Jim Jordan has been nominated to become the next Speaker of the House of Representatives by the Republican Study Committee. Jordan is a conservative firebrand who has been a long-time member of Congress and has served as a primary challenger to current House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for the past two years. Jordan's name has been on the short list of potential replacements for McCarthy, but there are still 55 Republicans who refuse to vote for him on the floor of the chamber. Will he win the primary and become Speaker? We'll find out on tonight's Firebrands. Firebrand: It's Choose Your Fighter Time! Subscribe to our new show on Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your shows, and don't forget to rate, comment and subscribe to our other shows CRITIQUE, The Anthropology, The HYPE Report and HYPETALKS. Subscribe and comment to stay up to date with the latest Firebrand news, and stay tuned for our next episode on the future of the Firebrand brand! Subscribe today using our podcast s hashtag and tag so we can keep sharing it on social media! and help spread the word to the firebrands out there! Thank you for listening and supporting our efforts to elect the firebrand firebrand! Love, Firebrand Nation! Timestamps: 4:00 - Matt Gaetz 6:30 - What's your favorite firebrand? 7:15 - What do you think of Jim Jordan's chances of becoming Speaker? 8: 9:00 11:15 13:30 15:00 | What would you'd like to see Jim Jordan as Speaker of The House? 16:10 - What does Kevin McCarthy do better than Kevin McCarthy? 17: Who would you vote for Jim Jordan? 18:40 - Is he a good guy? 19:30 | Is he the best choice? 21:15 | Should he have a better chance of winning in the next election? 22:10 23: Does he have the best chance of being the next speaker? 25: Is he good at it? 26:40 27:10 | What are you looking forward to be the best person to win the next guy to win in 2020? 30: What s your favorite candidate? 31:40 | Who do you have a plan for the job? 32:30 Is he better than Mr. Jordan?
00:05:38.000Simulcast streaming from Room 2021 of the Rayburn House Office Building here in the Capitol Complex on Washington, D.C., where we have been working to uproot the Uniparty, to squash the hopes of the special interests and lobbyists who run this town, and to put somebody in the chair for Speaker of the House who will deliver for the American people.
00:06:30.000But we have an opportunity, greater than ever before, to elect Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, Speaker of the House.
00:06:38.000Just moments ago, in the House Republican Caucus, there was an election that occurred between Jim Jordan of Ohio and Austin Scott of Georgia.
00:06:48.000They both did a great job in the candidate forum, and at the end of that, Jim Jordan got the most votes.
00:06:55.000And Austin Scott, someone who's been very critical of me, who doesn't hold my view on every subject, was a complete class act.
00:07:06.000He asked the hundred or so members who'd voted for him to vote for Jim Jordan.
00:07:12.000We had a subsequent vote where it was simply a question of acclaim to accept the will of the Republican Conference to make Jim Jordan the Speaker of the House.
00:07:28.000Even after Austin Scott of Georgia dropped out and endorsed Jim Jordan, there are 55 Republicans, and we don't know who all of them are, though we know some and we're going to talk about them, 55 Republicans saying that they will refuse to vote for Jim Jordan on the floor of the House of Representatives.
00:08:05.000I know how hard it is to hold a coalition together like that.
00:08:09.000And it is not as easy said as it is done.
00:08:13.000And so if we've got some moderate, squish, weak Republicans who will not vote for Jim Jordan...
00:08:20.000They shouldn't be able to do that in some closed-door room in the basement of the Capitol.
00:08:24.000We should be having public votes on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives as many times as it takes to elect Jim Jordan Speaker of the House.
00:08:33.000And if these no-name, no-nothing members want to stand up and oppose Jim Jordan, my sense is that they're going to hear a lot from their Republican constituents who know Jim Jordan to be a good man and a fighter.
00:10:05.000Maybe they want some other feature of the kind of tapestries of public service that aren't sought by many but may be sought by some.
00:10:18.000One member, Representative John Rutherford of Florida, said just moments ago publicly that he will not vote for Jim Jordan on the floor because he's angry with me.
00:11:03.000Since he, out of all of the folks that have thrown their hat in the ring, he is head and shoulders above the rest in the majority that he's able to put together.
00:11:37.000I've known him to be a man of patience, of good sensibility.
00:11:41.000I know him to be a person who cares deeply about public service.
00:11:44.000He was the sheriff in Duval County prior to being elected to Congress.
00:11:48.000And in that role, I worked with him very closely because I had previously chaired the Criminal Justice Subcommittee of the Florida House of Representatives.
00:11:56.000I know him to be a better person than what you just saw.
00:12:01.000Because what you just saw from Congressman John Rutherford was selfish and bad for the country and childish.
00:12:10.000It is beyond any type of rational explanation to say that because he's got a problem with me, he's not going to vote for Jim Jordan.
00:12:23.000I'm not running for Speaker of the House.
00:12:44.000We hadn't even sent a subpoena to Hunter Biden.
00:12:47.000And Kevin McCarthy could no longer be trusted because he had made multiple contradictory promises that he never intended to keep and couldn't possibly keep.
00:12:56.000Those things don't infect a Jim Jordan speakership.
00:13:02.000And John Rutherford should reconsider.
00:13:04.000I know there are many Floridians who watch this program, and I would encourage you in the most polite and respectful way to find Congressman Rutherford's social media accounts and lay out why you believe he ought to be with the team, be with the Republicans, and be with Jim Jordan.
00:13:22.000I hope you'll call his congressional office not to badger or to be crude in any way, But to help a good man like John Rutherford understand why supporting another good man, Jim Jordan, is the right choice.
00:13:38.000There's also a fallacy in this 96% argument.
00:13:45.000That fiction was burst in our Republican conference meeting by Kevin McCarthy.
00:13:54.000You see, there was an effort by California Congressman Tom McClintock to deem the removal of Kevin McCarthy null and void, to sanction and condemn the folks who voted with me to remove Kevin McCarthy, and then to reinstate him as Speaker of the House.
00:14:13.000And when Congressman McClintock made that motion, Kevin McCarthy stood up before the body and he said, you all need to know that it's not just eight who are against me.
00:14:26.000Kevin McCarthy, to his credit, had the self-awareness to acknowledge that while eight did what had to be done in voting against him on the floor, the hard eight, that there are many others who would never vote for Kevin McCarthy again.
00:14:42.000Now you may ask, why is that the case?
00:14:43.000How come they didn't vote against him the time before?
00:14:47.000Political courage is not exactly in abundance in this town.
00:14:52.000And once people saw that McCarthy was going to be removed, there were plenty who said, well, he's gone anyway.
00:14:59.000I don't want my fingerprints on the political murder weapon, and so I will simply allow him to be removed in the absence of my vote to do it.
00:15:17.000Because while Kevin McCarthy has never been particularly popular with our party's activists, he certainly was popular with many of the special interest donors.
00:15:26.000And if you want to keep a good relationship with the special interest donors, why vote against McCarthy if you don't have to in order to remove him?
00:15:35.000So it's a little inside baseball bringing you in the room.
00:15:38.000You should never believe the argument that 96% were ever...
00:15:43.000For Kevin McCarthy, upon my motion to vacate, they were just willing to hide in the bushes as the hard eight did what had to be done.
00:15:52.000And some of the people who didn't vote with us have heard a lot from their constituents about how popular removing McCarthy was, and there are some who regret the fact that they weren't with me.
00:16:01.000And I know that because many of them have called me and said it to me in private.
00:16:05.000And I will keep their confidence, but I also know we did the right thing and we are on the right path with Jim Jordan.
00:16:13.000Matter of fact, I've known it for a while.
00:16:16.000You see, back in 2021, the 14th episode of Firebrand was entitled Speaker Jordan, and I laid out the case with him that his vision and his trust factor would likely contribute to a very productive speakership if he chose to pursue the gavel.
00:16:36.000Now, ultimately, he didn't, but see if you can catch any tells in the From episode 14 in November of 2021, Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, take a listen.
00:16:48.000Is one reason people need to read, do what you said you would do, because you're going to be Speaker of the House one day, Jim?
00:17:12.000I mean, I remember in Florida with you and Ron DeSantis going from small town to small town in my district, you didn't have a speaker campaign with a great deal of corporate infrastructure, but people showed up with homemade signs.
00:17:25.000And I'm going to put them on the screen.
00:17:27.000They brought their homemade signs that said, Speaker Jordan.
00:17:56.000I am pressing my dear friend Jim Jordan in that clip because I know he knows he's the man.
00:18:01.000And sometimes we're called for jobs that we don't pursue or we don't want because you get the right person with the right skills and there is divine providence in all of this.
00:18:10.000But if you notice there, I'm pressing Jordan and he's saying he doesn't want it as he's kind of looking down and looking away because he is so humble.
00:18:23.000I mean, you even look at that question and answer.
00:18:27.000I'm asking a popular politician about their own political ambitions.
00:18:32.000And he pivots it around to talk about what he wants to do to empower me.
00:18:38.000That is the kind of guy Jim Jordan is.
00:18:40.000If Jim Jordan were a basketball player, he's a wrestler, not a basketball player, but he'd be the guy on the team that didn't lead in scoring but led in assists because he's willing to dish the ball to someone else for them to be able to score, for them to be in a position to be successful.
00:18:55.000It's one of my favorite clips, one of my favorite episodes that we've done in Firebrand, and certainly Jim Jordan is one of my favorite congressmen.
00:19:03.000And one of your favorites as well, Joe on Facebook, says Jim Jordan's the man.
00:19:09.000Benji, South Dakota, would love a speaker, Jim Jordan.
00:19:13.000On Getter, Patricia says it's not about the speaker to her.
00:19:30.000On Rumble, There's a concern that Paul Ryan might return.
00:19:36.000I promise you, we will not make Paul Ryan Speaker of the House again.
00:19:40.000Just like Kevin McCarthy, we've seen enough of that particular brand of failure.
00:19:44.000And we want to move away from the American Enterprise Institute vision of conservative public policy and toward the America First vision for public policy.
00:19:59.000And undeniably, it is what Jim Jordan represents.
00:20:03.000The one thing I'll miss, though, if Jim's speaker, are these electric moments in committee where he is able to display a skill set that I admire, that admittedly I try to replicate.
00:20:16.000One of my favorites, Jim Jordan torching Dr. Fauci.
00:20:23.000Dr. Fauci, over the last year, Americans' First Amendment rights have been completely attacked.
00:20:28.000Your right to go to church, your right to assemble, your right to petition your government, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, have all been assaulted.
00:20:35.000For a year now, Americans haven't been able to go to church.
00:20:37.000Even today, when they go to church, they're limited in the size of worshipers who can meet.
00:20:47.000You had to be in your home at 10. In Pennsylvania, you had to be in your home.
00:20:50.000When you're in your home, you had to wear a mask.
00:20:52.000In Vermont, when you're in your home, you didn't have to wear a mask, Dr. Fauci, because you weren't allowed to have people over to your house.
00:21:25.000I mean, the governor of our third largest state meets with physicians and that video is censored because they dare to disagree with Dr. Fauci?
00:21:39.000So I just want to know when do Americans get their First Amendment liberties back?
00:23:06.000I think it would be a terrific thing to get that subpoena for Hunter Biden out in the first week of Jordan and to get these J6 tapes released at the outset of the Jordan speakership.
00:23:16.000So thank you, Julia, for raising that important point.
00:23:19.000One of the other great Jordan moments, his questioning of Robert Mueller.
00:23:46.000What's interesting, you can charge 13 Russians no one's ever heard of, no one's ever seen, no one's ever going to hear of them, no one's ever going to see them.
00:23:54.000You can charge them, you can charge all kinds of people who are around the president with false statements, But the guy who launches everything, the guy who puts this whole story in motion, you can't charge him.
00:24:13.000Mifsud told Papadopoulos, Papadopoulos tells the diplomat, the diplomat tells the FBI, the FBI opens the investigation July 31st, 2016, and here we are three years later, July of 2019, the country's been put through this, and the central figure who launches it all, Lies to us, and you guys don't hunt him down and interview him again, and you don't charge him with a crime.
00:25:36.000And that is the curiosity that our oversight has largely been lacking under Speaker McCarthy because we would get the subpoenas ready, we would want document requests to go out, we would want people in the witness chair, and there just seemed to be a bottleneck in the Speaker's office where we couldn't get things dislodged and moving and going toward an end that would reveal to the American people what's really going on in this government, affecting them.
00:26:00.000What's going on with a compromised First family out there selling access and influence to foreigners who want to harm American interests so that they can get rich.
00:26:15.000This is someone who knows his neighbors.
00:26:18.000This is someone who, in his own community, people look to for a helping hand, for inspiration.
00:26:24.000He served in the state legislature before coming to the United States Congress.
00:26:28.000I did as well, and I think that is really important service to inform how we think about governance.
00:26:34.000Because so much is broken here in Washington.
00:26:37.000If you hadn't been in any other Lawmaking or policy or legislative body, you might come here and think this is the only way to do it.
00:26:45.000But those of us who've come from good legislatures, like Ohio, like Arizona, like Florida, we've seen how budgets get balanced.
00:26:55.000How the appropriations process can be used, even in a bipartisan way, to ensure that we're doing programmatic review of how your money is being spent.
00:27:06.000So I think that's really going to inform how Jim Jordan asks questions, maybe not from that dais in the House Judiciary Committee, but maybe in the Speaker's office where we can get some real answers.
00:27:19.000We had someone today at the meeting where we were debating Jordan's candidacy get up and say well they were concerned and undecided about voting for Jim because they see all this great work that I've been showing you from the Judiciary Committee and they wonder well if Jim's not there are we still going to have the same rigor and the same effort in judiciary and I can I will tell you exactly what I told that congressman with Mike Johnson and Chip Roy and
00:27:49.000Dan Bishop and yours truly we have got a great team on the House Judiciary Committee and while there is no replacing a Jim Jordan we're going to do everything we can to make sure That we take the lessons we've learned from him about how to ask questions, how to move oversight forward, and we're going to do a good job for you.
00:28:10.000I can tell you that with a very high confidence level with people like Mike Johnson, like Chip Roy, like Dan Bishop, we've got really, really a great team on that committee, and I look forward to being a part of it and to supporting our leadership there however we can to make sure that Jim's successful and that we're successful, and This committee's got to do really important work just beyond the January 6th tapes.
00:28:33.000It was a point made by someone on Getter watching the show that it's about the political prisoners.
00:28:39.000It's about this wide array of civil rights violation that has occurred, whether it's public defenders who actually wanted their clients to get convicted, whether it's judges who gave draconian, crazy sentences.
00:28:53.000Or whether it's an FBI that was out there harassing and targeting people who had no intention of ever committing a crime.
00:29:03.000But in the This morass of just the protests and riots on January 6th may have crossed a line onto federal property that wasn't even marked, that wasn't delineated in any way.
00:29:17.000So we still think about those folks every day.
00:30:50.000When you didn't do that privately, when you told your family about Benghazi, it was terrorists killed two of our people.
00:30:57.000When you talk to the Libyan president, Ansar al-Saria did it, al-Qaeda did it.
00:31:02.000When you talk to the Egyptian Prime Minister, we know it's not a film, we know it's not a protest, we know it's not a video, it's a terrorist attack.
00:31:08.000Well, Congressman, I was working off the information that we had, which was that Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility.
00:31:16.000And at that point, I did say that it was an al-Qaeda Madam Secretary, look at the difference in these two statements.
00:31:29.000One says it wasn't a pre-planned attack.
00:31:51.000There's another document that's kind of important.
00:31:53.000That's the same day that Ben Rhodes drafted his talking points memo.
00:31:58.000Bullet point number two, to underscore that these protests are rooted in an internet video, not a broader failure of policy, because we couldn't have Libya, Mr. Roskam pointed out earlier, we couldn't have that fail.
00:32:13.000So the same day you got Jay Carney saying, This was no way a pre-planned attack, and the experts in Libya talking Greg Hicks and the Near Eastern Affairs people are saying it was a well-planned attack.
00:32:24.000That same day, the talking points that get Susan Rice ready for the Sunday shows, make sure you focus on the video, not about a broader policy failure.
00:32:34.000After all, we've got an election coming in 50-some days.
00:32:40.000I want to get to some of the questions folks have been posting on our social media platforms.
00:32:44.000Remember, if you are not subscribed, make sure you're subscribed either on our listening platforms or our viewing platforms, particularly Rumble.
00:32:52.000And you've got to click the bell on either Rumble or YouTube to ensure that your notifications are turned on because just the very nature of the congressional calendar is such that we don't always go live at the same time.
00:33:04.000Appointment, viewing, you've got to be on notice, ready, so that I can give you the information first.
00:33:09.000So here's some of the questions people have.
00:33:11.000First, will the motion to vacate still exist at a one-person threshold?
00:33:16.000The answer to that question is yes, unless it is changed.
00:33:20.000Now, a lot of Republicans have come to me and some of my colleagues saying, we want to negotiate an increase in the threshold on the motion to vacate.
00:33:30.000I'm negotiable if, in exchange for increasing the threshold for maybe one person to three people or five people or more, we get other ethics reforms for accountability over the United States Congress.
00:33:44.000I've partnered with Democrat Ro Khanna to lay out some of those reforms.
00:33:48.000They include a ban on congressional stock trading, a ban on taking money from lobbyists and political action committees, a lifetime ban on members of Congress from becoming registered lobbyists or registered foreign agents, If we did those things, if we did all of them, if we did some combination of them, I really believe that your interests would not be left aside as people are valeting for the special interests and putting their needs first.
00:34:14.000I really think that would be important.
00:34:16.000So right now, if there's no change, Merely the replacement of McCarthy with Jordan would not change the motion to vacate threshold.
00:34:45.000You guys want to know exactly the 55 names.
00:34:48.000Someone says, I want to know the 55 names so that I can start working the phones to get these folks to vote for Jim Jordan.
00:34:53.000Now, some of these 55 have self-identified.
00:34:57.000We showed you Congressman John Rutherford, Republican from the Sunshine State of Florida, who said he right now will not vote for Jim Jordan.
00:35:04.000He will vote for Kevin McCarthy in order to spite me.
00:35:29.000So I think there might have been some sense on the part of Jim Jordan that if we were to have like a public flogging of these people politically, that that could harden their Resistance to his candidacy rather than being more accommodating to hearing him out.
00:35:45.000What he wants to do and where he wants to take the conference.
00:36:14.000We just removed one who gave it a lot of lip service, but didn't do what was necessary.
00:36:21.000We've got to tie border policies to the budget.
00:36:24.000You cannot give the Biden administration an endless amount of debt that they can accrue, continuing resolutions, without forcing a closure of the border.
00:36:37.000On the Judiciary Committee, we have subject matter jurisdiction over this question.
00:36:42.000And so I think Jim Jordan is uniquely poised to be able to bring this together.
00:36:46.000HR2, our very best border bill that we passed and the Senate won't take up, And one of the principal architects of that bill was Jim Jordan.
00:36:54.000So I think he's going to be great for us on the border.
00:36:56.000And I got to say, there is a little nostalgia on the live stream for the Speaker Trump talk.
00:37:33.000My homework assignment for everybody watching Firebrand, listening to Firebrand, Keep your eyes out for folks who share the position of Congressman John Rutherford of Florida that they refuse to vote for Jim Jordan in a nice, polite, appropriate way.
00:37:47.000I want you to encourage them to back Jordan and I trust you to be able to do it.
00:37:52.000I trust all of us because we are the only institution in the U.S. government right now in the House of Representatives that Republicans can rely on to fight.
00:38:03.000And I couldn't come to work here every day not fighting for you.
00:38:07.000And Kevin McCarthy got in the way of that.
00:38:11.000On Rumble, Jax says that he used to believe in me, but not anymore because he does not think that Jim Jordan does anything but talk about stuff.
00:38:28.000All of the work we do to try to get subpoenas, to try to get accountability, to try to get Hunter Biden the witness chair, I believe, based on my experience on the Judiciary Committee, that the principal logjam for that was in the House Counsel's office and in the Speaker's office.
00:38:43.000So Jim Jordan's efficacy was limited by Kevin McCarthy.
00:38:49.000And with Jim in the Speaker's office, I think we're going to have a green light to get the facts, expose the truth, cut off the money to the corrupt entities in our government, and put downward pressure on spending.
00:39:06.000I'm counting on you to get on the phone lines, to get on the internet, and do everything you can to help me elect Jim Jordan, the 56th Speaker of the House.