and Barbara Lee, but you can't like, I'll make you the senator, but you're not permanent.
00:48:03.000Instead, he's just throwing her in there.
00:48:04.000And now the Democratic Party is going to have to have an intersectionality fight.
00:48:25.000So I'm all in favor of the intersectionality fight in my old home state of California.
00:48:29.000Newsom said, I think Lafonza Butler is uniquely positioned, simply the best person I could find for this moment in the job.
00:48:33.000Now, the real reason he appointed Lafonza Butler is he's trying to shore up union support in advance of a possible presidential run should Joe Biden keel over physically in the middle of 2024.
00:48:43.000So he's basically checking off every diversity box he can find in the Senate pick so that he can go back to the crowd and say, to black Americans, I did appoint a black woman.
00:48:50.000And he can go back to LGBT people and be like, you know who I did appoint?
00:49:44.000So, Barbaralee had said it was an insult for Newsom to appoint a black woman to a caretaker role when he had said that he wanted a placeholder appointee so that he wouldn't actually intervene in the election.
00:49:53.000Barbaralee is, no, they should be permanent.
00:49:58.000By the way, LaFonza Butler is the most radical senator in America now.
00:50:03.000She backed a plan to abolish bail across California for criminal suspects.
00:50:08.000So, Democrats... The fact that Republicans are losing to this party... Alan Simpson was a Republican senator from Wyoming, and he once suggested that American politics was a battle between what he termed the evil party, the Democrats, and the stupid party, the Republicans.
00:50:23.000And the stupid party continues to be incredibly stupid, and the evil party continues to appoint more and more radical people.
00:50:52.000So I'm, I was pretty happy with the writer's strike, to be honest with you, because at least then we didn't have to, uh, deal with this kind of crap.
00:50:58.000Anyway, Jimmy Fallon announced that he was back last night to the cheers of at least two dozen people in his audience.
00:53:56.000If I was the judge in the case he has going on in New York right now, I'd start the trial, I'd say, listen, look, we're gonna get to the fraud thing, but first, hop up on this scale, big fella.