RadixJournal - October 04, 2023


Just Nominate Trump For Speaker Already!


Episode Stats

Length

12 minutes

Words per Minute

142.64

Word Count

1,783

Sentence Count

117

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

Matt Gaetz has been voted out of office as House Speaker of the House of Representatives, and I m here to explain why. Matt Gaetz is a freshman congressman from Florida who has been a thorn in the side of Speaker Kevin McCarthy for a long time, and now he s out of a job.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Mr. Speaker, my friend from Oklahoma says that my colleagues and I who don't support Kevin McCarthy
00:00:05.220 would plunge the House and the country into chaos. I don't think voting against Kevin McCarthy
00:00:12.960 is chaos. I think $33 trillion in debt is chaos. I think that facing a $2.2 trillion annual deficit
00:00:21.000 is chaos. I think that not passing single-subject spending bills is chaos. I think the fact that we
00:00:27.260 have been governed in this country since the mid-90s by continuing resolution and omnibus
00:00:32.800 is chaos. And the way to liberate ourselves from that is a series of reforms to this body that I...
00:00:39.180 Well, Matt Gaetz has blown his wad on this one. What he could not accomplish back in January,
00:00:47.960 that is finding a speaker other than Kevin McCarthy, he's certainly accomplished now. Kevin McCarthy
00:00:55.060 is gone. And it only took seven Republicans, I believe, to side with Democrats and in effect
00:01:03.780 hold a no-confidence vote for the speaker and eventually vacate the chair. Now, the thing
00:01:11.760 that Matt Gaetz will struggle with is to really justify what he's doing over the long haul,
00:01:22.080 but also to, more immediately, just to find another speaker to take his place. And I think,
00:01:29.080 in commenting on this, I think I'm just going to jump right to the chase on this one. I think
00:01:36.180 that this will be remembered as an utterly useless and futile gesture. I believe that's the quote from
00:01:47.460 Animal House. Unless they do something very bold and actually put Donald Trump into the speaker's chair
00:01:56.700 and make him two heartbeats away from the presidency and perhaps, I'm not a lawyer, shield him from any
00:02:07.020 kind of liability or criminal proceedings. Now, I say this because otherwise, none of this really makes
00:02:17.140 sense or it seems exceedingly personal. So, I've heard some theories about why Matt Gaetz has done this.
00:02:29.780 Kevin McCarthy is a corrupt politician. He can be blackmailed due to various Native American funding
00:02:39.060 schemes that went to his family. I don't know anything about this. I certainly don't doubt it.
00:02:45.160 I certainly don't think someone like Kevin McCarthy is above it, but that seems a bit like a
00:02:51.540 rationalization. All politicians have their issues like this, and I'm not sure that Kevin McCarthy is
00:03:00.000 worse than anyone else. Now, there's also the theory that there was a years-long ethics investigation
00:03:08.720 into Matt Gaetz. He was investigated by the FBI and others, but there was a congressional investigation,
00:03:15.980 and Kevin McCarthy let this go through. Is this Matt Gaetz' ultimate revenge of, you need to stick by me,
00:03:23.000 and if not, I'm going to push you off the ledge? Maybe. Matt Gaetz has denied that. He said,
00:03:30.140 I'm not mad about it. I've been investigated and cleared, as he has been. The justification that Matt
00:03:39.180 Gaetz gave was, and that is the overt rhetorical justification that he gave, isn't particularly
00:03:50.720 compelling. So, I've listened to Matt Gaetz on a Twitter space, or X space now, I'm sorry. I've
00:03:58.040 listened to his speech on the floor of Congress, and I've listened to a couple of interviews, and this is
00:04:04.400 basically what I'm hearing, that, you know, you say we're chaotic. No, it's Kevin McCarthy. He's chaotic
00:04:11.760 because he doesn't keep his promises, or something like this. There was also a gesture towards the
00:04:20.020 de-dollarization, which is apparently taking effect, which, you know, I don't, we need to solve the debt,
00:04:27.740 because of de-dollarization. This sounds, I don't know, sounds a bit like Russian propaganda, to be
00:04:34.040 honest, about the world moving off the dollar. He also said some things that, actually, I agree with,
00:04:42.000 and I actually imagine that the majority of the country agrees with. Things like a line item veto or
00:04:49.520 a single-subject bill. I guess he was focusing on a single-subject bill. Line item veto would be the
00:04:54.900 power of the presidency. I remember this was talked about in the 1990s, where the president
00:05:00.400 could veto pork here and there. From Congress, they're saying a single-subject bill. So let's
00:05:06.360 not have these continuing resolutions or these omnibus packages. No single person has read the
00:05:12.860 whole bill. It would almost be impossible to do so. It's, you know, the King James Bible and complete
00:05:19.720 works of Shakespeare times 20 all put into something. Why don't we have single-subjects bill, and we'll be
00:05:27.280 here working hard for the American public, getting things done, cutting the pork, doing what we say we're
00:05:34.480 going to do, and there are no secrets. Now, that's all fair, and I actually bet you could get the majority
00:05:43.160 of the public to get behind that. It's hard to kind of disagree with such a proposition. The only problem is
00:05:51.600 that he doesn't have, the Republicans don't have the votes to put forward something like this, but also, you're not
00:05:58.380 anywhere closer to getting there by ousting McCarthy. I'm sure McCarthy agrees with that in principle. Are you going to
00:06:08.460 find some other person, some unnamed new speaker, Jim Jordan or Scalise or one of these kind of
00:06:14.380 get-along boys who have, you know, enough friends on all throughout the all the little factions of the GOP?
00:06:22.580 No, none of this is happening. So Gates is rhetorically justifying this action
00:06:29.620 through this kind of heady talk, almost Ron Paul talk. You know, Ron Paul was tolerated for years,
00:06:37.340 and he'd, you know, get down in Congress and, you know, be like, oh, we need to go back on gold and
00:06:42.120 bring the troops home. And, you know, on some level, it wasn't that what he was saying was in a way so
00:06:48.180 inflammatory or controversial. It was on some level, everyone agreed with him. It's a very nice thing
00:06:53.280 to say. It's difficult to argue against outside of saying it's not very pragmatic. But so he's,
00:07:00.860 Gates is justifying this move, which is absolutely chaos generating. It's knifing the leader of your
00:07:11.080 party in Congress. It is making headlines, getting everyone talking about it. I mean, here I am.
00:07:18.580 But there's no real justification for it outside of this kind of rhetorical flourish of, you know,
00:07:25.600 one day, we shouldn't have a national debt. And one day, we should have single subjects,
00:07:30.820 subject bill. And one day, we should have term limits. And one day, we should have a line item
00:07:35.640 veto. And one day, whatever, gold standard. Who knows? Because it's all kind of virtue signaling.
00:07:45.340 It's all kind of feel good rhetoric. Doesn't mean I disagree with it necessarily, but it is
00:07:50.880 bullshit at the end of the day. So this does lead open the question of what is it really about?
00:08:01.980 Is it personal? Is it grandstanding? Because Gates wants to run for the governorship of Florida in a
00:08:10.140 few years once DeSantis turns out. What is it about? Why did Nancy Bass Mace do it? This kind of weird,
00:08:17.860 you know, put her finger up to the wind, go this way and that Republican congressman. She sounds like
00:08:24.340 a Democrat. She sounds like she's pro-life. She sounds like she's pro-choice. She sounds this. She's
00:08:29.080 pro-Trump. Who knows what she is? Why did she join this gaggle? What is going on? And I guess what I
00:08:37.960 would suggest is that it's only going to be a stupid stunt unless Matt Gaetz does something that's
00:08:48.920 actually bold and meaningful. So before Kevin McCarthy's was vacated, the Congress passed a
00:08:59.000 kind of stopgap spending bill that I believe is 45 days or something like this. And it does not add
00:09:06.160 new funding for Ukraine, but it continues the existing funding. I mean, it's all very
00:09:13.040 nebulous. But there was no shutdown. Things are going to keep going forward. And I'm sure Gates
00:09:21.460 would have loved to shut down, but now he got this. But again, it becomes a cheap political stunt unless
00:09:27.060 there's some there there. Now, Hannity opened up his show, and I saw the clip of this on Twitter. He
00:09:34.780 opened up his show saying that, you know, Donald Trump is considering becoming Speaker of the House.
00:09:41.580 He's willing to help out the party, however he can, you know, how selfless of him. You don't need
00:09:48.400 to be a congressman to be Speaker of the House. That's not in the Constitution. Maybe it should be,
00:09:52.560 or maybe they thought it wasn't there when they wrote it. But every Speaker of the House has been
00:09:58.220 from Congress, but that that's not a legally binding thing. So Donald Trump could become
00:10:08.060 Speaker of the House, he could be two heartbeats away from the presidency. So he would only have
00:10:12.440 to hang two people. In other words, that is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And I'm, I guess, only half
00:10:18.280 joking. The other thing is that you could plausibly argue that he should have immunity of some kind
00:10:26.060 from state and federal prosecution. He, all of these civil cases need to be delayed indefinitely.
00:10:36.240 After all, he's doing the people's business. How could you be harassing him in this way? Needless
00:10:42.900 to say, throwing him in prison, when there's all this important work for the American people that
00:10:48.320 needs to be done and sleeves need to be rolled up, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, it also,
00:10:55.380 it, it, I mean, I know it's, it's crazy. And when I, when we were on our, um, our, uh, members only
00:11:03.160 podcast today, I was kind of throwing it out there half jokingly and people chuckled. Uh, I mean,
00:11:09.860 it is kind of crazy, but then how in a way, like could the Republicans vote against it? I mean,
00:11:18.840 do they really have the balls to vote against something like that? It would be a bold move.
00:11:23.500 They all voted for Donald Trump twice. They all declare their support for Donald Trump.
00:11:29.000 They're not very many Liz Cheney's in Congress. She's gone. Uh, so why not in a way you're not going
00:11:36.440 to get anywhere closer to any of these goals with Jim Jordan or Scalise? You're, you're just as far
00:11:42.180 away and you might even be further. I think there's probably more love for Kevin McCarthy,
00:11:48.240 uh, in Congress as a whole than there is for, uh, Jim Jordan of all people. So what are you doing
00:11:55.860 if you're not actually achieving something? You're making this statement that is going to be,
00:12:03.300 uh, interpreted as petty and personal and unnecessary and chaotic unless you do something bold like,
00:12:14.120 uh, make Trump speaker of the house. Again, I'm ambivalent about all these things. Uh, I think
00:12:21.260 the GOP is pretty crazy, but, uh, I don't know. I find their insanity pretty entertaining. So there you go.