A government shutdown has broken out in the United States, and I'm here to explain what's going on and why it's a good thing it's not Elon Musk or Joe Biden or Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer or anything else.
00:00:11.000Politics is a battle between principle and pragmatism.
00:00:15.000The things that you want and the things that it is possible to get.
00:00:18.000Anybody in my job who tells you that pragmatic considerations are simply a lack of will or a betrayal of principles does not understand politics or is lying to you.
00:00:28.000There are a lot of people who are doing that today.
00:00:29.000People who suggest that any time Congress cuts any sort of deal, that is a violation of principle.
00:00:34.000And if only they'd acted with Nietzschean willpower, they could have gotten 100% of the things you wanted.
00:00:41.000Now, on the other side, anybody who tells you that pragmatism ought to lead to complete abandonment of principle is also lying to you.
00:00:48.000Anybody who says, listen, I had to give away the store because otherwise you wouldn't have gotten anything.
00:00:52.000Those people are generally lying to you also.
00:00:54.000So the art of politics and the difficult thing about politics, elective politics, is finding the balance between what you want, principle, and what you can get.
00:01:15.000Well, because Congress is unable to pass a real budget with Chuck Schumer as the head of the Senate and with a very, very slim House majority for the Republicans.
00:01:40.000Right now, the actual president of the United States is the senile dotter who Democrats refused to oust as the actual president, despite the fact he doesn't have a working brain.
00:01:49.000But that dude can still stand in the way of anything Republicans pass in the House, and he can veto legislation if he doesn't like it.
00:01:57.000So what is the actual position right now with regards to the continuing resolution?
00:02:01.000Well, the Wall Street Journal editorial board suggests correctly, in lieu of passing a real budget, the House and Senate have agreed on another continuing resolution or CR that will extend through March 14th in the new year.
00:02:12.000The only virtue here is the government won't shut down if the continuing resolution passes, and it will give the new GOP Congress a chance to use budget rules to pass a reconciliation bill next year with 51 Senate votes, which means Chuck Schumer won't be able to extort more spending if Republicans want at least some of their priorities to pass.
00:02:28.000But Schumer is going out with a CR bang, and the GOP is once again forced to take it.
00:02:33.000Some Republicans want to blame Speaker Johnson for getting too little in exchange.
00:02:37.000But as long as they refuse to vote for a continuing resolution, then the Speaker is going to have to go to Democrats in order to pass a continuing resolution or you get a government shutdown.
00:02:46.000The GOP House actually passed nearly half of all of their appropriations bills this year.
00:02:50.000Susan Collins and Patty Murray passed almost all the Senate bills through the Appropriations Committee And then Schumer refused to bring all that to the floor because he likes these giant omnibus crammed down packages.
00:03:00.000That's how you end up with these giant omnibus packages.
00:03:02.000Now, what is actually in this package?
00:03:19.000Instead, they decided that they were going to load in a bunch of stuff, including about $100 billion for disaster relief funds, which is overkill, and $10 billion in farm pork.
00:03:30.000And by the way, this is something that many Republicans wanted, was this farm pork bill, including Donald Trump, J.D. Vance.
00:03:36.000They both wanted that farm bill spending in there.
00:03:39.000So, we should point out at this point the conflicting interests between the parties who are involved in this negotiation.
00:03:46.000Donald Trump's mandate is to do things.
00:03:48.000He wants to clear the decks before he becomes President of the United States.
00:03:53.000He would like, for example, the debt ceiling increased.
00:03:55.000So that way, he can actually spend more money.
00:03:58.000And in the way that the government calculates things, tax cuts are spending money, which of course is really silly, but that is how things are done.
00:04:05.000In terms of congressional appropriations and ability to take out additional debt and all the rest.
00:04:09.000So Trump would love to enter office with all of the spending off the books for him so he doesn't get blamed for it and also an increase in the debt ceiling.
00:04:17.000Mike Johnson's mandate is to try to get most of the things that Trump wants and if that means giving up some concessions he has to do that and he has to do that by negotiating with his own caucus.
00:04:26.000This idea that Mike Johnson just has the singular ability to pass a bill himself ignores the fact he has an incredibly slim majority in Congress.
00:04:33.000And I just want to show you this graphic from 538 because it's fairly accurate.
00:04:36.000It shows the breakdown of the House in terms of the various constituency groups inside Congress.
00:04:43.000So you have basically three groups of Democrats.
00:04:45.000You have the Progressive Democrats, the Core Democrats, and the Moderate Democrats.
00:04:47.000And then you have five different groups of Republicans, as 538 labels it.
00:04:52.000And again, this isn't totally inaccurate.
00:04:57.000These would be people in purple districts who tend to vote for bigger spending and who also tend to vote for lax social policy, for example, or might be squishes on the border.
00:05:07.000Those are moderate Republicans, and there are 39 of them.
00:05:10.000And then on the other side, you have what 538 calls far-right obstructionists.
00:05:14.000Now, again, I think that is a mislabeling, but these are people who, for example, would rather shut down the government than green-light discretionary spending.
00:05:23.000I think that's actually quite principled in some cases, but it does make it very difficult to work a coalitional bill through.
00:05:29.000When you have 39 people on one end who are in purple districts and who basically just want to get by, Or those seats turn Democrat and you don't have any power.
00:05:37.000And on the other side, you have people who are like, I'm not going to vote come hell or high water for anything that increases debt levels in the country.
00:05:44.000Well, how do you put all of that together?
00:05:46.000And the answer very often, especially with a very slim majority, is that Mike Johnson, in order to get the things that Trump wants, has to trade away some of the things that Republicans would like.
00:05:55.000Again, this is not specific to Mike Johnson.
00:05:59.000One of the most annoying things about the way, again, that people in my position, you know, commentators on politics, people who try to shape public opinion, one of the most annoying things that people in my position very often do...
00:06:10.000It's once again suggesting that the person who is charged with leading a coalition of widely disparate interests can single-handedly ram things through.
00:06:19.000That is not how the legislature works.
00:06:20.000It is not how the legislature has literally ever worked.
00:06:24.000In fact, the only time in my lifetime that you had a leader who was able to do that on the Republican side was Newt Gingrich.
00:06:30.000He was able to do it for about two years, and then his own Republican caucus basically ousted him.
00:07:01.000Now, he's not in office yet, but he has, of course, an enormous amount of sway with the Republican caucus.
00:07:06.000And then you have Johnson, who wants to do the things that Trump wants him to do, but who's actually going to be the guy who has to negotiate the deal.
00:07:13.000Johnson, in this sort of iteration, he is more like an agent of the president, Donald Trump, than he is like a principled leader who is standing for the thing.
00:07:34.000And then you have the person who's representing principle, which would be Elon.
00:07:37.000So Elon was set up at Doge, the Department of Governmental Efficiency, along with Vivek Ramaswamy, to go through all of these bills and point out where there is pork.
00:07:52.000And so it's very good that Doge is there to point this sort of stuff out.
00:07:55.000However, what you can easily end up with, and this is actually what happened in this situation, is a bill that had been basically pre-negotiated between Trump, Johnson, Vance, Congress, congressional Republicans, few congressional Democrats.
00:08:10.000Everybody knows there's a bunch of crap in it because, again, to get 70% of the loaf means 30% excrement.
00:08:15.000And again, this is not a defense of the bill.
00:08:17.000I would not vote for this bill were I in Congress because I'd probably be labeled one of the far-right obstructionists by 538. I would look at this bill.
00:08:25.000I think they are a waste of money and I think they make industry significantly less competitive and efficient.
00:08:30.000I would not vote for a giant disaster relief package because frankly, I think that much of the disaster relief stuff should be done at the state level.
00:08:38.000I, for example, don't see why California needs to subsidize Florida or Florida subsidize California.
00:08:44.000Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and our home state here in Florida has been hit with a multiplicity of hurricanes over the last couple of years.
00:08:51.000And so I wouldn't vote for this package.
00:09:29.000He's the one who took the Speaker of the House position, which is legitimately the worst position in American government.
00:09:34.000I'm just going to tell you right now the same thing that I've said about Johnson and McCarthy and Paul Ryan and John Boehner going back years and years and years and years, which is anybody who tells you that any of these leaders has the capacity to single-handedly ram through all of the things you want without giving up any of the things you don't want. which is anybody who tells you that any of these Those people are lying to you.
00:09:54.000If somebody ever tells you that the real problem in politics is just that no one has principles, no one has principles, that's a bit of a fib.
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00:12:52.000We don't normally like what's called a continued resolution, a CR, but in this case it makes sense because if we push it into the first quarter of next year, then we have a Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald J. Trump back in the White House will be able to have more say over the funding decisions for 2025. Now that would have been an easier thing to do, but then we had circumstances outside of our control.
00:13:12.000We had these emergencies that are required.
00:13:14.000So we had, as you know, a record hurricane season.
00:13:16.000We had Helene and Milton, and they just did massive destruction across our red states, frankly, in the southeast and the eastern side of the country.
00:13:25.000And then we have farmers who are in jeopardy of permanently going under.
00:13:29.000They've had three lost years in a row because of Bidenomics and inflation and other circumstances outside of their control.
00:13:35.000And so when you cobble those two things together, There's a desperate need for that aid, and that's what adds another hundred plus billion dollars to the bill, and that's why everybody's uncomfortable with it.
00:13:46.000We have a massive deficit and debt problem, of course, in this country.
00:13:51.000We can begin to address that and shrink the size and scope of government in January with Republican control.
00:13:57.000But we've got to bridge the gap to get there, and we cannot leave our small farms and ranchers and our inner people who are devastated by the hurricanes out in the meantime.
00:14:05.000So that's the difficult part about this.
00:14:07.000That's what people are really struggling with.
00:14:09.000And I am too, but we have a responsibility here, and that's legislative.
00:14:13.000Now again, because there are a lot of people like me in the Congress who wouldn't vote for this bill, that means that Johnson then had to go to Democrats and negotiate something to get the things that Trump and Johnson and Vance all wanted.
00:14:22.000And a lot of those things are absolute crap, right?
00:14:27.000And Vivek Ramaswamy, whose job it is, along with Elon Musk, to go through these kinds of things and point out the bad things, they pointed out the bad things today.
00:14:34.000And there are, in fact, a lot of bad things.
00:14:36.000So as Vivek points out, keeping the government open until March 14th will cost $380 billion by itself.
00:14:42.000But the true cost of this omnibus is far greater due to new spending.
00:14:45.000Renewing the farm bill for an extra year, $130 billion.
00:14:48.000Okay, now again, that's something that I oppose.
00:14:50.000I'm not sure that Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Mike Johnson oppose that because they would like the farmers to get the subsidies.
00:15:42.000It's supposed to be about keeping government operations open and providing disaster relief aid to hurricane victims, which I'm sympathetic to.
00:15:49.000But if you read the bill carefully, it contains pay raises for members of Congress, and I'm not making this up, an expansion of their federal health benefits.
00:15:57.000It contains all kinds of special interests and pork funding, including opening up a new stadium in Washington, D.C. It renews the Global Engagement Center, which is a key node of the censorship industrial complex.
00:16:09.000And the worst part is, they didn't want you to know about any of it, and that's why they made this a last-minute jam job.
00:16:16.000The reason I'm co-heading Doge is I think we need outsiders to bring actual accountability to Washington, D.C. So feel free to call your congressman and let him know how you feel about it.
00:16:25.000So again, there's a bunch of stuff in the bill that is pretty terrible, including, for example, a short-term funding bill that includes more funding for the so-called Global Engagement Center, which is an organization, it's part of the State Department, that we at The Daily Wire are suing, right?
00:16:37.000We don't want that organization to be in existence.
00:16:41.000It basically works with groups like, for example, NewsGuard in order to target, quote-unquote, disinformation and suppress American speech.
00:16:49.000So, I would very much like for that agency to disappear.
00:16:53.000This bill, for example, keeps the agency alive.
00:16:55.000And there's a bunch of stuff in the bill that is just like that.
00:16:58.000A bunch of actual nonsense in the bill.
00:17:07.000And Elon really started ramming through all sorts of objections to the bill.
00:17:13.000Which again, in his job as head of Doge, that's the job to do, is to look at the bills and say, here's all the pork, here's all the problems with the bill.
00:17:19.000Some of the things he was saying were true and absolutely necessary.
00:17:22.000Some of the things he was retreating were sort of not true.
00:17:25.000So again, all sorts of bad stuff in there.
00:17:28.000Potentially up to $2 billion in funding to rebuild the Francis Scott Key Bridge.
00:17:32.000$69,000 pay bump for lawmakers was suggested, but that's not actually real.
00:17:37.000The thing that is actually happening in terms of the pay bump for lawmakers, just to be perfectly accurate as to what exactly is happening, the pay raise that is happening is a part of the cost of living adjustment freeze that is now being unfrozen.
00:17:50.000So, members of Congress have not had a raise to their $174,000 salary since 2009. The pending CR does not include a colifreeze.
00:17:58.000That would not result in a 40% boost in pay.
00:18:01.000That would result in a potential 3.8% increase in pay thanks to cost of living adjustment from 2009 in terms of inflation.
00:18:08.000It's an increase of about $6,600, not an increase of $69,000, as was implied by many of the people who are sort of putting out this information.
00:18:15.000There was also some bad information put out suggesting that $3 billion in federal money would be put forward for a new NFL stadium in Washington.
00:20:00.000But that's a question of incremental better deal.
00:20:04.000Okay, the reality is if you want all the things that you want to get in politics, you're going to have to give up a bunch of stuff that you don't particularly like.
00:20:10.000And then it's just a question of that balance.
00:20:13.000We've tried to navigate this as best as possible and chosen the least of the bad options in front of us.
00:20:19.000No one wants to spend $110 billion, but when you have emergencies that are actually, you know, as they're legally called, acts of God, these are not man-made disasters.
00:20:29.000They're outside of our control, and there's a certain principle that the federal government has some role to play.
00:20:43.000Democrats don't have a big priority on the agriculture community because they don't have that in their districts.
00:20:47.000These are Republican states and Republican districts, and we'd be derelict in our duty if we didn't take care of them.
00:20:53.000So that's the part of this that is uncomfortable for people.
00:20:55.000We don't like spending money, but we have to do it responsibly.
00:20:58.000Okay, so Elon, of course, then saw the bill, and he had been apprised of the fact that a compromise had to be made, but he didn't like the actual compromise that was made.
00:21:06.000So he started rage-tweeting about this yesterday.
00:21:08.000And again, I agree with a huge number of his criticisms.
00:21:10.000He called the bill criminal, an insane crime against the American people, an outrage, terrible, and madness.
00:21:15.000I should point out at this point that for all the talk about the overspending in this particular CR, literally yesterday, the same day that this happened, the Senate passed a bill that's going to cost way more money than anything that we are talking about right now.
00:21:29.000A Social Security bill passed the Senate that effectively pays more to public sector employees for Social Security that they wouldn't have got anyway.
00:21:38.000The bill is quite properly opposed by Senator Rand Paul, who points out that the Social Security reforms are going to cost $200 billion.
00:21:46.000And this part of the problem with sort of the eye of Sauron approach to federal debt and federal spending is that you can sporadically get interested in the thing that's on the table.
00:21:57.000But in the meantime, something is happening in the back room that is that is really, really much worse.
00:22:02.000The reality is the systemic drivers of debt in the United States of America are Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and all the discretionary welfare programs attached to them.
00:22:11.000And those are precisely the things that the Trump administration is very unlikely to tackle.
00:22:15.000So some of this is just arguing over incremental differences in the national debt without touching the actual substructure that drives the national debt.
00:22:22.000Again, that's not to say we shouldn't talk about discretionary spending.
00:22:28.000There's sort of a whack-a-mole approach being taken to the national debt and all this.
00:22:32.000Now, folks, if it feels like the government spends with one hand and then stops the spending with the other, that's because there's a lot of dishonesty constantly happening.
00:22:40.000Ever feel like you're stuck in this loop of rent payments, just watching your money vanish into thin air, you know, like you are as a taxpayer?
00:22:46.000I know we've all been there, writing those big checks every month, wondering if there's a better way.
00:23:38.000That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Ben.
00:23:41.000Also, this election season, I visited six different states between campaign stops, media hits, and other podcasts, our very own election coverage in Nashville.
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00:24:37.000That's balanceofnature.com, promo code SHAPIRO. Okay, so Elon goes off on this.
00:24:42.000Elon suggests he is going to fund a primary for anyone who votes in favor of this bill.
00:24:50.000Trump and Vance, President Trump and Vice President Vance, who, again, were part of the negotiation.
00:24:55.000It's not as though they were absent from all of this talk.
00:24:58.000They signed into the chat and they started to saw off the limb behind Speaker Johnson.
00:25:02.000So they put out a statement that said, quote, The most foolish and inept thing ever done by congressional Republicans was allowing our country to hit the debt ceiling in 2025. It was a mistake and is now something that must be addressed.
00:25:12.000Meanwhile, Congress is considering a spending bill that would give sweetheart provisions for government censors and for Liz Cheney.
00:25:17.000The bill would make it easier to hide the records of the corrupt January 6th committee, which accomplished nothing for the American people and hid security failures that happened that day.
00:25:23.000This bill would also give Congress a pay increase while many Americans are struggling this Christmas.
00:25:28.000Increasing the debt ceiling is not great.
00:25:36.000And we should pass a streamlined spending bill that doesn't give Chuck Schumer and Democrats everything they want.
00:25:41.000Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill without Democrat giveaways combined with an increase in the debt ceiling.
00:25:51.000Anything else is a betrayal of our country.
00:26:05.000That is a statement that is pointed out jointly by President Trump and Vice President Vance.
00:26:09.000So the options that are basically left on the table are these.
00:26:13.000One, what they probably should have done in the first place, a clean continuing resolution without the Farm Bill, without the disaster aid.
00:26:18.000Just put that forward, get through the first few weeks of the new year.
00:26:22.000Trump's president, you have a Republican Congress, you have a Republican Senate, and now you can actually have an honest conversation about how Republicans should vote.
00:26:29.000Remember, right now, Chuck Schumer is still in charge of the Senate, and Joe Biden is still the president of the United States.
00:26:34.000But, again, it turns out that Trump, Vance, and Johnson don't actually want a clean continuing resolution.
00:26:41.000So, President Trump put out a statement yesterday, quote, If Republicans try to pass a clean, continuing resolution without all of the Democrat bells and whistles that will be so destructive to the country, all it will do after January 20th is bring the mess of the debt limit into the Trump administration rather than allowing it to take place in the Biden administration.
00:26:56.000Any Republican that would be so stupid as to do this should and will be primaried.
00:27:00.000Everything should be done and fully negotiated prior to my taking office on January 20th, 2025. So now, Trump and Vance are adding a new wrinkle.
00:27:06.000They don't just want to pass the clean CR. They also want to pass an increase in the debt ceiling.
00:27:11.000The debt ceiling is what allows the government, gives permission to the executive branch to go and take out more debt.
00:27:16.000We have this debate every year, every six months in the Congress.
00:27:20.000The increase in the debt ceiling, and usually that is used as a lever to get the government to spend less money by Republicans.
00:27:26.000President Trump put out a statement saying, Also,
00:27:53.000the Communist Global Engagement Center, a project of crooked Hillary Clinton, should not in any way, shape, or form be extended, and the shielding of the very corrupt J6 Unselect Committee of Political Losers and Thugs would be suicidal for a new Republican approving it.
00:28:03.000Likewise, this is not a good time for Congress to be asking for pay increases.
00:28:06.000Hopefully you'll be entitled to such an increase in the near future when we make America great again.
00:28:11.000Okay, so, what exactly does all that mean?
00:28:13.000It means that now, they are no longer asking just for a clean CR, which again, would have been the best plan.
00:28:19.000Just get for a few more weeks of spending, that's it.
00:28:21.000Get Trump in office, get the Republicans in office, and then negotiate all this stuff out.
00:28:25.000President Trump would love for the debt ceiling to go away, so when he comes into office, Republicans can pass the new tax bill, for example, or pass a border bill, without having to worry about the debt ceiling.
00:28:42.000So, the only way you're going to get all those things is by, wait for it, giving concessions to Democrats because Republicans do not run the Senate.
00:28:49.000Because Republicans probably don't have enough votes in the House to get something like that across the finish line.
00:28:54.000There are a lot of Republicans who don't want to increase the debt ceiling and sort of sign a blank check.
00:28:59.000Why exactly would Democrats vote to increase the debt ceiling to help Republicans in the future?
00:29:05.000This idea that Democrats are desperate to increase the debt ceiling on behalf of Trump and the Republicans taking office, that is not how politics works.
00:29:12.000And Democrats are already pointing this out.
00:29:14.000So, for example, Chris Murphy, the execrable senator from Connecticut, Democrat, he put out a statement, quote, Remember what this is all about.
00:29:20.000Trump wants Democrats to agree to raise the debt ceiling so he can pass his massive corporate and billionaire tax cut without a problem.
00:29:27.000Shorter version, tax cut for billionaires or the government shuts down for Christmas.
00:29:31.000So, Democrats are now opposing a clean continuing resolution.
00:29:36.000House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries suggested Wednesday, Democrats will oppose any federal spending bill that strays from the deal that was announced the day before because they understand that they sort of have Republicans boxed in.
00:29:45.000Politically speaking, what they believe is that if the government shuts down, Republicans will be blamed.
00:30:03.000So, if there is a government shutdown, who will be blamed is sort of the question.
00:30:06.000I think that on the right side of the aisle, there's a generalized perception that the left will be blamed.
00:30:11.000That if Republicans, for example, pass a continuing resolution...
00:30:15.000And still, somehow, are able to pass an increase in the debt ceiling, and then Democrats refuse all those things, Democrats will be blamed for the continuing resolutions failure.
00:30:25.000Democrats will be blamed for the ensuing partial government shutdown.
00:30:28.000Again, government shutdown in the end of the world.
00:30:31.000When I say it's not that big a deal, it is for the people who are furloughed, but typically they don't last all of that long.
00:30:36.000And also, all of these sort of essential services, meaning social security checks, for example, those continue to go out on time.
00:30:42.000So, what would the actual political result of this be?
00:30:45.000Well, it would be a battle that President Trump would have to inherit immediately on taking office.
00:30:50.000The next month, because it's still a month until he's president, the next month would be taken up with conversation in the media about why is the government shut down?
00:30:57.000Why didn't Donald Trump just let the Republicans pass the continuing resolution?
00:31:01.000Why are government workers not getting paid for Christmas?
00:31:20.000But if President Trump is counting on Democrats to vote for an increase in the debt ceiling and Joe Biden to sign that in order to help him in his first year, I don't think that's going to happen.
00:31:30.000So how far are Republicans going to take it?
00:31:32.000And then, really, how far is Trump going to take it and own it?
00:31:36.000How far will President Trump and J.D. Vance and Elon Musk take it and say, yes, we're the ones who said no to this bill because we thought that the extra pork was not worth the squeeze?
00:31:46.000That's always how these government shutdown battles go.
00:31:48.000They rarely result in exactly what Republicans would like them to result in.
00:31:52.000And the question of who receives the blame, maybe it doesn't matter to Republicans, but in a very closely divided Congress where you have a bunch of members who are fighting for their seats.
00:32:00.000Remember, Republicans are almost certainly going to lose seats in the Congress in 2026, which means they lose the majority in 2026. So there are a lot of Republican Congress people who are fighting for their seats who might not go along with any of this because, frankly, they don't want to be out of their jobs.
00:32:16.000These are the complex dynamics of the politics.
00:32:19.000Again, Democrats, I don't think are going to save Republicans from this one.
00:32:22.000Democrat Jasmine Crockett, who is quite a terrible congresswoman, she's reveling in the Republican dysfunction.
00:32:28.000What is happening in the House of Representatives?
00:32:33.000Like, this was supposed to be just, you know, a pro forma exercise, they're gonna pass the CR, and it has turned into an usher debacle with people openly calling for Speaker Johnson to be thrown out of the Speaker's office.
00:32:50.000Listen, we're looking at this like this is their problem.
00:32:53.000We have seen this play out over and over in the entire two years that I've been in Congress.
00:32:57.000We know that they had a problem picking a speaker when I first got to Congress, and I thought since they held on to the speaker a little bit longer than they held on to McCarthy, That I could go into January knowing that Mike Johnson would be the speaker, but now they're calling for his ouster.
00:33:12.000And remember, this is not like one of the most senior members, right?
00:33:16.000So basically, he had not burned enough bridges, and so they had to go way, way down in seniority to find someone that they could come to a consensus on.
00:33:25.000We have seen this over and over, and I'm just going to sit back and sip my tea and wait on them to figure it out.
00:33:57.000What you need is a Republican caucus that moves in almost machine-like fashion in order to promote its highest priorities.
00:34:04.000They actually need to stick together, for example.
00:34:07.000And that does mean that if Doge is making points from the outside and putting public pressure from the outside, it has to be on particular members on particular issues, not just shooting down pre-written legislation.
00:34:21.000I mean, if Doge is truly sort of an independent body who's going to be calling out everything, then maybe that's their job.
00:34:26.000But that means that President Trump and J.D. Vance and team might have to push back against Doge from time to time.
00:34:31.000That may not be the dynamic that they're looking for.
00:34:34.000If you want President Trump's priorities to pass, there is going to be some stuff that you don't like because that is the necessity of pragmatic politics.
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00:36:30.000Now, again, there are a lot of people in my position in conservative media or in politics who I think there's always an interest in telling the public that if everyone were just more pure, that if Mike Johnson were just a stronger person, then you would have gotten everything you could possibly want.
00:36:52.000I think it is a form of demagoguery, frankly, to suggest that every politician who doesn't do everything that you want is doing it because they're some sort of sellout or cuck.
00:37:01.000But this idea that every single House Speaker of my lifetime has been a sellout or a cuck, and it's not just a matter of incentive structures, is wrong.
00:37:09.000Thomas Sowell once suggested that the art of politics is not getting the right person in the right place.
00:37:13.000It's making the wrong person do the right thing through incentive structures.
00:37:19.000If Republicans, for example, had a 40-seat majority in the House, rather than like a two-seat majority in the House, you'd be able to get a lot more done.
00:37:26.000If Republicans were not on the verge of losing the House in 2026, you'd be able to get a lot more done.
00:37:32.000If they controlled the Senate already, incentive structures mean an awful lot when it comes to politics.
00:37:37.000And I know that that creates a lot of frustration for people who want to see their politicals done.
00:37:44.000But the reason you have checks and balances in the United States, the reason that the processes are arcane, the reason you have coalitional politics, is because this is a big, unwieldy country.
00:37:52.000And it requires a government that actually has to go through the motions of compromise.
00:37:56.000And you don't get everything that you want all the time.
00:37:59.000Now, I'm going to push for everything that I want.
00:38:01.000I'm going to say that members who don't give me what I want ought to lose their primaries.
00:38:04.000I'm also not going to suggest that the Speaker of the House, or Donald Trump for that matter, that their job is the same as my job.
00:38:41.000So Steve Bannon, who again, Steve is a very colorful figure for sure, but Steve is constantly on the sort of bandwagon of anyone I don't like is a cuck.
00:38:50.000And so here is Steve Bannon now suggesting that Mike Johnson is a Democrat, which I'm sorry, that's just ridiculous.
00:38:57.000Mike Johnson is one of the most conservative members of the House by his career voting record.
00:39:02.000But again, Steve always has an interest in suggesting that if you don't get what you want 100% of the time, it's because some politician has sold you down the river, has sold you out.
00:39:11.000Which, this sort of game, I think, is pretty ugly.
00:39:42.000Suggesting that Mike Johnson is not a committed Christian because he is not able to get more of the loaf that, by the way, Donald Trump wanted?
00:39:51.000Again, this bill didn't emerge from nowhere.
00:39:53.000This sort of stuff is pretty distasteful.
00:39:56.000Thomas Massey, who again is very consistent in terms of wanting smaller government, but now he's blaming Mike Johnson.
00:40:02.000Thomas Massey will never at any point be happy with any Speaker of the House because any Speaker of the House is going to have to do things that Thomas Massey does not like in the same way that Ron Paul was a purist about spending.
00:40:11.000And it turned out that he never had a Speaker of the House that he liked.
00:40:15.000Ron Paul also happened to kind of like bringing the pork back home to his own district.
00:40:49.000Okay, I can promise you right now that anybody that Thomas Massey suggests is not going to speak to the House.
00:40:53.000Not because they're a bad person or anything, just because, as I pointed out at the top of the show, look at that Republican caucus again, and you will notice there are many people who do not agree with Thomas Massey in that caucus.
00:41:06.000Understanding the dynamics of politics allow for a little bit more...
00:41:11.000I would say sanguinity when it comes to the ugliness of the sausage making.
00:41:15.000I think so much of frustration in modern American politics is driven by people believing that if only there were people who were just committed enough to the principles, then magically all of my principles would manifest in real life.
00:41:28.000People who sell you that bill of goods are lying to you.
00:41:30.000And very often they're lying to you because they want to appear to be quote-unquote the most principled.
00:41:42.000In fact, I think that we ought to completely restructure an enormous amount of the American entitlement state, which is something that the Trump administration is not going to do and is not interested in doing for electoral reasons.
00:42:01.000No, it means he is a politician who's doing pragmatic things.
00:42:04.000It's important to note this going forward because I promise you every single bill that Republicans bring while Trump is president are going to have compromises in them.
00:42:12.000And if the basic idea is that every compromise is a sellout, And not an attempt to grab 70-80% of the loaf.
00:42:18.000You're going to be a very unhappy camper with President Trump, which is unfair to President Trump.
00:42:25.000They're in a different position than I am.
00:42:27.000They're in a different position than Steve Bannon.
00:42:29.000By the way, they're even in a different position than a normal congressperson whose job it is to vote their principal, and then all that gets hashed out by the leadership.
00:42:36.000That's why the structure is the way that it is.
00:42:48.000This kind of idea that's now trying to be trotted out, that Johnson is the bad guy and all this, that Trump and Johnson are at odds, is not true.
00:42:56.000Jamie Comer, who is one of the more conservative members of Congress, he says, listen, if it comes down to a fight with Johnson with regard to the speakership, Trump is going to back Johnson.
00:43:05.000That is likely true, and it should be true, because who else is Trump going to find who's going to do better than Johnson on this?
00:43:12.000I think the only way Mike Johnson does not get re-elected speaker is if Donald Trump came out and said he preferred someone else.
00:43:19.000Then we'd have to go through the process again.
00:43:22.000It's very difficult to get practically every member to agree because I think We could lose two votes on the speaker's race.
00:43:30.000If two Republicans vote against whoever the speaker nominee is, then it can still pass.
00:43:36.000If three vote against him, then it fails to get the minimum number.
00:44:09.000According to the Washington Post, the last month voted along party lines not to release the results of the long-running investigation into Matt Gaetz.
00:44:17.000It was a culmination of a contentious debate over whether to release the report in the first place.
00:44:22.000The 10-member panel actually voted to table the report after Trump named Gates his Attorney General pick, and then he submitted his resignation to Congress.
00:44:30.000The Congress suggested, Speaker Johnson said, there's no need to release the report.
00:45:33.000Well, our first battles are to defeat the censorship industrial complex.
00:45:37.000Those are three big words, but they pack a powerful punch, and the Daily Wire's very aware of that, I know.
00:45:42.000For many years, we've had the privilege of partnering with you as you've had different cases come up on campuses and defending rights on campuses to speak freely.
00:45:51.000But more and more, we're seeing this insidious development of collusive Actors and government, private people colluding together to censor speech, and we're determined to use the tools at our disposal to stop it.
00:46:04.000And I think that there's no greater moment and opportunity, but also no greater threat right now to where we're headed in the next season.
00:46:11.000We have to take this on and take it on now.
00:46:14.000It's pretty incredible to see how many states, left-wing states, particularly California, trying to crack down on elements that are clearly free speech.
00:46:21.000You have a case in which you guys are representing the Babylon Bee because California is basically now trying to ban satire or parody, it seems.
00:46:30.000And these are tools that we haven't seen states necessarily use in the past as such overt censorship.
00:46:35.000So we have three cases right now that the center's already started on, which include laws that are trying to stop satire and parody like the Babylon Bee, but also even large platforms that are essentially turned into snitches on those who would post content that the government might disapprove of.
00:46:52.000We also have a case right now involving stage publications where peer-reviewed, published articles that are used in litigation and in academic journals are being rolled back, essentially depublished in breach of contract in an attempt to censor views that the left ideologues don't like any longer.
00:47:11.000In this particular case, the case involves chemical abortion drugs, and it happened during the chemical abortion cases.
00:47:17.000But I just want to emphasize, I think that One piece of this is also just ensuring there's essentially transparency.
00:47:25.000And as the Daily Wire sued the Global Engagement Center and the things that are happening in the Texas lawsuit, we need to have more of that because we're seeing the government fund censorship and then hide behind private actors to do its dirty work.
00:47:38.000I mean, I think this is a really important point.
00:47:40.000One of the things the government has been doing for a long time has been essentially using backdoor pressure to get private entities to engage in censorship.
00:47:48.000So given the Supreme Court's ruling in the last term that, for example, the Biden administration pressuring Facebook to take down particular content didn't amount to a violation of free speech.
00:48:24.000That ruling that you're referring to, Murthy, was based on standing.
00:48:27.000And it essentially said there wasn't enough proof in the record to say that Facebook would have done these things on their own, that they wouldn't have done these things on their own, that they wouldn't have engaged in censorship on their own.
00:48:37.000And there were a few other nuances to it.
00:48:39.000But I think a case that's squarely presented will come back again.
00:48:43.000And we intend to help bring those cases back to the court because as the dissent in the case continues, There is great danger here that the NRA case is another Supreme Court case that was in the same term where that direct coercion or collusion between the government and a private entity was more transparent and visible.
00:49:02.000And in that case, the court said it was wrong.
00:49:06.000We have to ensure that there's transparency through FOIAs and public records requests, and then we have to make them pay.
00:49:12.000We have to ensure that the platforms that are engaging in this collusive relationship have a reputational cost and stake in place, but also that we're using all the legal tools we can to protect speech.
00:49:24.000Well, that is Kristen Wagoner, she's CEO, President and General Counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom.