RadixJournal - October 04, 2023


Just Nominate Trump For Speaker Already!

Hosted by
Richard Spencer
Mentioned
Kevin McCarthy Matt Gaetz Donald Trump Jim Jordan Ron Paul Scalise Nancy Mace Sam Harris James Bible Liz Cheney Joe Biden Shakespeare Speaker
Aspirationally Jewish Your Birthright For A Mess of Pottage

Episode Stats


Length

12 minutes

Words per minute

142.64

Word count

1,783

Sentence count

132

Harmful content

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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 1.00
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? 0.96
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 0.99
00:08:48.920 actually bold and meaningful. So before Kevin McCarthy's was vacated, the Congress passed a 0.97
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. 0.99
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. 0.96