McCarthy and his opponents continue to negotiate over who should be the next House Speaker, and Democrats take a gamble on making Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker, while Joe Biden takes advantage of the chaos to campaign and visit the border. Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/sponsorships and use promo code: CRIMINALS for 10% off "Hunt a Killer" for 10 days, and a limited-use coupon good for three months when entering your first year of free training. Use coupon "CRIMENTARY" for $10 off your first month of membership, and you get 20% off your entire membership for the rest of the year. Thanks to our sponsor ExpressVPN for sponsoring the show. The show is now available on all major podcasting platforms, including Audible, iTunes, and Podcoin. If you like the show, please consider pledging a small monthly or annual membership fee of $19.95, and we'll match you with a free epsiode of the show's theme song and ad-free ad-libbed version of the song "Goodbye Outer Space" by The Weakerthans, available on the App Store and Google Play. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and other podcasting services, wherever you get your favorite podcasting platform, and help keep us up to date with the latest releases. Thank you! Ben Shapiro and Ben Shapiro - The Benchmark Media - The Best Fiends - The podcast version of The FiveThirtyEight The Six Figures Podcast - Our new music is out now! Subscribe to The Bench Bureau Podcasts - Subscribe and review us on Podchaser - Subscribe to our new podcast! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices and become a supporter of our new sponsor, Rate/subscribe to our newest episode of The BenchBreeze Media - Rate/Review us on iTunes and review our podcast on Podcoin? Subscribe in iTunes and leave us a review and review the show review our work on Apple Music - Rate & review in iTunes Rate us on review & review the podcast on your podcast app? Subscribe & subscribe on PODCAST Thanks for listening to our podcast and review it in iTunes & review it on Stitcher and share it on Podcrush Share it on your social media!
00:00:12.000Today's show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
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00:00:24.000Well, we enter day three of the ongoing speakership saga, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:00:29.000Negotiations were set to continue between Kevin McCarthy and his detractors on Thursday, with some lawmakers expressing hope they could see a resolution to the speaker fight soon.
00:00:36.000Both sides saying that it could take days.
00:00:38.000At this point, the discussions between McCarthy's allies and his opponents heated up after McCarthy did not reach the majority in three series of votes for the speaker post on Tuesday, nor another three on Wednesday.
00:00:47.000So we've already had six votes on who should be the Speaker of the House.
00:00:49.000McCarthy has come up short each and every time.
00:00:51.000It seems like there is a solid and not particularly growing chorus of people who don't want McCarthy to be Speaker or who are at least using this vote as leverage in order to exact concessions.
00:01:04.000It's about 20 Republicans right now who aren't supporting McCarthy.
00:01:07.000Probably half of them just don't want McCarthy to be Speaker, and another half of them want to exact concessions from McCarthy that would be more conservative in orientation.
00:01:16.000And there is a very large difference between these two groups.
00:01:18.000One of them has a strategy, one of them does not.
00:01:20.000The group that wants to exact concessions from McCarthy, this is just traditional, typical politics, right?
00:01:24.000You have leverage over McCarthy, and now you can get out of him an additional couple of seats on the Appropriations Committee, or you can get a commitment from him on not bringing to the floor omnibus packages.
00:01:34.000This stuff is good and fine and useful.
00:01:36.000And this is the sort of stuff that McCarthy has been attempting to negotiate with this group for quite a while.
00:01:40.000And there's been movement on that front.
00:01:43.000Actually, Politico was reporting as of this morning.
00:01:46.000That it looks like there's a deal in the works at least for about half of those 20 Republicans to come on board with McCarthy, given that they are given enough concessions.
00:01:54.000So according to Politico, there are a bunch of new concessions that are on the table.
00:01:57.000Here's what's being discussed according to one well-placed source familiar with the talks.
00:02:00.000Keep in mind, negotiations are ongoing and fluid.
00:02:03.000The GOP leader appears to have finally acquiesced to a demand to lower the threshold needed to force a vote ousting a speaker to just one member.
00:02:09.000While McCarthy originally indicated restoring the one-member motion to vacate was a red line, his allies now argue there's not a huge practical difference between this and his previous offer requiring five members to trigger the vote.
00:02:18.000So, Nancy Pelosi, upon taking office in 2018, she decided to increase the threshold for essentially a no-confidence motion against the Speaker of the House.
00:02:27.000McCarthy was seeking to maintain that.
00:02:29.000Many in the House Freedom Caucus, many of McCarthy's opponents, wanted to lower it back down to one member.
00:02:34.000Presumably seeking to avoid an embarrassing vote every two months when one member decides that they're going to initiate some sort of vote of no confidence.
00:02:41.000He wanted to raise the threshold, but now it appears he is willing to maybe lower the threshold again.
00:02:45.000McCarthy apparently is prepared to give the House Freedom Caucus a couple of seats on the powerful House Rules Committee, which oversees the amendment process on the floor, which would be good.
00:02:55.000Frankly, any more amendments on the floor would be useful considering how many bad omnibus packages come down that don't have any amendment process that is actually given to them.
00:03:03.000Now, again, a lot of this is paring away the power of the speaker.
00:03:06.000And as we have seen already, the Republican Party has almost no power over its own membership.
00:03:10.000So the fact That the Speaker is now going to reflect the position of the Republican Party more generally is not a great shock.
00:03:16.000The Speaker of the House used to be able to wield all sorts of power over his membership.
00:03:19.000Nancy Pelosi was actually amazingly good at wielding power over her membership because, mainly, she was an incredible fundraiser, and this meant that she could either withdraw money from particular candidates or give money to particular candidates.
00:03:30.000She would withdraw committee assignments, switch committee assignments, use whatever power was available in order to cudgel everybody into line.
00:03:35.000Republicans traditionally are not as good at this, and it certainly has been true since the end of the Gingrich era.
00:03:40.000McCarthy now wants to give, apparently he's willing to give the House Freedom Caucus a couple of seats on the House Rules Committee.
00:03:46.000There are also talks about giving a third seat to a conservative close to the Freedom Caucus but not in it.
00:03:50.000Somebody like Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky.
00:03:54.000Apparently, there is a struggle right now between the Freedom Caucus and McCarthy.
00:03:57.000McCarthy's saying, I want to pick those members, and the Freedom Caucus is saying, we want to pick those members.
00:04:00.000They also want to vote on term limits.
00:04:02.000There's a key demand from Representative Ralph Norman, who's proposed a constitutional amendment limiting lawmakers to three terms in the House.
00:04:07.000Now, again, it would take an actual constitutional amendment, in all likelihood, for term limits to become the law of the land, and it's going nowhere in the Senate.
00:04:14.000So McCarthy can easily say, fine, we'll have a vote on it, and then the vote just goes dead in the Senate.
00:04:18.000Again, none of that would be a giant shock.
00:04:21.000The big one, and this is the big positive one, would be a major change to the appropriations process.
00:04:25.000Fears of another trillion plus dollar omnibus spending bill have been the major driver of the conservative backlash to McCarthy.
00:04:30.000The brewing deal includes a promise for standalone votes on each of the 12 yearly appropriations bills, which would be considered under what is known as an open rule, which would allow floor amendments to be offered by any lawmaker.
00:04:39.000Conservatives also want a concession to carve out earmarks included in those packages for separate votes.
00:04:43.000Although it's unclear if they'd be voted on as one package or separately.
00:04:46.000Now again, all this is going to make legislation very, very unworkable.
00:04:50.000I don't have a problem with it being unworkable and unwieldy.
00:04:53.000There's going to come a point where McCarthy is going to have to pass some of these votes.
00:04:56.000And what's likely to happen in that case is that let's say that they move forward with these appropriations bills.
00:05:01.000And all the Democrats vote against the appropriations bills and they carve off another 15, 20 Republicans who won't vote for the appropriations bills.
00:05:06.000And suddenly we're in the position of a government shutdown.
00:05:08.000McCarthy doesn't want to preside over another government shutdown.
00:05:12.000You may end up back where you started, but at least people will have had their say, which I'm not opposed to in any way, shape or form.
00:05:18.000There's one more big concession that apparently is coming from the Congressional Leadership Fund.
00:05:21.000The McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund reached a deal with the Conservative Club for Growth, which had initially signaled opposition to Speaker McCarthy to stay out of open house primaries for safe Republican seats.
00:05:30.000So in the past, The Congressional Leadership Fund had poured in millions of dollars to back more establishment candidates against the Club for Growth, which was backing a lot of insurgent Tea Party-esque candidates.
00:05:41.000And now the Congressional Leadership Fund is committing to staying out of open primaries in very solidly held conservative seats.
00:06:24.000Have you ever read the fine print that appears when you start browsing in incognito mode?
00:06:28.000It says your activity might still be visible to your employer, your school, or your ISP.
00:06:32.000Well, why do you want that activity to be visible to those people?
00:06:35.000Instead, you should be doing what I do and using ExpressVPN.
00:06:38.000Think about all the times you've used Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, hotel, even a friend's house.
00:06:42.000Without ExpressVPN, every site you visit can be logged by the admin of that network.
00:06:45.000That's still true even when you're in incognito mode.
00:06:47.000Your home internet provider can also see and record your browsing data.
00:06:50.000In the United States, they're legally allowed to sell that data to advertisers.
00:06:53.000ExpressVPN is an app that encrypts all your network data and reroutes it through a network of secure servers so your private online activity stays just that.
00:07:39.000I sleep like a baby, particularly at those times when our brand new puppy is not waking me up so that I have to take it out to go to the bathroom.
00:07:44.000My mattress should never be a one-size-fits-all solution because why should you have to compromise on comfort?
00:08:24.000Representative Warren Davidson, Republican of Ohio, listed yesterday a bunch of the concessions McCarthy had already made to the people who are not interested in voting for him at this time.
00:08:34.000Following the election, Kevin McCarthy engaged in that negotiation.
00:08:38.000He led the conference to adopt substantive reforms that will make our majority more effective.
00:09:36.000And herein lies the problem for McCarthy.
00:09:38.000He's negotiating with one group that's reasonable and wants concessions and another group that just doesn't want McCarthy.
00:09:43.000The big concession is McCarthy steps aside.
00:09:46.000So how exactly is he supposed to negotiate all of that?
00:09:49.000And again, this is not coming from a place of animus against any of these Congress people.
00:09:53.000I know people in all three of these groups.
00:09:55.000I know people who are very strongly in support of McCarthy.
00:09:57.000I know people who are in the Chip Roy group, and I've been talking with them.
00:10:00.000I know people who are in the anti-McCarthy group, and I've been talking with some of them as well.
00:10:03.000So this notion that this is about animus against any one of these groups is wrong.
00:10:08.000I just think that two of these groups have a strategy, and one of these groups does not.
00:10:12.000The problem, of course, is that if you have enough people who don't have a strategy, and their strategy is essentially loud noises, This could force a very, very dangerous floor vote on the speakership, which I'll explain in just a second.
00:10:23.000Here's Chip Roy explaining what he wants and Brett Baier saying, so if you get what you want, do you have the votes?
00:10:27.000And Chip Roy being like, I don't know.
00:10:33.000We want to protect the rules that we've already been able to advance.
00:10:36.000We want to make sure we have spending restraint, like the cut, cap, and balance from a decade ago.
00:10:40.000We're having those conversations as we speak, but we're not going to relent unless we can actually do our job and stop this town, this broken town, from rolling over the American people.
00:10:50.000And if Kevin McCarthy says, you know what, I'll give you everything you want, what will you say?
00:11:29.000People are opposing Steve Scalise's possible replacement.
00:11:33.00088% makes you one of the more conservative members of the Republican House of Representatives.
00:11:38.000It's like an 86% score from the American Conservative Union.
00:11:41.000This isn't a person who's like wildly liberal on the far left wing of the Republican Party.
00:11:46.000The big rip on on Kevin McCarthy is that he's a wheeler and a dealer.
00:11:51.000But in a in a moment where the party essentially exerts no influence over an entire cadre of its own members, You kind of have to be a wheeler and dealer to get there.
00:11:59.000So people are saying, well, why is McCarthy even bringing his own speaker show up for vote if he doesn't have the votes?
00:12:03.000Let me remind you, there is not a single Republican Speaker of the House candidate who has gotten a unanimous vote for their candidacy since John Boehner in January of 2011.
00:12:28.000But the majority is so small at 222 and you have to get to 218 that 5 members of the House can stand against the other 217 members of the Republican caucus and then demand that the candidate with 217 votes step aside in favor of an unnamed candidate who's not even declared as of yet.
00:12:44.000And if the five had another candidate they were putting up there, who I thought was stronger and better and more likely to actually get to 218, then, okay, fine.
00:12:56.000But so far, nothing remotely like that has been presented.
00:13:00.000When Paul Ryan was made Speaker of the House, against his will, sort of, in 2015, there were nine Republicans who did not vote for him for Speaker of the House.
00:13:07.000The difference is Republicans had a far broader majority.
00:13:10.000So the big shortcoming here for McCarthy is really not with regard to whipping the votes right now.
00:13:13.000The big problem for McCarthy is that McCarthy and the Republican House did a crap job of getting themselves elected in large numbers in the last election cycle.
00:13:20.000If they had 230 Republican members of the House right now, Then McCarthy could afford to lose 12 and be totally fine, and he'd be fine right now.
00:13:27.000He'd just make concessions to the Chip Roy wing and everything would be done.
00:13:30.000The problem is that the majority is so slim that if you have five people who are just saying no, nothing can be done except for, as I mentioned, a sort of nuclear option that may be brought to bear in very short order given the intransigence of these four or five or six or eight members who refuse under all circumstances to back McCarthy.
00:13:48.000Well, this led to a very weird sort of political realignment that's been happening right now.
00:13:53.000And that political realignment is between people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's actually siding with McCarthy because she says, listen, we have to have a speaker of the House.
00:13:59.000I mean, she actually sounds like the reasonable person now, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
00:14:01.000She's chiding McCarthy's opponents and saying, you guys don't have a plan.
00:14:06.000Like, who is it that you're putting up there?
00:14:08.000McCarthy, we can force him into positions.
00:14:47.000Okay, Marjorie Taylor Greene happens to be correct about this.
00:14:50.000Donald Trump also backing Kevin McCarthy.
00:14:53.000Meanwhile, Lauren Boebert was asked about Donald Trump backing Kevin McCarthy, and she's like, well, Donald Trump isn't in charge of this boat anymore.
00:15:00.000So here is Lauren Boebert saying that no matter what Donald Trump says, she's going to continue to fight back against McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
00:15:37.000She is the captain now to President Trump.
00:15:39.000I mean, it does make Trump look pretty weak that he can't get the Trumpiest members of his own caucus in line on this one.
00:15:44.000But again, what Marjorie Taylor Greene says, and believe me, I have criticisms of Marjorie Taylor Greene that I've made very clear in the past.
00:15:51.000Marjorie Taylor Greene, what she's saying there is exactly correct.
00:15:53.000Jim Jordan yesterday said there is no chance he will be Speaker.
00:15:56.000He said, I'm not interested in being Speaker.
00:15:58.000He was their first attempt to nominate.
00:16:01.000Here was Jim Jordan yesterday walking through the Capitol building and saying, I don't want any piece of this.
00:16:05.000But is there any chance that you may be Speaker of the House?
00:17:09.000Kevin McCarthy has worked tirelessly to end Nancy Pelosi's reign as Speaker, flip the House from Democrat to Republican, and implement our agenda.
00:17:21.000The people who are voting against Kevin McCarthy in the Republican conference ...are aiding Joe Biden, aiding Hakeem Jeffries, and aiding Chuck Schumer, because they are the reason that we are not getting about the business that we set out to do.
00:17:37.000They need to wake up and realize that we're not rolling over.
00:17:42.000There are over 200 of us who support Kevin McCarthy, and we will support him on every single vote.
00:17:51.000Okay, well, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and when she says that the opposition has not brought a serious candidate forward, she's not wrong about that.
00:18:21.000I rise today to nominate Byron Donalds, my friend, an amazing man of Florida, an amazing leader, someone who almost even took leadership here in our Republican Party and came very close in doing so and it was a very brave run that he took.
00:18:39.000He's a man who understands what tough times look like and has come out of those tough times even stronger, more liberated, and as a leader.
00:18:52.000Again, I like Byron Donalds, but Byron Donalds is not going to be Speaker of the House.
00:18:57.000In fact, yesterday, Byron Donalds, who's like, I didn't come here if I'm interested in being Speaker.
00:19:00.000I voted for myself because, frankly, it's kind of fun.
00:19:02.000Representative Donalds, yesterday, saying as much.
00:19:07.000Here's what he said, selling himself as Speaker.
00:19:24.000They nominated me, of course I voted for myself, it's pretty cool.
00:19:27.000So I mean, does that sound like a serious opposition?
00:19:29.000Or does it just sound like we're going to say no until we get what we want without any actual strategy for a replacement?
00:19:34.000Again, I understand why people are angry at Kevin McCarthy.
00:19:37.000I understand that they believe that he has conceded too many times to Democrats, which is why you have negotiations taking place between people like Chip Roy and Kevin McCarthy, exacting hard-nosed concessions from Kevin McCarthy.
00:19:48.000The question is, who can you actually make the speaker at this point?
00:19:52.000By the way, Representative Donalds is saying the same thing.
00:19:53.000Representative Donalds, who is being treated as sort of the great hope of the opposition, he says, if McCarthy makes enough concessions to us, then I'm willing to vote for McCarthy.
00:20:03.000We're going to go back in and we're going to have this round of ballots and we're going to have more conversations.
00:20:07.000Do you see a path forward for Kevin McCarthy real quick?
00:20:11.000I think it's possible, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done right now.
00:20:16.000I think it's possible is the proper answer.
00:20:19.000I think it's possible is the proper answer.
00:20:21.000So there have been some other names that have been floated here.
00:20:24.000By the way, I should mention here that Cori Bush, the congresswoman from Missouri, the Black Lives Matter congressperson from Missouri, that's literally how she got her political career started.
00:20:44.000So in other words, the first person who's ever been nominated speaker on the Republican side of the aisle and is black, which would make two nominees for a black speaker of the house, right?
00:21:03.000This is part of the problem, by the way, with this whole sort of silliness that's happening right now, not on the behalf of negotiation, but just on behalf of sort of the chaos crew.
00:21:11.000The problem is that you're distracting from the fact that the Democrats are terrible.
00:21:18.000As we'll see, Joe Biden is taking full advantage of the chaos in the House right now in order to trot out a feeling of sort of salinity and sobriety.
00:21:26.000He's out there campaigning with people like Mike DeWine and Mitch McConnell.
00:21:30.000He's out there heading down to the border.
00:21:32.000He's able to obscure the fact that he's a horrible president.
00:21:35.000And the Democrats are able to obscure the fact that they just lost the majority in the House because the Republicans are too busy fighting one another.
00:21:40.000Now, again, the process of democracy is messy.
00:21:42.000Within a week, everyone will have forgotten all of this, so long as a conclusion is actually reached.
00:21:45.000But if no conclusion is reached, then what you're going to end up with is a nuclear option.
00:21:49.000Representative Michael McCaul of Texas says we do have a nuclear option in store if we still have five, six, seven Republicans who are holding up the works right here.
00:21:56.000Here is Representative McCaul explaining.
00:22:00.000The Democrat from Ohio says she's willing to cross party lines maybe to get this solved.
00:22:07.000Not all Democrats are on board with that, but that that might be a possible way to end this.
00:22:16.000We would prefer that all Republicans stick together.
00:22:19.000I don't know if that could happen at this point in time.
00:22:22.000There is one other option, Neil, the nuclear option, where a vote would be made on the plurality of votes, not the magical 218 number that you're talking about.
00:22:32.000But that would be a very dangerous move as well because then these 20 or so that don't like Kevin McCarthy or won't vote for him would have to make a decision.
00:22:42.000Do I vote for McCarthy or for somebody else that then could throw the speakership to the Democratic Party?
00:22:49.000We'll get to more on this in just one second.
00:22:55.000Because, I know, nobody likes to think about death, but death could be upon you at any moment.
00:22:59.000I know dark thoughts to start the new year.
00:23:01.000But, if you are, in fact, hit by that truck just outside, the one that you're looking at outside the window, right now you walk outside and BAM!
00:23:07.000As you're bleeding out on the pavement, you'll be thinking, man, I should have listened to Shapiro like 10 seconds ago and headed on over to Policy Genius to get the life insurance I need.
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00:23:57.000Also, what is your New Year's resolution?
00:24:00.000Well, if you are like me, There are more boxes of VHS tapes and old film reels and pictures that you need to send off to Legacybox and get those things preserved forever.
00:24:07.000It makes a fantastic gift for family, for friends, for yourself.
00:24:11.000All that stuff that's out there in the garage, all those great family memories, you spent a lot of time taking those pictures and now you haven't seen any of them in years.
00:24:17.000Well, maybe that's because they need to get digitized and preserved.
00:24:19.000Preserve them from the elements, preserve them from the bugs that are in the garage.
00:25:13.000The way that would work is that some Republicans and some Democrats, you need more than 218, would vote in order to change the rule as to how you get made House Speaker.
00:25:20.000And you need a plurality, meaning the most votes.
00:25:55.000Maybe these maybe Democrats think that there are enough crazy Republicans that they are willing to actually to avoid having McCarthy be speaker, hand the gavel to Hakeem Jeffries.
00:26:07.000Maybe there are some Republicans who are willing to hand Hakeem Jeffries the gavel just to not hand it to McCarthy, which seems wild to me.
00:26:13.000In any case, what they would do is then they would vote to change the rule so plurality takes it.
00:26:17.000212 Democrats then vote for Hakeem Jeffries.
00:26:19.000And now you have the group led presumably by Chip Roy and company, this sort of negotiating group.
00:26:54.000The way that that works is that it has to be a majority of people who vote on the issue, who do not abstain.
00:27:00.000And so what that means is if, let's say that you lose They're 435 members of the House.
00:27:07.000Let's say that 35 of them abstain, then somebody who gets to 201 wins.
00:27:10.000But you're not going to get 35 to abstain.
00:27:13.000Right now, even if you got 10 people who really, really hate Kevin McCarthy to abstain from the vote, that still does not get you anywhere close to the number that McCarthy needs in order to win the speakership.
00:27:42.000It's one of the things that sets us apart from our friends on the other side of the aisle. Yes, diversity of thought is a good thing, but they want us divided.
00:28:10.000She actually tweeted out, if only, if Democrats took a shot every time McCarthy lost a Republican, we'd all be unconscious by now.
00:28:17.000Fair point by the irrepressibly idiotic Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
00:28:21.000Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Susan DelBene, she was out there saying they're the chaos caucus.
00:28:25.000This is the broader problem for the Republican Party.
00:28:28.000If you are attempting to earn the trust of the American people, then you have to look as though you are sober.
00:28:32.000Again, a sober negotiation happening between people who say that they want to exact concessions from McCarthy for the 35th time, who say they want to exact these concessions.
00:29:29.000The Republicans have been the chaos caucus, and they're proving that yet again.
00:29:34.000Inability, there's just not leadership there to help bring people together.
00:29:38.000Okay, so again, you can see the smiles on the faces of the morning Joe crew over all of this.
00:29:46.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden is out there enjoying the spectacle.
00:29:49.000He says not his problem, but it's embarrassing.
00:29:52.000You know, again, what seems to be more embarrassing is a president with applesauce for brains, but I guess when the focus is not on President Applesauce for brains, then the focus ain't on the guy whose head is mush.
00:30:05.000speaking just moments ago about ongoing negotiations on capitol hill over the speaker and more have a listen It's embarrassing.
00:30:33.000It's embarrassing, says Joe Biden, who is an embarrassment of a president.
00:30:36.000I have a generalized rule when it comes to politics.
00:30:38.000If Joy Behar is happy about something, that means that it's a stupid thing and that it's a thing that is a problem.
00:30:42.000Here is Joy Behar yesterday explaining how much she is enjoying the quote unquote demise of the GOP.
00:30:48.000We gotta figure out who's gonna get this house in order here.
00:30:52.000I had a little, what they call, schadenfreude watching this.
00:30:54.000You know, I sort of enjoyed that there's been such disarray because they deserve it.
00:30:59.000It was nice that they took a break from destroying the country and started to turn on each other.
00:31:04.000But I'm enjoying the demise because they are the most destructive force in politics in my lifetime.
00:31:13.000Whenever Joy Behar is happy about something, again, good indicator that Republicans and conservatives should not be happy about it.
00:31:19.000Meanwhile, all of this is providing Joe Biden with the cover he needs in order to essentially consolidate control, power, whatever elements of popularity he has.
00:31:29.000Joe Biden always does best when he's out of the spotlight, because the more spotlight is on Joe Biden, the worse he looks.
00:31:52.000I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on.
00:31:54.000And yet Joe Biden is being allowed to escape the consequences of all that because the more Republicans provide a distraction for Democrats to focus on, the less the crowd is focused on the Democrats, which means that they can ignore the fact that Joe Biden is a nonsensical old man.
00:32:07.000Here was Joe Biden being a nonsensical old man yesterday.
00:32:09.000I've traveled over 140 countries around the world.
00:32:14.000I'll paraphrase the phrase of my own neighborhood.
00:32:18.000The rest of the country, the world is not a patch on our jeans.
00:32:22.000If we do what we want to do, we need to do.
00:32:26.000I'm not a patch on our jeans, and the rest of the world, and I'll travel around the country, and I'll rock your road, and I'll go jamming in Manhattan.
00:32:36.000That's Joe Biden standing in front of an unfinished bridge.
00:32:39.000Meanwhile, by the way, he was campaigning on the infrastructure bill that he signed with Republicans.
00:32:43.000And here I have to call out Mitch McConnell.
00:32:45.000Why in the hell are you campaigning with Joe Biden?
00:32:50.000So I understand why Mike DeWine did it.
00:32:52.000Mike DeWine is a very moderate Republican governor of Ohio.
00:32:54.000He won by about 20 points in his last reelect.
00:32:57.000Mike DeWine did an event with Mitch McConnell celebrating the infrastructure bill.
00:33:01.000Now, Mitch McConnell voted in favor of the infrastructure bill.
00:33:02.00019 Senate Republicans voted in favor of the infrastructure bill.
00:33:05.000So the last two moves we've seen from Mitch McConnell, who is, I would say, proving himself to be fairly warm toward President Biden, is to sign off on a $1.7 trillion omnibus package.
00:33:23.000He signed off on that so he wouldn't have to negotiate with House Republicans by waiting a month and a half.
00:33:28.000And then he did a campaign event with Joe Biden on infrastructure, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:33:33.000President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell touted a bridge project made possible under the 2021 infrastructure bill during a trip to Kentucky on Wednesday.
00:33:40.000Now, what's funny about this is that that bridge that is behind them has been largely unfinished for about 10 years and it will remain unfinished because every infrastructure bill ends up being a giant waste of money on the federal level.
00:33:49.000The former Senate colleagues appeared together in Covington, Kentucky, where the White House announced funding to upgrade the Brent Spence Bridge between Ohio and Kentucky, as well as investments in other bridges around the country.
00:33:58.000Also scheduled to attend were Sherrod Brown, Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, former Senator Rob Portman, a Republican, and Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat of Kentucky.
00:34:07.000Biden then called McConnell a friend and colleague, and cited the bipartisan infrastructure law as an example of elected officials in Washington coming together to work together.
00:34:15.000Here is Joe Biden praising Mitch McConnell for the infrastructure bill.
00:34:19.000Again, Republicans handing Democrats victory on both the practical level as well as on the imagistic level.
00:34:25.000Mitch, it's, you know, it wasn't easy to get this done and it wouldn't have gotten done no matter all the work so many others have done and by writing the legislation and dropping it in.
00:34:38.000It wouldn't have happened without your hand.
00:35:56.000If you're a part of the future, that means that you will exist.
00:35:58.000Meanwhile, Joe Biden is heading down to the border, so he's going to use cover of whatever chaos is going on to head down to the border for a brief trip so that he can say that he has been to the border.
00:36:05.000We'll get to all that in just one second.
00:36:07.000Folks, in 2022, we launched Jeremy's Razors as a joke, but it was a very important joke.
00:36:11.000Now, just 9 months and 15 premium products later, we have amassed the largest social media following of any brand in the category.
00:36:17.000We've taken over 10 million bucks away from so-called men's grooming companies that actually hate men.
00:37:03.000According to the Wall Street Journal, the president's comments came after the Wall Street Journal reported the White House was strongly considering adding a visit to the border to a Mexico trip.
00:37:09.000According to people familiar with the discussions, Biden is expected to meet Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, handsome Bernie Sanders in Mexico City for the North American Leaders Summit January 9th and 10th.
00:37:22.000The trip would be Biden's first visit to the border as president and also ever.
00:37:25.000One of the people said there would be no new policy announcement at the event if it occurs.
00:37:30.000The reason that Biden is announcing that, of course, is because he believes that he has momentum and he believes he has cover.
00:37:34.000Now, he could be suckered into a false sense of complacency here.
00:37:38.000Democrats did not do amazing in the last election cycle.
00:37:40.000Republicans just didn't do particularly well.
00:37:42.000And if Democrats continue to run to the extreme left, they're going to pay the price for that.
00:37:45.000I think that is why Joe Biden is actually using this as an opportunity to try to look moderate with things like infrastructure and maybe visiting the border.
00:37:51.000According to Politico, Biden on Thursday is going to announce plans to accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in a border strategy that will be paired with the expanded use of Title 42 expulsions.
00:38:03.000The president, in a speech in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, will unveil a new humanitarian parole program for migrants from those nations, according to several people familiar with the planning.
00:38:13.000In other words, he's going to continue to rely on the temporary Title 42 program.
00:38:21.000At the same time, he is going to allow 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela into the country.
00:38:29.000Now, at least you can make the argument with regard to, for example, Cuba and Venezuela, that some of these are actual humanitarian asylum cases.
00:38:36.000Cuba is a giant communist hellhole and people who are willing to get on like a floating Cadillac and try to move the 90 miles from Cuba to the south coast of Florida.
00:38:44.000Those people, it seems to me, should be given some form of asylum.
00:38:48.000However, 30,000 migrants per month is a lot of migrants per month.
00:38:51.000This is Over the course of the year, 360,000 migrants that he wants to let in.
00:38:56.000The idea that this is going to alleviate the problem rather than exacerbating the problem is, of course, false.
00:38:59.000And exactly how are you going to make sure that these people are from the countries that they say they are?
00:39:04.000It is not as though somebody shows up at the border and they show you their Venezuelan ID and you're like, OK, well, I guess I guess now I can trust it.
00:39:11.000The new policy is modeled after the one ruled out solely for Venezuelans this fall.
00:39:14.000That created a narrow pathway for up to 24,000 migrants.
00:39:17.000But now we are talking about expanding that by a factor of, what, 15?
00:39:21.000Border agents have already turned away masses of Venezuelans using a Title 42 authority over the past few months.
00:39:27.000The program's unveiling comes one day after Biden announced it is his intention to make his first trip to the border as president.
00:39:33.000Many of the president's left-wing opponents are angry that he would expand the Title 42 program.
00:39:39.000So basically, he's saying, I'm gonna let in these people in order so that I can continue to use Title 42.
00:39:42.000He is likely to please no one, nor is he likely to stem any of the migration surge that we have seen, the illegal immigrant migration surge that we have seen over the course of Joe Biden's presidency.
00:39:51.000Apparently, up to 5 million people illegally entering the country since Joe Biden took office.
00:39:56.000How bad is the situation on the southern border?
00:39:58.000It's so bad that Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who's a Democrat, has been sending illegal immigrants to New York City.
00:40:03.000Remember that time it was horrible and evil for Ron DeSantis to send illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard?
00:40:08.000How dare anybody's winter vacation be ruined by illegal immigrants arriving there by the dozen?
00:41:50.000Or she'll talk about how, why is all my money just disappearing in taxes?
00:41:53.000You're like, wow, Cardi B, you had a bout of sanity.
00:41:55.000Well, she had one the other day, pointing out that inflation is absolutely crippling people, particularly people who are making less money than Cardi B.
00:43:05.000And all of the focus would be on inflation.
00:43:08.000All of the focus would be on a sinking stock market.
00:43:10.000All the focus would be on the fact that Amazon is about to lay off 18,000 workers, like right now.
00:43:15.000The biggest company in America, Amazon, it's labs are about to affect 18,000 employees, the highest reduction tally revealed in the past year to major tech company, as the industry pairs back amid economic uncertainty, according to the journal.
00:43:26.000The layoffs are concentrated in the company's corporate ranks and represent roughly 5% of that element of its workforce, 1.2% of its overall tally of 1.5 million employees as of September.
00:43:35.000The Seattle-based company in November said it was beginning layoffs, but the cuts concentrating in its retail devices business, recruiting, and retail operations.
00:43:42.000At the time, the Wall Street Journal reported the cuts would be $10,000.
00:43:44.000Now they are close to doubling that number.
00:43:46.000Again, the economy is on a razor's edge at this point, and Joe Biden is feeling none of the blowback of that.
00:43:51.000He's feeling pretty good about himself.
00:43:52.000Meanwhile, because we blew so much money into the pockets of the American people, we still have massive inflationary pressures.
00:43:58.000I understand everybody thinks inflation is over for no reason, considering it is still well above 7%.
00:44:04.000Remember, the goal of the Fed is supposed to be 2%.
00:44:05.000It is now more than triple that, and yet we're supposed to pretend everything is going hunky-dory.
00:44:10.000According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials offered uncharacteristically blunt words of warning to investors that cautioned against underestimating the central bank's determination to hold interest rates at higher levels to bring down inflation.
00:44:21.000Minutes of the Fed's policy meeting last month, released on Wednesday, highlighted the tricky communications task that has vexed the central bank over the past six months.
00:44:27.000The Fed's rapid rate increases last year have fanned investor hopes that inflation will slow quickly over the coming year.
00:44:32.000In the run-up to the December meeting, longer-term bond yields tumbled, reflecting optimism about a speedy decline in inflation and fears of a recession this year.
00:44:39.000Many Fed officials are saying, wait a second, the robust economics showing people continuing to spend means we're going to have to ratchet up those interest rates in order to ratchet down the inflation.
00:44:48.000So don't get so don't get so happy so fast.
00:44:52.000Any market rallies that ease financial conditions threaten to hinder officials efforts to cool hiring and wage growth, which in turn could prompt them to continue lifting rates or holding them at higher levels for longer, increasing the risk of a deeper or longer economic downturn.
00:45:04.000Some of the minutes of the Fed's December 13th to 14th meetings had, quote, an unwarranted easing in financial conditions, especially if driven by a misperception by the public of how the Fed is going to react, would complicate the committee's efforts to restore price stability.
00:45:15.000So they keep saying to the market, guys, we're raising the interest rates, we're raising the interest rates.
00:45:18.000Stop acting as though the economy is going to be OK and tossing more money at things.
00:45:21.000You need to stop pumping money into the economy.
00:45:23.000It's contributing to the inflation that we are attempting to fight.
00:45:27.000And really, really bad year for Joe Biden was 2022.
00:45:30.000And yet he escaped the consequences of that largely because of Republican incompetence.
00:45:34.000Less Republican incompetence would be a wonderful thing at this point.
00:45:38.000That's certainly be something worth shooting for.
00:45:40.000Because again, the more the focus is on Joe Biden, the worse it's going to be for him.
00:45:44.000Okay, meanwhile, I have to give you the dumbest and most hilarious story of the day.
00:45:50.000According to the UK Daily Mail, Photos obtained by the Daily Mail show how a person named Kay LeClaire was able to transform herself over the course of just two years from a white college student to an indigenous two-spirit, including even some in the Native American community.
00:46:05.000LeClaire identified themselves on Facebook as a white woman in July 2017 as they spoke of they nuptials with Adam Pagenkop the following summer.
00:46:14.000But by 2019, they publicly identified as a Native American two-spirit, which is a term many indigenous people use to describe a non-binary gender identity.
00:46:22.000Now, I do have to point out here that not only is this absurd and silly on its face, it is hysterical that the media has to continue calling this obviously female person a they.
00:46:34.000I can also point out they're not Native Americans.
00:46:35.000If a person says, I'm a Native American Two-Spirit and I wish to be called they, instead of everybody saying, we're not going to pay attention to any of that.
00:46:40.000We're just going to call you a white lady because you're a white lady.
00:46:42.000Instead, the media is like, no, we will call you they.
00:46:45.000We're just going to draw the line and saying that you're indigenous.
00:46:48.000The good news for Kay LeClaire is that eventually she'll end up presumably being a senator from Massachusetts.
00:46:54.000If you pretend to be Native American, then you can run for president eventually.
00:46:58.000LeClaire even went on to co-found a queer indigenous artist collective in Wisconsin and started buying Native American art from Etsy, which they would pass off as their own and sell to unsuspecting buyers.
00:47:09.000You know, they say go woke, go broke, but the truth is, the truth is, that if you're talking about catering to a particularly stupid crowd, go woke, make a little bit of money.
00:47:19.000Go woke, claim victimhood, you do okay.
00:47:22.000It used to be, in the more racist days of the United States, that people, in order to escape the evils of racism, would sometimes attempt to pass as members of the white race.
00:47:32.000And that was an indicator of the evils of America's racial caste system.
00:47:36.000And it was a real thing that used to happen.
00:47:39.000Now you have white people attempting to pass themselves off as members of minorities, which should tell you something about the social circumstances surrounding race in the United States right now.
00:47:48.000You don't see a lot of black Americans attempting to pass themselves off as white, but you do see a lot of white Americans attempting to pass themselves off as members of minorities to thereby gain victimhood status in the new racial hierarchy of intersectionality.
00:48:00.000Some in the Native community have now said they had their suspicions about LeClaire, who went from a light-haired brunette to a tan woman with dark hair over the course of just a few years.
00:48:07.000LeClaire was ultimately forced to step down from their community positions last month, after it came to light that they were actually a Pretendian, a term Natives use for people who pretend to have Indigenous lineage.
00:48:16.000It is unclear whether they will face charges for their false claims, as profiting off a false Native American identity is a federal crime.
00:48:22.000By the way, that's kind of fascinating, that if you profit off a false native identity, that's somehow a federal crime.
00:48:27.000But if you profit off another false identity, like saying, pretending you're a man, or a two-spirit, or you're a man, and you pretend you're a woman, that's not a federal crime.
00:48:47.000The anonymous genealogist told Madison365 they first became aware of LeClaire through a Facebook ad for the upcoming talk on indigenous feminism.
00:48:54.000It identified LeClaire under her native name, Nibi Wakamigkwe, which AdvanceMight said they found unusual because given the Ojibwe name is typically something that would be just used in ceremony or with other people who are Ojibwe or a part of your community, it's weird that you're publicly using it.
00:49:09.000AdvanceMight, who is also of indigenous heritage, conducted some research and found that while LeClaire is a common Native American last name, there were social media posts in which they identified as Anishinaabe.
00:49:20.000The genealogists then discovered that LeClaire had previously claimed to be Cuban, So this person seems to be some sort of sociopath seeking to take advantage of the woke status in modern America.
00:49:40.000And again, says less about this human being, because there are lots of crazy people in the United States, and much more about the incentive structure in the United States right now.
00:49:49.000The supply of racism does not meet the demand for racism.
00:49:53.000And so people are now claiming to be members of minority race, minority status, just so that they can claim to be victims in American society.
00:50:02.000One of the professors at University of Minnesota posted Facebook on Saturday saying, quote, I've sat with this Kayla Clare situation about going through all the emotions, hurt, anger, disbelief. I welcomed them into my home, brought them to ceremonies and bartered my artwork for their fakes. Others warned me, but I was hesitant to believe someone would weave such an elaborate web of lies. They were so kind and eager to help and share.
00:50:47.000We'll be getting into Walgreens now distributing the abortion pill.
00:50:50.000Plus, we have on an economist to discuss the problems with the interest rate in the United States and why stagflation looks like our future.
00:50:56.000If you're not a member, become a member.
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