Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announces his intention to leave the Congress to quit at the end of the year. Former House Speaker Patrick McHenry announces his retirement from the Congress. Speaker McHenry signals a willingness to serve out the entire term that his voters elected him to, and says if he cannot run the place and be speaker, then he will leave. So there is an establishment exodus from the United States Republican Conference. And it s a good thing we have a 4-seat majority that we were elected to by the voters. Now, we just have to figure out who will replace Kevin McCarthy as Speaker and who will take his place as the next Speaker of the House. And that s going to be a tough job, but we can t wait to see who comes in and replaces him as Speaker. And we can't wait to hear who it is! Tweet me and let us know who you think is the best choice to replace him. Timestamps: 4:00 - What would you like to see as Speaker next year? 7:30 - What kind of speaker would you look for in a potential replacement 8:15 - Who do you see as the best person to succeed him or her priorities? 9:40 - How would you vote for him next term? 11:15- What is your biggest takeaway from this guy? 12:00- What does he look forward to seeing as Speaker McCarthy? 13:20 - What are you looking forward to in the next speaker? 14:30- What s your biggest challenge? 15:10 - What do you think you're looking for? 16:00 17:10 15, can you see the most important thing? 17, what would you want me? 18, what is your answer? 19, do you have a job that you think I m going to get me a chance to be the most effective? 21:20 22, can I see me a better than a guy I m looking a day? & so much more? #1 + 2) - Is he a good guy ? 19:40 20, is he a man that I think he s a guy that I m gonna be a guy like that 21, etc., etc. #1 & #3 & #2 +3) Thank you, God bless you,
00:06:04.000We elected more Republican women, veterans, and minorities to Congress than ever before.
00:06:11.000We reduced the deficit by over $2 trillion while protecting the full faith and credit of our nation.
00:06:18.000We kept our government operating and our troops paid while wars broke out around the world.
00:06:25.000Traveling the country and serving with all of you, I have encountered far more people that want to build something than those who want to tear it down.
00:08:05.000This announcement from Speaker McCarthy coming the day after his top lieutenant, Patrick McHenry, announced his retirement from the Congress.
00:08:13.000The key difference is that McHenry seems to be indicating a willingness to serve out the entire term that his voters elected him to.
00:08:19.000Kevin McCarthy, in turn, saying if he cannot run the place and be speaker, then he will leave.
00:08:26.000So there is an establishment exodus from the United States Republican Conference.
00:08:31.000And it's my hope that we backfill these establishment lobbyist-drawn entities with folks who are willing to fight for the America First agenda to reduce wars, to get out of these bad trade deals, and to stop the illegal immigration that is overrunning our country.
00:08:48.000And we have to provide a check on the Biden administration that continues to spend us into oblivion and to more debt and to defang this weaponized government that's been turned against our fellow Americans.
00:09:00.000Kevin McCarthy was not useful in that fight.
00:09:05.000But there is a very real math problem that we are confronted with for this departure.
00:09:11.000For all of the self-congratulatory videos that Kevin McCarthy may make, him leaving, his unwillingness to stay and vote for even the most basic of Republican priorities may imperil our ability to get the job done.
00:09:26.000We have a four-seat majority that we were elected to.
00:09:30.000Errantly, foolishly, in violation of precedent and due process.
00:09:36.000We made the decision to expel George Santos.
00:09:39.000Now, most Republicans in the conference voted against expelling Santos, but enough voted with the Errant Ethics Committee that he is now gone.
00:09:57.000And then Bill Johnson, the Republican from Ohio, has indicated that he is taking the university presidency at Youngstown State.
00:10:04.000That will leave us with a one-seat majority.
00:10:08.000Sure hope everyone eats their veggies, stays healthy over the break.
00:10:12.000Otherwise, this thing could tip the balance to the Democrats.
00:10:16.000Now, there has been some commentary on social media that I am to blame.
00:10:19.000That it's my fault that Kevin McCarthy is quitting and leaving early.
00:10:26.000I don't know anyone else who would just say, well, if I can't run the place, I'm gonna leave.
00:10:30.000Nancy Pelosi, for all her flaws, and there are many, she at least stuck around.
00:10:36.000She didn't hurt her team by saying, well, if I can't be the quarterback, I'm just gonna take the ball and go home.
00:10:43.000That seems to be what we're getting from Kevin McCarthy.
00:10:45.000This is not an act of patriotism or moving on to the next fight.
00:10:49.000It is an act of abject selfishness, and it is revealing that if Kevin McCarthy can't swing the gavel and be in charge and make the decisions, that he's not willing to be a team player.
00:11:01.000For all the criticism I've received about not being a team player, I'm here.
00:11:33.000Suspect in custody following a bomb threat at NAS Pensacola.
00:11:38.000And for your sense of context, today is the four-year anniversary of the terrorist attack at NAS Pensacola I had acquired a gun, had brought it onto campus.
00:11:57.000We later learned that that Saudi Arabian official was inspired by Al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula.
00:12:03.000There were a number of our first responders and police who were harmed in getting there and limiting the carnage that was visited upon our community at the negligence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
00:12:16.000They are required when they have people training in the United States on our aircraft and on our weapons systems.
00:12:22.000To be monitoring their social media, to be communicating with them, to see that they do not fall victim of any type of radicalization.
00:12:29.000And because of that negligence from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, people ended up dead in my community.
00:12:37.000Now to date, the kingdom has not stepped forward to take responsibility to ensure that the first responders who took bullets and saw their lives forever changed were in any way compensated for that damage.
00:12:50.000Damage caused by Saudi Arabia's negligence.
00:12:53.000So I've introduced legislation to hold Saudi Arabia accountable and...
00:12:57.000We were talking about that today, giving interviews about it, building a coalition for it.
00:13:02.000When we saw this news, a suspect is in custody following a bomb threat at NAS Pensacola Wednesday morning.
00:13:09.000According to NAS Pensacola, a suspected bomb threat was made on base at 9.35 a.m.
00:13:16.000The Escambia County Sheriff's Office received the call about the threat at about 10 a.m.
00:13:20.000The base was then put on lockdown as Naval Security investigated.
00:13:29.000Naval Security Forces, in coordination with local law enforcement, partners executed a pre-planned response and are in the process of clearing the affected areas.
00:13:37.000NAS Pensacola said in a release no one was injured and the individual suspect is in custody.
00:13:44.000So we have yet to see if there's any evidence of that person working in concert with others.
00:13:50.000I am eager to see whether or not this has any relationship to the historic nature of this day.
00:13:56.000I have gotten reports that on Telegram and other sites, Al-Qaeda-related groups were celebrating This anniversary and this terrorist attack in Pensacola, Florida.
00:14:07.000And we will get to the bottom of this particular bomb threat and we'll give you updates and reports accordingly.
00:14:16.000Report I saw in the Washington Examiner I want to bring to your attention.
00:14:20.000The piece is titled, Children with Liberal Parents are More Likely to Suffer Mental Health Problems.
00:14:26.000The piece says, Children who grow up in politically liberal households are more likely to suffer mental health problems than their conservative peers, according to a new study.
00:14:35.000An Institute for Family Studies and Gallup report found that political ideology is one of the strongest predictors of which caregiving styles a parent adopts.
00:14:45.000Conservative parents are associated with the best mental health outcomes for their children.
00:14:51.000Conservative parents have several key distinctions in their relationship with their children that inform mental health care outcomes, including the ability to effectively discipline their children while also displaying affection and responding to their needs.
00:15:04.000The right-leaning parents also have better quality relationships characterized by fewer arguments, more warmth, and a stronger bond.
00:15:14.000Political ideology is just one predictive factor in the overarching conclusion of the study, which is that having high-quality relationships between children and their parents is the most important factor in achieving positive mental health outcomes.
00:16:03.000As previously mentioned, this is Merrick Garland.
00:16:06.000He is explaining why the Justice Department has filed the first ever charges under a U.S. war crime statute against four Russian-affiliated military personnel in what is described as heinous crimes against an American citizen.
00:16:22.000So drop on in here in D.C. Kurchian, who was one of the commanding officers, and Valery and Nazar, the lower-ranking soldiers, and their co-conspirators.
00:16:32.000During the abduction, we allege that those defendants threw the victim to the ground while he was naked, tied his hands behind his back, pointed a gun at his head, and beat him with their feet, their fists, and the stocks of their guns.
00:16:46.000We allege that they forced him into a building that Russia-affiliated forces were using as a jail and into a closet that they were using as a jail cell.
00:16:55.000We allege that as they interrogated him, they tortured him.
00:17:15.000So what does it mean that the Department of Justice now is trying to bring these war crimes actions against Russians due to the conflict in Ukraine?
00:17:25.000Well, undeniably, if there were war crimes committed and atrocities, those should be brought out to the public.
00:17:31.000But is now really the opportune time to do that?
00:17:35.000The number one goal of the United States of America vis-a-vis the war in Ukraine should be to bring that war to an end, to a conclusion.
00:17:44.000It's one of the reasons I've been fighting against all these efforts to send more money and military materiel into the region, and it's one reason why I wouldn't be showcasing the war crimes pleadings at this stage of the game, because it is very likely that That those accusations could make it even more difficult to bring these parties into any sort of peace accord.
00:18:06.000Now, the efforts to investigate, collect evidence, I support all of that.
00:18:13.000But when you're out there accusing the Russian military of war crimes, it does increase the The terrible prospect of some sort of escalatory accident where perhaps nuclear authorities or codes are devolved and someone who thinks that might be brought up on war crimes believes that their only way out is some sort of detonation of a tactical nuclear weapon or even the launch of an intercontinental ballistic delivery system.
00:18:40.000So I really, really question the timing of the Attorney General on this.
00:18:44.000No problem with collecting the evidence.
00:18:46.000But when you're out there, at this stage of hostilities, trying to make the case on war crimes, I think you've put the cart before the horse a good bit.
00:18:55.000And as we're having this discussion, there are ongoing negotiations about how to deal with the desire on the part of many Republicans and Democrats, principally Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden, to lash Ukraine money to Israel money or border money or Taiwan money.
00:19:11.000And as I've said many times, I do not believe that we are well served to address these questions collectively.
00:19:17.000The war in Israel is fundamentally different than the war in Ukraine, which is fundamentally different than you will see potentially in the Taiwan Straits and in the South China Sea.
00:19:27.000And if we do not look at those as separate geopolitical events, my concern is that we're just writing checks to the military-industrial complex without any real sense that our objectives are more likely to be achieved as a consequence of that spending.
00:20:13.000We're talking about women's sports, Title IX. There are federal equities at play there.
00:20:18.000We don't want men participating in women's sports.
00:20:21.000And from no less than the National Women's Legal Center, we get testimony from Fatima Gross, who says women just need to lose more gracefully to men.
00:20:34.000Success in school sports depends on a whole range of factors including how hard you work and coaching and access to really good resources and facilities.
00:20:45.000And trans students participate in sports for the same reason as their kids, because it is fun, because it creates belonging and community, because it teaches so much about persistence and leadership and discipline, unless they learn to lose gracefully, hopefully.
00:21:05.000And often they learn to win with dignity, hopefully.
00:21:10.000They learn to do the sort of work that means you have higher grades and stay connected to school.
00:21:53.000You've got to, at times, just pinch yourself when these woke witnesses come before the Congress when we're trying to evaluate the ways to protect Title IX and they're saying things that make absolutely no sense.
00:22:04.000It reminds me of the hearing we had where women's groups were coming forward to advocate for the rights of men to have abortions.
00:22:11.000And now, apparently, men to participate in women's sports.
00:22:14.000I don't think women should have to lose gracefully to men.
00:22:17.000I'm more of the Riley Gaines school of thought on that.
00:22:21.000But, man, it's bizarre when they come and spread that vial before our congressional committees.
00:22:27.000Before we get out of here, I want to bring your attention to something going on in our hemisphere in Latin America that threatens to really destabilize energy markets and the like.
00:22:38.000Venezuela has taken a referendum justifying their annexation of about two-thirds of neighboring Guyana.
00:22:47.000There was no real geopolitical basis for this referendum.
00:22:53.000Venezuela believes that this was part of their country prior to a determination that British Guyana had those claims back in 1899. Now Maduro facing an election and A lot of popular discontent is seeking to externalize his conflict and his failures by saying, well, what Venezuela really needs is to take over two-thirds of Guyana.
00:23:16.000There's a lot of consternation about this in Guyana, as you might imagine.
00:23:20.000Here's Guyana and President Ali reacting to this news we'll talk about on the other side.
00:23:26.000First of all, I want to make it very clear that the borders were settled in 1899. Venezuela and then British Guyana participated fully in the settlement of this border.
00:23:41.000The border was then enacted in Venezuela local laws and also stamps were produced with the borders as it exists today.
00:23:51.000When we were about to get independence, Venezuela raised the controversy and the Geneva agreement was entered into.
00:23:59.000In that agreement, it provided that if the controversy could not have been settled between the parties, then the United Nations Secretary-General would determine the mechanism to settle that.
00:24:11.000And the mechanism that was determined by the United Nations Secretary-General was the ICJ. And that is where we believe this matter must be settled.
00:24:21.000Venezuela is faced with many challenges, political challenges, democratic challenges, and challenges within the society itself.
00:24:30.000Many believe that this is a distraction to what obtains in Venezuela now, but we are taking this very seriously because of the narrative that is coming out of Venezuela, the threat that comes out of Venezuela.
00:24:44.000And recently, Venezuela opened defiance of the International Court of Justice when the leaders there basically said they will not adhere to the orders of the ICJ. Now this is an important issue for us in this region because we want this region to remain a zone of peace.
00:25:06.000This is an important part of the Western Hemisphere.
00:25:12.000Alright, so here's what I think is really going on in Venezuela and in Guyana.
00:25:16.000When you had the war break out with Ukraine and Russia, gas prices were soaring in the United States.
00:25:22.000And so the Biden administration was doing everything and anything possible to try to get more fuel into our supply.
00:25:28.000That's why they drew down on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
00:25:32.000A foolish decision that undid what President Trump had done to fill up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve so that we would be more resilient as a country if there were some run on natural resources.
00:25:44.000So Joe Biden was willing to draw down on that over politics, whereas Trump put us in a stronger position for national security.
00:25:51.000That's not all the Biden administration did.
00:25:54.000They went to Iran and made deals with Iran to get more Iranian liquefied natural gas and crude oil into the marketplace.
00:26:04.000Iran having claimed to billions of dollars, which was then moved from European banks into Qatari banks.
00:26:10.000And now that extra $6 billion that Joe Biden has unlocked for the Iranian regime, we see put to use in the hands of the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah and Iranian-backed proxies throughout Syria and northern Iraq.
00:26:26.000And it is causing real damage to our service members, U.S. contractors in the region.
00:26:32.000Our allies are becoming more anxious and destabilized because we...
00:26:38.000Made sure that Iran was more flush with cash than previously so that we were able to justify this continuing pressure against Russia.
00:26:48.000The Biden administration dispatched a number of their senior officials down to Venezuela.
00:26:53.000And they have taken actions to ease the Trump-era sanctions on Venezuela that were keeping the Maduro regime in check.
00:27:00.000It wasn't allowing Maduro to export his particular brand of socialist communist dictatorship.
00:27:07.000They weren't able to engage in these expeditions.
00:27:12.000There were less of a threat to Colombia under the Trump administration.
00:27:16.000But now that more Venezuelan oil is online, that sanctions have been reduced on Venezuela, well, we see them more dangerous, more adventurous, now making this claim on two-thirds of another country.
00:27:31.000So I guess my question to the audience is this.
00:27:39.000Or Venezuela being interventionist in Guyana?
00:27:43.000I think we should be most focused on the destabilizing activities that are closest to our borders, that could lead to refugees, that could lead to war breaking out in Central America, eroding nation states, creating a more permissible environment for transnational criminal organizations, drug trafficking rings, human trafficking rings.
00:28:02.000That's what's going to happen with a stronger, more malign, more capable Venezuela.
00:28:08.000But oh no, we've got Washington politicians trying to act as though they're big tough on Russia and they're caring more about Crimea than the Crimea scenario playing out in our own region.
00:28:21.000And obviously the discovery of natural gas and oil, other minerals in these areas of the Ikebo region of Guyana are accelerating Venezuela's ambitions, but they wouldn't have the ability to act on those If it wasn't for the Biden administration's weakness, we have to realize that there are resources in countries where we don't get along with the governments of the people and we don't want to see them enriched.
00:28:48.000But at the same time, when we play this almost Foucault-style game of pressing power down in one place and hoping it doesn't emerge in another, the consequence is either higher prices for Americans or more bad guys get more bad stuff.
00:29:05.000What we have done in this Ukraine war and Russia has created a cascade of negative geopolitical consequences in Europe, in Africa, in the Middle East, and in Latin America.
00:29:19.000And the smartest thing we could do is bring that conflict to a close.
00:29:22.000And if we did so, we would have a stronger hand in dealing with the dictators in our own midst.
00:29:29.000So we'll be watching this situation very carefully.
00:29:32.000I saw a report today that Maduro, on the back of this referendum that you just saw President Ali discussing, was encouraging Venezuelan oil companies to go lay claim, drill, extract.
00:29:46.000And what do you think is going to happen there?
00:29:48.000You're going to have some of the Guyanin contracts and contractors believing they have a claim of right there.
00:30:03.000And too often our leaders are worried about what's going on oceans away instead of the stuff that's happening right here in our backyard.
00:30:11.000It'll be tougher to address those things.
00:30:13.000It'll be tougher to come up with conservative remedies to the policy challenges that face us in the world where we have a one or two seat majority.
00:30:22.000But that's because Kevin McCarthy isn't sticking around if he can't wield the gavel.
00:30:38.000We're glad you've joined the conversation.
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