Ep. 1154 - Republicans Clash To Find A Worthy Speaker Of The House
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
170.61864
Summary
On Christmas morning, the House of Representatives voted for a new Speaker of the House, and no one won. It's the exact same thing that happened the last time Republicans had a chance to elect a Speaker, back in 2015.
Transcript
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The 118th Congress, now under Republican control, voted yesterday for the next Speaker of the House, and no one won.
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McCarthy has been in House leadership for over a dozen years.
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He's actually already started moving his files and furniture into the Speaker's suite.
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But McCarthy did not get the 218 votes necessary to secure the Speakership, which brought the vote to a second ballot.
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Now, McCarthy still didn't have the votes, brought it to a third ballot, still didn't have the votes, and then the House adjourned for the night.
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The whole episode was somewhat embarrassing, certainly for McCarthy.
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It was the first time in 100 years that a Speaker election went to multiple ballots.
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But the one thing that it was not was surprising.
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People are acting shocked right now, especially the establishment Republicans.
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I'm not sure why, because this is the exact same thing that happened last time Republicans had a chance to elect a Speaker back in 2015.
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It's the exact same thing by the exact same people to the exact same guy.
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In 2015, when John Boehner stepped down as Speaker, Kevin McCarthy was his presumptive successor, until some members of the House Freedom Caucus refused to go along with it.
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And the Freedom Caucus had enough votes to block him.
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That election did not go to multiple ballots, but only because McCarthy bowed out of the race when he saw that he didn't have the votes.
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Then, members of both the establishment and the Freedom Caucus called on Paul Ryan to take the Speakership as a compromise candidate who was acceptable to both sides.
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A lot of people don't like Paul Ryan these days because he became extremely anti-Trump and in recent years has seemed kind of like a squish.
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But at the time, Paul Ryan was considered one of the more conservative members of the House.
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Jim Jordan, great guy, strong conservative bona fides, and also someone who is not completely unacceptable to the establishment.
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I understand why some Republicans are backing the Freedom Caucus candidate, Andy Biggs.
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I understand why some Republicans are backing Jim Jordan.
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I even understand why some Republicans are backing Kevin McCarthy.
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The only thing I don't understand is how all the political geniuses, the politicians, the pundits, the prognosticators,
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how all of them are completely shocked and appalled that history is simply repeating itself.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Matt Duncan, who says,
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Controlling words, controlling minds for Christmas.
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And when I unwrapped the book after my mom handed it to me, I heard the signature ding after I realized what she had given me.
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The production crew was on top of it on Christmas morning.
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Thank you, Michael, and everyone else there at The Daily Wire for making this Christmas so special.
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I'm so glad that you could have received such a magnificent gift.
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These are the people who are being absolutely maligned, tarred, and feathered by the libs and by the squishes, by the Republican establishment.
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And yet, I look down this list of people who are not backing McCarthy, and a lot of them are some of my absolute favorite members of Congress.
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We've got Dan Bishop, Lauren Boebert, Josh Bresheen, Mike Cloud, Andrew Clyde, Eli Crane, Matt Gaetz, Bob Good, Paul Gosar, Andy Harris, Anna Paulina Luna, Mary Miller, terrific.
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Ralph Norman, Andy Ogles, Scott Perry, Matt Rosendale, Chip Roy, love that guy, Keith Self, and Biggs.
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I'm seeing like half a dozen names here of some of the people that I like most in Congress.
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If they're holding out, maybe they've got good reason to do that.
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Now, what the establishment is saying is this is terrible.
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This is a horrible embarrassment for the Republicans.
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We don't, you don't need to get the speaker on the first ballot.
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We don't, I have nothing personally against Kevin McCarthy, really, as far as Republican leadership goes.
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He's far from the worst guy we've ever seen there.
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But he wasn't born with an entitlement to become the speaker of the House.
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In Democratic politics, lowercase d, it can be a little bit messy.
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People can fight and battle and try to get their committee chairmanships.
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In fact, this very fight happened the very last time that Republicans were able to elect a speaker.
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Representative Bob Good has been going on TV to give his side of why Kevin McCarthy should never be the speaker.
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There's nothing about Kevin McCarthy that indicates that he will bring the change that's needed to Washington or that's needed to the Congress.
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Or he'll bring the fight, fight against the Biden-Schumer agenda.
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It's worth it to fight for a few hours or even a few days to get the best possible person for speaker.
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Kevin McCarthy is not sufficiently conservative.
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And so we should hash it out and make sure we pick the right speaker now.
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Now, some people are saying who cares who the speaker is the only job of the speaker of the House when the opposition party has the Senate and the White House is just to say no and to stall the agenda.
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Okay, that's true, but I suspect what Bob Good and the other Freedom Caucus members are thinking right now is, yeah, maybe the threshold of candidate that you need when you are in the minority of the whole government is relatively low.
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But once someone is established as the speaker of the House, it's not as though if the Republicans win the Senate and the White House next time, they're just going to boot the Republican speaker and elect some new guy.
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Once you get that position, you pretty much stay in that position.
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So they're saying, let's fight, let's get it right now because this could have long-term consequences.
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Newt Gingrich, who was speaker of the House of Representatives for the Republicans, he has been going on TV explaining why we need to elect Kevin McCarthy.
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They're voting against over 215 members of their own conference.
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Their conference voted overwhelmingly, 85%, for McCarthy to be speaker.
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So this is a fight between a handful of people and the entire rest of the conference.
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And they're saying they have the right to screw up everything.
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Well, the precedent that sets is so do the moderates, so do the members from Florida.
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I mean, any five people can get up and say, I'm now going to screw up the conference too.
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And there's nobody going to replace Kevin because he has far more people totally dedicated to him than this handful of never-enders.
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And the result's going to be anybody who tried to replace Kevin would face total chaos.
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So I hope in the next 24 hours that this handful of members will realize they don't have the moral right to reject the choice of 85% of their conference.
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I love Newt Gingrich, but I don't think his analysis is totally precise here because it's already happened before.
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He says, well, the vast majority of the Republicans are supporting McCarthy.
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And so if they don't go with McCarthy, it's just going to be sheer chaos.
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They're not going to be able to find a candidate.
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Last time, the majority of Republicans were backing McCarthy.
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And then a small number of Republicans held out, and we got Paul Ryan.
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It was like wrangling cats, but that's going to be true of anybody.
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It's going to be true of Kevin McCarthy if he becomes the speaker.
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It's going to be true of Andy Biggs if he became the speaker.
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And looking at history right now, looking at the times that Kevin McCarthy has been up for this job, and looking at Jim Jordan emerging as a potential compromise candidate.
00:11:06.080
Or some other names have been floated as well, but Jim Jordan is probably leading the bunch.
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It seems certainly plausible, if not likely, that you get a compromise candidate type to take the reins from McCarthy if McCarthy cannot command the number of votes that are needed to win the speakership, okay?
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Which he wasn't able to do last time, and he wasn't able to do yesterday.
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So maybe the Republicans seriously have to consider an alternative.
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I don't get all that riled up about these House leadership elections.
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Because my job as a citizen is to elect the congressman.
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But these elections are for the congressman to elect their leadership.
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And it's a different sort of thing, and it requires a different skill set.
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But I'm certainly not going to castigate any members of the House Freedom Caucus for saying, no, we want a different leader.
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And the guy that 85% of the conference is pushing is not acceptable to us.
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Worth noting, by the way, you don't need to be a member of Congress to be the Speaker of the House.
00:13:48.340
So obviously the funniest choice is Donald Trump.
00:13:54.680
And by the way, it would have a lot of political benefit for Republicans who don't want Trump to be
00:13:59.320
If Donald Trump just became the Speaker of the House, that would benefit Ron DeSantis.
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That would benefit other GOP rivals who are looking at 2024.
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That would benefit the people who don't want Donald Trump to run again in 2024.
00:14:13.780
Could you imagine the State of the Union when Joe Biden gets up there and you've got Donald Trump
00:14:19.940
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome sleepy, stupid Joe.
00:14:33.160
So something seriously for the members to consider.
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And I should point out, some people have mentioned on social media, they floated the name of yours
00:14:50.300
And many people are talking about it, all right?
00:14:52.680
And I deeply appreciate the countless, countless number of people who are clamoring incessantly
00:15:01.380
for me, Michael John Knowles, yours truly, your beloved podcast host, international sex symbol,
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I will not accept the Speakership of the House unless the Congressman elect me to it.
00:15:24.100
What should the House do once they finally get all of these Speaker decisions sorted out and start governing?
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One great idea that has been floated is to open up a subcommittee on the weaponization of federal agencies.
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A subcommittee is different than a select committee.
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A select committee is like what Pelosi set up to make a big hullabaloo about the January 6th people
00:15:50.760
and to just put on a big show for the television cameras that doesn't really do anything.
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A subcommittee, which is what the House Republicans are talking about now on the weaponization of the
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federal agencies, of the FBI, of you could go even beyond the intelligence community, of the IRS,
00:16:07.400
The subcommittee has the power to consider and introduce legislation,
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which is important because it raises the possibility of reforming some bureaucratic structures
00:16:17.480
that the GOP rightly believes poses a threat to our system of government.
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An example of using the Congress to fight back against the executive agencies would be something like the Church Committee,
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And the Church Committee looked into all of the nefarious activities of the CIA and uncovered a lot of bad stuff.
00:16:43.840
Okay, the Church Committee uncovered things like, gosh, MKUltra, right?
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I'm trying to think of all of their- I just gave a speech on all of the nefarious activities of the CIA over the years.
00:16:57.760
You think about the infiltration of the media, not just abroad, but here domestically, to push government propaganda.
00:17:05.100
And the Church Committee played a large role in uncovering some of these activities.
00:17:11.720
If it were a subcommittee doing it, that would be great because it would actually have the teeth to try to reform the system.
00:17:16.560
I'm not saying it necessarily would be successful, but it would be the best shot we've got.
00:17:19.920
These sorts of issues are what Republicans need to focus on because they're not merely political issues.
00:17:30.580
It's not just about this policy or that policy.
00:17:40.280
It's a meta-political issue because immigration will determine who gets to vote for what sort of things
00:17:59.880
Three million immigrants coming into the country every year, two million of whom are illegal,
00:18:03.300
because they rightly believe it will give them a political advantage.
00:18:09.740
When we're going after the weaponization of federal agencies,
00:18:12.260
we're not just talking about one political issue or some other political issue.
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We're talking about how policy is decided and who gets to do it.
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Do you want it to be the congressman or do you want it to be some unaccountable bureaucrat
00:18:26.480
who is a lifelong Democrat who is going to push leftism whether the people want it or not?
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I think you'd probably rather the Congress do that than the bureaucrats.
00:18:37.900
So this could be really dangerous too for the Republicans who do this if the House goes ahead
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and opens up the subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government.
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I'm reminded of the words of Chuck Schumer who laughed when Donald Trump was being attacked
00:18:55.940
by the intelligence community and there were all sorts of leaks and dossiers and insinuations.
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And Schumer laughed and he said, you know, never go up against the intelligence community.
00:19:08.260
And it was sad in a way, but it is kind of funny.
00:19:13.280
He's saying, yeah, you think that we run the show over here?
00:19:20.980
And so if the Congress does establish this House subcommittee on the weaponization of federal
00:19:26.260
agencies, all I'm saying is look out for some of its members to come out with sex scandals,
00:19:32.020
okay? Because I don't think that those federal agencies are going to go down without a fight.
00:19:43.940
I think from the Republican Congress, the best that we are going to get is lots of investigations,
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lots of hearings, lots of interrogation with the C-SPAN cameras running.
00:19:56.340
You're not going to get legislation for two reasons.
00:20:00.340
One, you're not going to get a lot of legislation because the Democrats have the Senate and the
00:20:05.400
But two, you're not going to get a lot of legislation because that's just not where the
00:20:17.880
We are not living like a bill up on Capitol Hill in Schoolhouse Rock.
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The power has shifted and it hasn't only shifted because bureaucrats have taken power
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or even because the Congress delegated power away to the executive agencies.
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The power has shifted because of really basic financial problems.
00:20:39.640
Right now, a study just came out, shows that the federal government's budget is in such disarray
00:20:45.960
that if they wanted to balance the budget, the federal government would be required
00:20:51.220
either to cut spending by 30% or to raise taxes by 40%.
00:20:58.160
Neither of those things are ever going to happen.
00:21:04.660
Or they could try to find a middle ground, which would still be unacceptable, both on the
00:21:25.060
And it's going to get much more expensive than it has been to have that.
00:21:28.460
Even as we've been running up that debt, we've been doing it kind of on the cheap because
00:21:36.400
So now just to service that amount of debt, think about the kind of interest that you pay
00:21:40.280
on your mortgage, if you have a home mortgage, now your home mortgage, instead of it being
00:21:47.360
a couple hundred thousand dollars, let's say it's $31.5 trillion.
00:21:51.580
The cost of just servicing that debt is astronomical, okay?
00:21:57.680
It means that our policy options as legislators, as citizens, as the people executing the government,
00:22:06.620
not executing like bang, bang, but in the executive role of the government, they're rather limited.
00:22:13.260
This is why the United States has to remain the global hegemon, okay?
00:22:18.140
This is why debates over our fiscal policy or our monetary policy or our military policy
00:22:27.600
You notice that no matter which side gets elected, the foreign policy basically remains the same.
00:22:33.680
No matter which side gets elected, the immigration policy basically remains the same.
00:22:37.440
No matter which side gets elected, the fiscal policy basically remains the same.
00:22:40.220
Republicans always run on cutting government spending.
00:22:43.900
The last time a Republican cut government spending, actually reduced the size and scope of the
00:22:54.960
The reason for that is because the US has to remain the global hegemon.
00:22:59.180
Because if the US doesn't dominate the world, then the country is going to collapse because
00:23:07.320
So the only reason that we're able to run up the numbers like this is because we are the
00:23:14.080
Because our military is the dominant power and because our dollar is the dominant power
00:23:20.220
And so the moment that that goes away, it's not like the country is just very slowly and
00:23:30.320
This is why both parties are so keen on fighting the war in Ukraine when the American people
00:23:37.380
The reason that they're doing that is because they're playing this very complicated game of
00:23:43.260
rebuffing the rival powers that are trying to threaten and question US hegemony.
00:23:50.820
That's why the United States is so concerned over Taiwan when the American people don't really
00:23:57.020
We have to do it because our whole national policy is dependent on remaining the big dog
00:24:06.320
And if you're so levered that that is the only thing keeping you from a national collapse,
00:24:13.740
then your members of Congress are actually not going to be able to do very much.
00:24:17.460
The president of the United States is not going to be able to do very much.
00:24:19.600
And speaking of threats to American hegemony, the NASA chief has just raised a brand new security
00:24:27.300
It's not the Taliban or the Muslim terrorists trying to blow us up.
00:24:31.940
It's not those pesky Russians filming us doing weird things with hookers in Moscow hotels,
00:24:37.000
okay, and threatening our pipelines and energy and things like that.
00:24:41.720
No, no, it is the Chinese who want to conquer the moon.
00:24:47.960
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And it is true that we better watch out that China doesn't get to a place on the moon under
00:26:27.640
And it is not beyond the realm of possibility that they say, keep out.
00:26:32.840
If you doubt that, look at what they did with the Spratly Islands.
00:26:35.620
Spratly Islands are a series of islands in the South China Sea that China has gone in
00:26:43.280
and basically taken over, even though they weren't supposed to do that.
00:26:47.820
I actually think Bill Nelson is correct in that it's not out of the realm of possibility
00:26:52.880
that China starts making much more ambitious territorial claims, including to the moon.
00:26:58.780
It's not out of the realm of possibility, which is why, put China aside for a second,
00:27:09.220
It's why the United States needs once again to pursue a policy of national greatness.
00:27:17.780
When Newt Gingrich, speaking of Newt Gingrich, ran for president in 2012,
00:27:22.820
he made this an important part of his campaign platform.
00:27:26.900
He actually made going back to the moon an important part of his campaign platform
00:27:31.260
and exploring space further because he said, we need a project of national greatness.
00:27:39.700
Much of our political debate for the past 30, 40 years has gone between two poles
00:27:51.880
The left, which is no longer looking out to the heavens,
00:27:58.600
The left, which says America is evil and we need to contract and we need to contract our empire
00:28:03.040
and contract our claims and our own sense of how wonderful the country is.
00:28:09.120
And we need to just look in at ever smaller circles, just at race or sex or this kind of
00:28:17.840
We're basically looking at ourselves under a microscope by the time we're through with that
00:28:21.280
vision or the right, which has said, yeah, forget about expansion, forget about exploration,
00:28:29.700
Now that's all, all that stuff's a waste of money.
00:28:41.480
We don't, there's no such thing as a project of national greatness.
00:28:45.900
We're just all individuals and you do you and I'll do me and we all do whatever the hell we want.
00:28:50.200
And we've got very little uniting us anymore, but I'll get to keep more of my money and that's
00:28:55.420
Those have been basically the two visions for the last 30, 40 years.
00:29:07.300
A great nation recognizes that it is a nation, that there actually are things that bind us together.
00:29:11.840
We're not just a bunch of individuals who happen to share a plot of territory with blurry borders.
00:29:22.080
And we're not, we're not just bags of chemicals that amount to nothing more than the pigmentation
00:29:34.480
We're part of a family at the most basic political level and then part of a local community,
00:29:43.460
We have a national character and we have national desires and we have national pursuits and endeavors.
00:29:48.980
And at the most basic level of political vision, we want to pursue the good and we want to avoid
00:29:54.460
evil and we want to do stuff and we want to go somewhere, okay?
00:30:00.480
Because by the way, without that vision, you are just going to dissolve into a bunch of
00:30:04.720
random individuals airing their petty grievances.
00:30:08.720
And it's going to happen on the left and it's going to happen on the right.
00:30:15.380
I think we need to go out there, go get a nice plot of land on the moon and go further.
00:30:22.500
And whether we go into space or we don't go into space, we need to have a vision for where
00:30:28.940
we're going and we need to pursue that together in cooperation with one another.
00:30:32.520
Instead, however, instead of pursuing that agenda of great ambition, of lifting our eyes
00:30:42.580
up, of making ourselves greater, instead what we're doing is degrading ourselves.
00:30:47.940
New York has just become the sixth state in the country to legalize human composting.
00:31:01.800
Human composting is when you die, they put you in a box, they put some plants and straw
00:31:10.120
and wood around you, and they leave you in that box for 30 days until you turn to soil,
00:31:19.680
New York Governor Kathy Hochul has added natural organic reduction to cremation and entombment
00:31:32.940
The new law defines the practice as the, quote, contained accelerated conversion of human remains
00:31:38.100
to soil in a structure, room, or other space in which decomposition can occur.
00:31:52.760
I imagine that the majority of people listening to this show right now would say,
00:31:56.920
yeah, there's something kind of wrong about this.
00:31:58.800
Some people might say, no, there isn't anything wrong.
00:32:00.680
But most people have a gut feeling, at least, that there's something wrong about this.
00:32:12.440
Most people, especially the kind of people who accept many of our culture's premises,
00:32:19.040
that we should just follow our unfettered reason, that people should have the right to do whatever
00:32:25.380
Consenting adults should have the right to do whatever they want to do.
00:32:30.060
It is important to maximize our individual autonomy.
00:32:32.400
People who believe these premises, which are not just the premises of the crazy left,
00:32:35.780
they're the premises of pretty much everybody after the Enlightenment, in liberal modernity,
00:32:40.420
even many people who call themselves conservative.
00:32:42.380
If you follow those premises and that kind of logical progression,
00:32:46.620
it's very difficult to explain why it's wrong to turn grandma into a plot of dirt,
00:32:53.180
okay, and then grow your tomatoes out of, you know, dear Aunt Sally.
00:32:59.720
And it's wrong because all those premises that we get out of liberal modernity are wrong too.
00:33:08.700
It's wrong because human beings have dignity, okay?
00:33:15.060
We are not the same thing as all the other animals.
00:33:28.520
And that is why we have a responsibility to show some respect for dead bodies.
00:33:36.960
That is why there are laws throughout the civilized world against the desecration of bodies.
00:33:45.840
It's recognizing that there is an aspect of the body as being part of your human self that is sacred.
00:33:59.600
But what you'll hear from the libs and the squishes is they'll say,
00:34:02.360
well, you know, you're entitled to all your religious mumbo-jumbo, whatever,
00:34:10.440
If we're now at the point where the way that we treat dear old grandma who loved us all our lives
00:34:15.740
is the moment she dies to throw her into the garden so the pigs can eat her and tomatoes can
00:34:20.560
grow out of her, then I guess we are a secular society.
00:34:34.460
There's this really, really good book that is coming out soon by a writer named Matthew Petrucic.
00:34:40.980
It's being published by Word on Fire, and it's a book about evangelization and ideology.
00:34:47.580
And I just did a blurb for it, so I got an advanced copy of this book.
00:34:51.520
I encourage you to pre-order it and get the book, because it does a great job of explaining
00:34:55.180
how political issues from the political debates that we have are just one tiny little fraction
00:35:03.240
of the broader debates that we, the conclusions of which we are simply assuming.
00:35:12.140
When we're debating a policy like whether or not to throw Graham in the garden,
00:35:16.480
that political debate is assuming a lot of conclusions about applied morality.
00:35:26.420
Applied morality, which is assuming a lot of conclusions about morality generally,
00:35:31.560
which is assuming a lot of conclusions about epistemology, about how we can know any.
00:35:45.820
How do we know that certain things are true and certain things are false,
00:35:48.600
and certain things are good and certain things are bad.
00:35:55.420
Well, that assumes a lot of things about anthropology.
00:35:57.480
We talk about anthropology a lot when it comes to the transgender debate.
00:36:06.520
These are going to be just assumed in a lot of our political debates.
00:36:09.540
When you move out from anthropology, you get to ontology,
00:36:13.320
the question of being, what it means to be, what it means to exist.
00:36:17.800
And when you have those questions, those questions are assuming conclusions from theology.
00:36:31.280
What is reality within which all of those other questions would exist?
00:36:39.080
We, unfortunately, just go into these debates blindly in many ways.
00:36:48.220
We're not going to have, you know, extremely high-level scholarly debates
00:36:51.140
over every single question that comes before the Congress.
00:36:53.880
The problem is, though we are assuming all sorts of conclusions
00:37:00.680
we used to assume them with the prejudice of tradition,
00:37:03.720
with the prejudice of civilization, with the prejudice of Christianity.
00:37:10.420
with the prejudices of liberalism, of leftism, of atheism.
00:37:16.820
And when you just take all the, there is no God, that's one premise we're assuming.
00:37:20.360
Or if there is a God, we can't really know anything about him.
00:37:28.340
The only way we know anything is through the micro-soap and the scientific method.
00:37:32.400
Morality is just whatever the people want at any given time,
00:37:35.100
or whatever makes me feel good, if it feels good, do it.
00:37:37.520
And so if grandma wants to get thrown into the garden, it's fine.
00:37:40.480
Or if we want to throw in the garden, that's fine too.
00:37:42.200
Well, yeah, I see how you could arrive at that stupid conclusion,
00:37:45.480
but you've arrived at it by assuming all sorts of conclusions
00:37:49.340
about higher-level thinking that are simply not true, okay?
00:38:02.820
And it's going to take a lot to dig ourselves out of that.
00:38:05.400
But I think the first thing we have to do is dig grandma out of the garden, okay?
00:38:12.020
We have a wisdom of repugnance to borrow a word from Leon Kass.
00:38:17.780
There is nothing wrong or irrational or stupid or uneducated
00:38:23.440
about using our law to say, no, you don't get to do that.
00:38:34.520
I think cremation makes a mockery of a notion that animated our culture for a very long time,
00:38:45.640
And it matters even beyond what will happen to us in the hereafter or at the second coming or the final judgment.
00:38:53.980
Because it gets down to the question of what is the relationship between the soul and the body?
00:39:01.600
If the body doesn't mean anything, then transgenderism is a-okay, right?
00:39:09.080
If I want to chop it up, even if a little kid wants to chop it up, no big deal.
00:39:14.580
So much so that I'm reminded of the words of Tertullian,
00:39:16.760
who said that the salvation is the very hinge, or rather the flesh is the very hinge of salvation, okay?
00:39:25.560
That our bodies and what we do with our bodies and what we do in time and space really do matter.
00:39:35.100
You know, in 2022, we launched Jeremy's Razors as a joke.
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00:40:15.140
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00:40:27.360
Ron DeSantis, speaking of Christianity, was sworn into office again yesterday.
00:40:36.420
And this Bible goes back to 1782 when the U.S. Congress endorsed the King James translation of the Aitken Bible,
00:40:45.620
which printer Robert Aitken published after America won the Revolutionary War.
00:40:50.260
It is the first and only edition ever commissioned.
00:40:53.660
Ron DeSantis was able to borrow this edition of the Bible from Glenn Beck.
00:40:56.860
Glenn Beck, as some of you may know, has probably the greatest collection of American artifacts ever assembled.
00:41:08.080
And so Ron DeSantis takes the oath of office on this Bible.
00:41:12.000
Glenn Beck lent it to him because he believes that Ron DeSantis' governorship has real historical significance.
00:41:20.600
It is the beginning of a renewal of the principles for which our founders fought.
00:41:23.840
This is, of course, just another signal that Ron DeSantis is running for president in 2024.
00:41:28.600
His wife looked absolutely beautiful at the swearing-in.
00:41:32.660
DeSantis doing all the right things to do that.
00:41:34.500
And he's pulling together a coalition of some people who really liked Trump.
00:41:37.780
Some people who, like Glenn Beck, really didn't like Trump.
00:41:42.060
It's a signal that Ron DeSantis is just pulling more and more support together.
00:41:47.980
So I don't have many more predictions to say about that sort of thing.
00:41:51.260
But speaking of rising stars in the GOP, George Santos.
00:41:56.360
George Santos, who is the newly elected Republican congressman, who lied about pretty much everything in his past.
00:42:03.560
His ethnicity, his job, his education, potentially his sexual desires, everything.
00:42:19.500
I shouldn't laugh, but it's funny, so I will laugh.
00:42:23.980
When George Santos was 19 years old, he entered a clothing store in Brazil and spent $700 using a stolen checkbook and a false name.
00:42:32.360
He then allegedly admitted to the fraud on a Brazilian social media website.
00:42:36.320
He and his mother allegedly admitted to police in 2010 that he stole the checkbook to make fraudulent purchases.
00:42:41.540
The following year, a legal charge against Santos was approved, but he had already left the country.
00:42:47.540
He was living in the U.S., so now this guy might be indicted by Brazil.
00:42:59.700
I was talking to some friends and relatives over the break, talking about George Santos.
00:43:04.200
They said, you know, those cowardly Republicans, I bet they're going to seat George Santos.
00:43:08.680
They're going to allow him to serve, even though he's clearly a pathological liar.
00:43:16.800
Because did George Santos ever claim to be Native American for his whole career when he was a Harvard professor?
00:43:25.020
Did George Santos, he lied about his education.
00:43:26.820
Did he ever claim to have three degrees that he got on a full academic scholarship after he was the top student in his department, officially named him?
00:43:35.040
And, oh no, that was Joe Biden, who also plagiarized, by the way.
00:43:39.960
The pickle here is that George Santos obviously has all sorts of problems and does not seem to be the most stable individual in the world.
00:43:50.460
But the ire against him seems so disingenuous because Democrats and libs get away with all the same stuff and actually far worse transgressions.
00:44:06.120
I am not generally in the habit of defending pimps, okay?
00:44:11.180
But for the libs to pretend to be up in arms over Andrew Tate's sex trafficking because he ran a webcam business,
00:44:18.380
seems disingenuous when the libs turn a blind eye to Jeffrey Epstein and to all the other insane sexual behaviors that they not only tolerate but actually encourage.
00:44:30.100
They themselves are the ones who are pushing the sexual revolution and who are claiming that prostitution is real work.
00:44:36.740
It's real work and we need to legalize prostitution and all sorts of deviant sexual behaviors.
00:44:41.860
So it just rings hollow when they go after Andrew Tate for that sort of stuff.
00:44:55.460
We don't need to really defend George Santos or Andrew Tate all that hard.
00:45:00.340
But I think we can observe, hey, you guys who are clutching your pearls here, you're being very, very disingenuous.
00:45:06.180
And I'm not going to prostrate myself at the altar of liberalism and say, no, throw these men to the wolves.
00:45:14.260
But I'm going to keep clear eyes about what the libs are doing.
00:45:17.120
Okay, now speaking of trouble in foreign countries, trouble overseas.
00:45:22.120
In Queensland, Australia, police are now asking citizens to snitch on their fellow citizens if they ever commit the terrible transgression of entertaining a conspiracy theory.
00:45:36.040
As I said before, if it's anybody out there that knows of someone that might be showing concerning behavior around, you know, conspiracy theories, anti-government, anti-police, conspiracy theories around COVID-19 vaccination, as what we're seeing with the train family, we'd want to know about that.
00:45:54.260
And you can either contact police directly or go through Crime Stoppers.
00:46:00.320
If there's any, I can't really do a good Australian.
00:46:07.600
They want to know if anyone is entertaining a crazy conspiracy theory like that the mRNA vaccines are not totally safe and effective, which has been proven true time and time again.
00:46:23.000
A crazy conspiracy theory that maybe the government is corrupt and has demonstrated that corruption at an international scale over the past three years, like has been proven time and time again.
00:46:39.200
We've said this on the show for a long time now.
00:46:41.940
The difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth over the last three years is about three to six months.
00:46:48.420
We're told it's a crazy conspiracy theory that the masks and the social distancing don't do very much.
00:46:54.420
And then later comes out, oh, yeah, actually, that was probably right.
00:46:56.660
Crazy conspiracy theory that the vaccines might cause heart problems and blood clots and things like that.
00:47:02.860
The crazy conspiracy theory that the vaccines won't stop you from getting COVID or transmitting COVID.
00:47:06.640
Oh, no, it actually, that turns out that that was totally true.
00:47:13.760
I said, well, wasn't that vaccine supposed to stop everybody from getting COVID?
00:47:17.560
You know, when they still wear the masks and things.
00:47:20.660
Isn't that supposed to stop you from getting COVID?
00:47:26.820
But it turned out, it turned out that actually none of that was true.
00:47:31.420
And remember when I said that from the very beginning and you all called me crazy and a lunatic and a murderer?
00:47:44.480
These clips that you're seeing come out of especially Australia.
00:47:49.960
And it's part of a broader plan that is being pushed by some of the most powerful people in the world.
00:47:54.560
Not so secretly, they're doing it out in the open.
00:47:57.980
This is a term coined by Klaus Schwab, who's the head of the World Economic Forum.
00:48:05.180
You've had King Charles in England and many, many heads of state throughout the world repeat this phrase.
00:48:11.060
That COVID-19 presents a terrific opportunity to not just change some healthcare policies, but to upend our economies, our political rights, the way that countries interact with one another.
00:48:29.120
And they're occasionally going to try to bring back maybe the masks or the vaccine mandates.
00:48:33.080
They might sputter to try to do that, even as that has become so implausible.
00:48:39.200
But the broader project, which involves changing the relationship of businesses to the state, what the sort of state can mandate, the sort of surveillance that the state is allowed to engage in, the medical knowledge that state actors are allowed to take, and the private actors are allowed to take, the blurring between the public and the private, which is a key aspect of the World Economic Forum agenda.
00:49:02.240
That's why the World Economic Forum exists in the first place, is to create a tighter partnership between the public sector and the private sector, which is not, it's not just communism.
00:49:16.380
It's this blobby, awful combination of these two things.
00:49:22.700
This corrupt fusion of people who want to take a lot of power and a lot of money and upend your way of life.
00:49:32.700
Do not think that you have left COVID in the rearview mirror.
00:49:47.500
And we are going to have a wonderful Woke presentation.
00:49:54.960
I need your expertise to help me decipher the high-level thinking in this Woke message.
00:50:02.520
So if you want to become a member, which I know all of you do, use code Knowles, K-N-W-L-E-S, at checkout for two months free on all annual plans right now at Daily Wire Plus.