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Jan. 5, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

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The Neverending Speaker Fight | Ep. 1640

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	Republicans continue to quarrel over whether to allow Kevin McCarthy to become Speaker of the House.
	Democrats consider a gamble on making Hakeem Jeffries Speaker.
	And Joe Biden takes advantage of the chaos to campaign and visit the border.
	I'm Ben Shapiro.
	This is the Bench Bureau Show.
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	Well, we enter day three of the ongoing speakership saga, according to the Wall Street Journal.
	Negotiations were set to continue between Kevin McCarthy and his detractors on Thursday, with some lawmakers expressing hope they could see a resolution to the speaker fight soon.
	Both sides saying that it could take days.
	At this point, the discussions between McCarthy's allies and his opponents heated up after McCarthy did not reach the majority in three series of votes for the speaker post on Tuesday, nor another three on Wednesday.
	So we've already had six votes on who should be the Speaker of the House.
	McCarthy has come up short each and every time.
	It seems like there is a solid and not particularly growing chorus of people who don't want McCarthy to be Speaker or who are at least using this vote as leverage in order to exact concessions.
	And this is two separate groups.
	It's about 20 Republicans right now who aren't supporting McCarthy.
	Probably half of them just don't want McCarthy to be Speaker, and another half of them want to exact concessions from McCarthy that would be more conservative in orientation.
	And there is a very large difference between these two groups.
	One of them has a strategy, one of them does not.
	The group that wants to exact concessions from McCarthy, this is just traditional, typical politics, right?
	You have leverage over McCarthy, and now you can get out of him an additional couple of seats on the Appropriations Committee, or you can get a commitment from him on not bringing to the floor omnibus packages.
	This stuff is good and fine and useful.
	And this is the sort of stuff that McCarthy has been attempting to negotiate with this group for quite a while.
	And there's been movement on that front.
	Actually, Politico was reporting as of this morning.
	That it looks like there's a deal in the works at least for about half of those 20 Republicans to come on board with McCarthy, given that they are given enough concessions.
	So according to Politico, there are a bunch of new concessions that are on the table.
	Here's what's being discussed according to one well-placed source familiar with the talks.
	Keep in mind, negotiations are ongoing and fluid.
	A one-member motion to vacate.
	The GOP leader appears to have finally acquiesced to a demand to lower the threshold needed to force a vote ousting a speaker to just one member.
	While McCarthy originally indicated restoring the one-member motion to vacate was a red line, his allies now argue there's not a huge practical difference between this and his previous offer requiring five members to trigger the vote.
	So, Nancy Pelosi, upon taking office in 2018, she decided to increase the threshold for essentially a no-confidence motion against the Speaker of the House.
	McCarthy was seeking to maintain that.
	Many in the House Freedom Caucus, many of McCarthy's opponents, wanted to lower it back down to one member.
	Presumably seeking to avoid an embarrassing vote every two months when one member decides that they're going to initiate some sort of vote of no confidence.
	He wanted to raise the threshold, but now it appears he is willing to maybe lower the threshold again.
	McCarthy apparently is prepared to give the House Freedom Caucus a couple of seats on the powerful House Rules Committee, which oversees the amendment process on the floor, which would be good.
	Frankly, any more amendments on the floor would be useful considering how many bad omnibus packages come down that don't have any amendment process that is actually given to them.
	Now, again, a lot of this is paring away the power of the speaker.
	And as we have seen already, the Republican Party has almost no power over its own membership.
	So the fact That the Speaker is now going to reflect the position of the Republican Party more generally is not a great shock.
	The Speaker of the House used to be able to wield all sorts of power over his membership.
	Nancy Pelosi was actually amazingly good at wielding power over her membership because, mainly, she was an incredible fundraiser, and this meant that she could either withdraw money from particular candidates or give money to particular candidates.
	She would withdraw committee assignments, switch committee assignments, use whatever power was available in order to cudgel everybody into line.
	Republicans traditionally are not as good at this, and it certainly has been true since the end of the Gingrich era.
	McCarthy now wants to give, apparently he's willing to give the House Freedom Caucus a couple of seats on the House Rules Committee.
	There are also talks about giving a third seat to a conservative close to the Freedom Caucus but not in it.
	Somebody like Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky.
	Apparently, there is a struggle right now between the Freedom Caucus and McCarthy.
	McCarthy's saying, I want to pick those members, and the Freedom Caucus is saying, we want to pick those members.
	They also want to vote on term limits.
	There's a key demand from Representative Ralph Norman, who's proposed a constitutional amendment limiting lawmakers to three terms in the House.
	Now, again, it would take an actual constitutional amendment, in all likelihood, for term limits to become the law of the land, and it's going nowhere in the Senate.
	So McCarthy can easily say, fine, we'll have a vote on it, and then the vote just goes dead in the Senate.
	Again, none of that would be a giant shock.
	The big one, and this is the big positive one, would be a major change to the appropriations process.
	Fears of another trillion plus dollar omnibus spending bill have been the major driver of the conservative backlash to McCarthy.
	The brewing deal includes a promise for standalone votes on each of the 12 yearly appropriations bills, which would be considered under what is known as an open rule, which would allow floor amendments to be offered by any lawmaker.
	Conservatives also want a concession to carve out earmarks included in those packages for separate votes.
	Although it's unclear if they'd be voted on as one package or separately.
	Now again, all this is going to make legislation very, very unworkable.
	It's going to be very unwieldy.
	I don't have a problem with it being unworkable and unwieldy.
	There's going to come a point where McCarthy is going to have to pass some of these votes.
	And what's likely to happen in that case is that let's say that they move forward with these appropriations bills.
	And all the Democrats vote against the appropriations bills and they carve off another 15, 20 Republicans who won't vote for the appropriations bills.
	And suddenly we're in the position of a government shutdown.
	McCarthy doesn't want to preside over another government shutdown.
	He'll get another bipartisan deal.
	You may end up back where you started, but at least people will have had their say, which I'm not opposed to in any way, shape or form.
	There's one more big concession that apparently is coming from the Congressional Leadership Fund.
	The McCarthy-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund reached a deal with the Conservative Club for Growth, which had initially signaled opposition to Speaker McCarthy to stay out of open house primaries for safe Republican seats.
	So in the past, The Congressional Leadership Fund had poured in millions of dollars to back more establishment candidates against the Club for Growth, which was backing a lot of insurgent Tea Party-esque candidates.
	And now the Congressional Leadership Fund is committing to staying out of open primaries in very solidly held conservative seats.
	So is that going to land the plane?
	The problem is nobody really knows.
	This is the big issue.
	Because again, you have two groups here who are negotiating and they're sort of pretending to be one group for purposes of solidarity.
	But it really is two groups.
	Group one are the people who are attempting to exact concessions like the ones we just mentioned, which are good and useful.
	And that again is normal congressional bargaining and parlaying.
	And the other is people who just say never McCarthy, never McCarthy, never McCarthy, no matter what the concessions are.
	And there, I have serious questions about the strategy, as we'll get to in just one moment.
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	So, first of all, the falsehood that McCarthy has made no concessions to this group already is not true.
	I mean, it's just not real.
	Representative Warren Davidson, Republican of Ohio, listed yesterday a bunch of the concessions McCarthy had already made to the people who are not interested in voting for him at this time.
	Following the election, Kevin McCarthy engaged in that negotiation.
	He led the conference to adopt substantive reforms that will make our majority more effective.
	Let me list some of them.
	Scott Perry's proposal for additional conference meetings ahead of key votes.
	Bob Good's proposal on stand-alone appropriations bills.
	Andy Bigg's proposal limiting suspension waivers from committees.
	Chip Roy's proposal to make co-sponsored amendments in order.
	Affirm 72-hour publication of bills before calling for a recorded vote.
	And end to proxy voting.
	So these are all concessions that McCarthy made.
	The list goes on and on and on right here.
	So Representative Roy was asked last night by Brett Baier what he's hoping to achieve.
	And he says many of these concessions.
	And then he's asked the question by Brett Baier of Fox News.
	So if you get these concessions, will you and this group then vote for McCarthy?
	And the problem for Chip Roy is he's kind of negotiating on behalf of people who Disagree with him.
	Many of them don't actually just want the concessions.
	They just don't want McCarthy.
	And herein lies the problem for McCarthy.
	He's negotiating with one group that's reasonable and wants concessions and another group that just doesn't want McCarthy.
	The big concession is McCarthy steps aside.
	So how exactly is he supposed to negotiate all of that?
	And again, this is not coming from a place of animus against any of these Congress people.
	I know people in all three of these groups.
	I know people who are very strongly in support of McCarthy.
	I know people who are in the Chip Roy group, and I've been talking with them.
	I know people who are in the anti-McCarthy group, and I've been talking with some of them as well.
	So this notion that this is about animus against any one of these groups is wrong.
	I just think that two of these groups have a strategy, and one of these groups does not.
	The problem, of course, is that if you have enough people who don't have a strategy, and their strategy is essentially loud noises, This could force a very, very dangerous floor vote on the speakership, which I'll explain in just a second.
	Here's Chip Roy explaining what he wants and Brett Baier saying, so if you get what you want, do you have the votes?
	And Chip Roy being like, I don't know.
	We're having a conversation tonight.
	We're going to keep talking about it.
	We want rules committee changes.
	We want to protect the rules that we've already been able to advance.
	We want to make sure we have spending restraint, like the cut, cap, and balance from a decade ago.
	We're having those conversations as we speak, but we're not going to relent unless we can actually do our job and stop this town, this broken town, from rolling over the American people.
	That's my job.
	And if Kevin McCarthy says, you know what, I'll give you everything you want, what will you say?
	Well, you mean give me everything I want, right?
	I mean, I've got to be able to go to the American People's Envoy.
	But what you want is not Kevin McCarthy.
	I didn't say that.
	If I get everything that I want, that's great, but we've got to get to 218.
	So right now in the room, Brett, it's not just Chip Roy.
	Okay, that's the point.
	And so Chip Roy is being reasonable.
	It's a lot of the other people who are out there who are not particularly being reasonable at this point.
	By the way, we should mention at this point, it's not like Kevin McCarthy is a big lib inside the Republican caucus.
	Kevin McCarthy's heritage action score is 88%.
	Steve Scalise's is 90%.
	People are opposing Steve Scalise's possible replacement.
	88% makes you one of the more conservative members of the Republican House of Representatives.
	It's like an 86% score from the American Conservative Union.
	This isn't a person who's like wildly liberal on the far left wing of the Republican Party.
	The big rip on on Kevin McCarthy is that he's a wheeler and a dealer.
	But in a in a moment where the party essentially exerts no influence over an entire cadre of its own members, You kind of have to be a wheeler and dealer to get there.
	So people are saying, well, why is McCarthy even bringing his own speaker show up for vote if he doesn't have the votes?
	Let me remind you, there is not a single Republican Speaker of the House candidate who has gotten a unanimous vote for their candidacy since John Boehner in January of 2011.
	It has been 11 years since then.
	John Boehner in 2013 when he was up for re-election for Speaker of the House, 12 Republicans defected against him.
	Right now you have about 20 Republicans who are defecting against McCarthy.
	About 10 of those seem to be about solid defections.
	8 to 10 of those are solid defections.
	Maybe as small as 5.
	But the majority is so small at 222 and you have to get to 218 that 5 members of the House can stand against the other 217 members of the Republican caucus and then demand that the candidate with 217 votes step aside in favor of an unnamed candidate who's not even declared as of yet.
	And if the five had another candidate they were putting up there, who I thought was stronger and better and more likely to actually get to 218, then, okay, fine.
	I'd be all in favor.
	That's fine.
	I'm always up for a better candidate.
	But so far, nothing remotely like that has been presented.
	When Paul Ryan was made Speaker of the House, against his will, sort of, in 2015, there were nine Republicans who did not vote for him for Speaker of the House.
	The difference is Republicans had a far broader majority.
	So the big shortcoming here for McCarthy is really not with regard to whipping the votes right now.
	The big problem for McCarthy is that McCarthy and the Republican House did a crap job of getting themselves elected in large numbers in the last election cycle.
	If they had 230 Republican members of the House right now, Then McCarthy could afford to lose 12 and be totally fine, and he'd be fine right now.
	He'd just make concessions to the Chip Roy wing and everything would be done.
	The problem is that the majority is so slim that if you have five people who are just saying no, nothing can be done except for, as I mentioned, a sort of nuclear option that may be brought to bear in very short order given the intransigence of these four or five or six or eight members who refuse under all circumstances to back McCarthy.
	Well, this led to a very weird sort of political realignment that's been happening right now.
	And that political realignment is between people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's actually siding with McCarthy because she says, listen, we have to have a speaker of the House.
	I mean, she actually sounds like the reasonable person now, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
	She's chiding McCarthy's opponents and saying, you guys don't have a plan.
	Like, who is it that you're putting up there?
	McCarthy, we can force him into positions.
	We can get him to make concessions.
	But what is your plan?
	Here's Marjorie Taylor Greene siding with McCarthy.
	Iron Donald is not going to gain any support.
	He's not even a serious candidate.
	They have run, in two days Charlie, the same group have run three different speaker candidates.
	Jim Jordan?
	Jim Jordan is flat out telling everyone I do not want to be Speaker of the House.
	He wants to be Chairman of the Judiciary and we need him to be Chairman of the Judiciary.
	He told Matt Gaetz to his face right in front of me on the House floor yesterday.
	Matt, I do not want to be Speaker, I want to chair Judiciary.
	Why are you doing this?
	Okay, Marjorie Taylor Greene happens to be correct about this.
	Donald Trump also backing Kevin McCarthy.
	Meanwhile, Lauren Boebert was asked about Donald Trump backing Kevin McCarthy, and she's like, well, Donald Trump isn't in charge of this boat anymore.
	We're the captain.
	So here is Lauren Boebert saying that no matter what Donald Trump says, she's going to continue to fight back against McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
	So let's work together.
	Let's stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us.
	Even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off.
	I think it actually needs to be reversed.
	The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes and it's time to withdraw.
	With that, I yield.
	Thank you.
	Captain Phillips.
	She is the captain now to President Trump.
	I mean, it does make Trump look pretty weak that he can't get the Trumpiest members of his own caucus in line on this one.
	But again, what Marjorie Taylor Greene says, and believe me, I have criticisms of Marjorie Taylor Greene that I've made very clear in the past.
	Marjorie Taylor Greene, what she's saying there is exactly correct.
	Jim Jordan yesterday said there is no chance he will be Speaker.
	He said, I'm not interested in being Speaker.
	He was their first attempt to nominate.
	Here was Jim Jordan yesterday walking through the Capitol building and saying, I don't want any piece of this.
	But is there any chance that you may be Speaker of the House?
	No.
	Watch yourself.
	No, I'm being clear.
	I want to chair a Judiciary Committee.
	I mean, you guys know I like this ability to cross-examine witnesses and get the truth for the country.
	Meanwhile, Representative Mike Lawler, Republican of New York, he says, listen, we can't have 20 people.
	And really, it's not 20, it's like 10.
	Because as I say, some of these people are willing to actually make a deal.
	He says we can't have the 20 people essentially negating the will of 200 plus members of the caucus.
	Normally, the way that this works, by the way, is that you vote internally inside the party for various Speaker possibilities.
	And then whoever wins the most votes ends up in sort of the general election, which is what the speaker's vote is.
	Everybody votes in the primary inside the party.
	And then when they get to the actual floor vote, then the party votes as a unity, unified body, at least to a certain extent.
	They didn't do that this time.
	Instead, people just decided to defect pretty publicly.
	Mike Lawler's like, I don't understand.
	You're asking McCarthy to step down because 20 people don't like him.
	Meanwhile, 200 people like him.
	How do you do the math here?
	Kevin McCarthy has worked tirelessly to end Nancy Pelosi's reign as Speaker, flip the House from Democrat to Republican, and implement our agenda.
	And the bottom line is here.
	The people who are voting against Kevin McCarthy in the Republican conference ...are aiding Joe Biden, aiding Hakeem Jeffries, and aiding Chuck Schumer, because they are the reason that we are not getting about the business that we set out to do.
	So these folks need to get serious.
	They need to wake up and realize that we're not rolling over.
	There are over 200 of us who support Kevin McCarthy, and we will support him on every single vote.
	Okay, well, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and when she says that the opposition has not brought a serious candidate forward, she's not wrong about that.
	Again, Jim Jordan is not interested.
	Yesterday, Lauren Boebert nominated Byron Donald, who is a very good congressperson from Florida.
	He's a second-term congressperson with no ambitions to actually be Speaker, as he himself made clear.
	Here was Boebert yesterday nominating Byron Donald, mainly as sort of an election ploy.
	Not because Byron Donald's a bad guy, or not because one day he won't be Speaker, but because he's not a candidate for Speaker right now.
	I mean, he's in a second term.
	I rise today to nominate Byron Donalds, my friend, an amazing man of Florida, an amazing leader, someone who almost even took leadership here in our Republican Party and came very close in doing so and it was a very brave run that he took.
	He's a man who understands what tough times look like and has come out of those tough times even stronger, more liberated, and as a leader.
	Again, I like Byron Donalds, but Byron Donalds is not going to be Speaker of the House.
	In fact, yesterday, Byron Donalds, who's like, I didn't come here if I'm interested in being Speaker.
	I voted for myself because, frankly, it's kind of fun.
	Representative Donalds, yesterday, saying as much.
	Here's what he said, selling himself as Speaker.
	Do you actually want to be?
	This is a protest vote.
	Like, actually, no, not really.
	Never came here to try to be Speaker of the House.
	Well, they nominated me, of course I voted for myself.
	That's pretty cool.
	They nominated me, of course I voted for myself, it's pretty cool.
	So I mean, does that sound like a serious opposition?
	Or does it just sound like we're going to say no until we get what we want without any actual strategy for a replacement?
	Again, I understand why people are angry at Kevin McCarthy.
	I understand that they believe that he has conceded too many times to Democrats, which is why you have negotiations taking place between people like Chip Roy and Kevin McCarthy, exacting hard-nosed concessions from Kevin McCarthy.
	The question is, who can you actually make the speaker at this point?
	By the way, Representative Donalds is saying the same thing.
	Representative Donalds, who is being treated as sort of the great hope of the opposition, he says, if McCarthy makes enough concessions to us, then I'm willing to vote for McCarthy.
	We're going to go back in and we're going to have this round of ballots and we're going to have more conversations.
	Do you see a path forward for Kevin McCarthy real quick?
	I think it's possible, but there's a lot of work that needs to be done right now.
	I think it's possible is the proper answer.
	Right?
	I think it's possible is the proper answer.
	So there have been some other names that have been floated here.
	By the way, I should mention here that Cori Bush, the congresswoman from Missouri, the Black Lives Matter congressperson from Missouri, that's literally how she got her political career started.
	She is a terrible human being.
	She tweeted out yesterday, for what it's worth, Byron Donalds is not a historic candidate for speaker.
	He is a prop.
	Despite being black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy.
	His name being in the mix is not progress.
	It's pathetic.
	So in other words, the first person who's ever been nominated speaker on the Republican side of the aisle and is black, which would make two nominees for a black speaker of the house, right?
	Hakeem Jeffries and Byron Donalds.
	He's a prop, according to Cori Bush.
	So we found the black life that doesn't matter to Cori Bush, apparently.
	She seems like an absolute delight.
	What a wonderful person.
	This is part of the problem, by the way, with this whole sort of silliness that's happening right now, not on the behalf of negotiation, but just on behalf of sort of the chaos crew.
	The problem is that you're distracting from the fact that the Democrats are terrible.
	The Democrats are awful.
	Their policy agenda is garbage.
	As we'll see, Joe Biden is taking full advantage of the chaos in the House right now in order to trot out a feeling of sort of salinity and sobriety.
	He's out there campaigning with people like Mike DeWine and Mitch McConnell.
	He's out there heading down to the border.
	He's able to obscure the fact that he's a horrible president.
	And the Democrats are able to obscure the fact that they just lost the majority in the House because the Republicans are too busy fighting one another.
	Now, again, the process of democracy is messy.
	That's fine.
	Within a week, everyone will have forgotten all of this, so long as a conclusion is actually reached.
	But if no conclusion is reached, then what you're going to end up with is a nuclear option.
	Representative Michael McCaul of Texas says we do have a nuclear option in store if we still have five, six, seven Republicans who are holding up the works right here.
	Here is Representative McCaul explaining.
	The Democrat from Ohio says she's willing to cross party lines maybe to get this solved.
	Not all Democrats are on board with that, but that that might be a possible way to end this.
	Your thoughts?
	I mean, it could be.
	We would prefer that all Republicans stick together.
	I don't know if that could happen at this point in time.
	There is one other option, Neil, the nuclear option, where a vote would be made on the plurality of votes, not the magical 218 number that you're talking about.
	But that would be a very dangerous move as well because then these 20 or so that don't like Kevin McCarthy or won't vote for him would have to make a decision.
	Do I vote for McCarthy or for somebody else that then could throw the speakership to the Democratic Party?
	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	Again, this strategy is the riskiest strategy.
	And the strategy would be you get some Democrats to sign on to a vote to actually change the rules for the speakership election.
	So here's how that would work.
	The way that would work is that some Republicans and some Democrats, you need more than 218, would vote in order to change the rule as to how you get made House Speaker.
	And you need a plurality, meaning the most votes.
	Not a majority, not 218.
	216, for example, because there are only 212 Democrats in the chamber.
	Okay, so, you have 212 Democrats.
	They all vote for Hakeem Jeffries.
	Right now, Kevin McCarthy is receiving about 201.
	We've seen him at 202.
	Latest vote was 201.
	So he is trailing Hakeem Jeffries by 11 votes.
	There are 20 Republicans right now who are not voting for McCarthy.
	Let's say it goes to a plurality.
	Let's say that the Democrats say, OK, let's let's let's roll the dice here.
	Let's force Republicans into a position.
	Let's force them to actually hand the gavel to Hakeem Jeffries.
	Maybe they will.
	Maybe these maybe Democrats think that there are enough crazy Republicans that they are willing to actually to avoid having McCarthy be speaker, hand the gavel to Hakeem Jeffries.
	Maybe Democrats think that.
	I mean, I don't know.
	Maybe it's true.
	Maybe there are some Republicans who are willing to hand Hakeem Jeffries the gavel just to not hand it to McCarthy, which seems wild to me.
	In any case, what they would do is then they would vote to change the rule so plurality takes it.
	212 Democrats then vote for Hakeem Jeffries.
	And now you have the group led presumably by Chip Roy and company, this sort of negotiating group.
	That may be 7, it may be 10.
	Unclear exactly how many people that is.
	McCarthy would need to pick up 12 votes in order to surpass Hakeem Jeffries for Speaker of the House.
	Does he have 12 of those 20 who will shift over to him if the possibility is Hakeem Jeffries on the other side?
	Maybe.
	That would be the nuclear option right here.
	The nuclear option would be to change that actual rule.
	There have been some other options that have been floated here to get out of the impasse.
	One of those options is to have people abstain from the vote.
	Try to get some of those 20 to simply not show up for the vote.
	The problem is the math.
	The way that that works is that it has to be a majority of people who vote on the issue, who do not abstain.
	And so what that means is if, let's say that you lose They're 435 members of the House.
	Let's say that 35 of them abstain, then somebody who gets to 201 wins.
	But you're not going to get 35 to abstain.
	Right now, even if you got 10 people who really, really hate Kevin McCarthy to abstain from the vote, that still does not get you anywhere close to the number that McCarthy needs in order to win the speakership.
	So it is a real impasse.
	Meanwhile, Democrats are just enjoying the spectacle.
	So yesterday, one House Republican Diversity of thought is a good thing.
	It's one of the things that sets us apart from our friends on the other side of the aisle.
	Yes, diversity of thought is a good thing.
	But they want us divided.
	They want us to fight each other.
	Democrats, of course, are sitting there maybe drinking and jeering her.
	Diversity of thought is a good thing.
	It's one of the things that sets us apart from our friends on the other side of the aisle. Yes, diversity of thought is a good thing, but they want us divided.
	They want us to fight each other.
	That much has been made clear by the popcorn and blankets and alcohol that is coming over there.
	Okay.
	AOC actually, believe it or not, I'm about to say that she said something clever.
	I know.
	She actually tweeted out, if only, if Democrats took a shot every time McCarthy lost a Republican, we'd all be unconscious by now.
	Fair point by the irrepressibly idiotic Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez.
	Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Susan DelBene, she was out there saying they're the chaos caucus.
	This is the broader problem for the Republican Party.
	If you are attempting to earn the trust of the American people, then you have to look as though you are sober.
	Again, a sober negotiation happening between people who say that they want to exact concessions from McCarthy for the 35th time, who say they want to exact these concessions.
	And McCarthy, that's normal politics.
	That's the scrum of politics.
	People who just say, under no circumstances will I vote for McCarthy.
	And I would rather maybe have a Democrat in charge of Congress.
	Yeah, that's kind of embarrassing for the Republicans, I would say.
	Again, not the debate, not the back and forth.
	Oh, that's fine.
	That's a democracy.
	I have no problem with gridlock.
	Gridlock is fine with me.
	We don't have a House speaker for another week?
	Whatever.
	Okay.
	The country will survive.
	It used to be that the House would actually adjourn for full years at a time back in the day.
	But are Democrats chortling over all this?
	You bet.
	And are the media enjoying it?
	You bet that too.
	Here's Democratic Representative Susan DelBene of Washington.
	I wonder what you make of what is happening in the House right now and what opportunity this poses for Democrats.
	Well, good morning.
	It's great to be with you.
	And it has been chaos.
	The Republicans have been the chaos caucus, and they're proving that yet again.
	Inability, there's just not leadership there to help bring people together.
	Okay, so again, you can see the smiles on the faces of the morning Joe crew over all of this.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden is out there enjoying the spectacle.
	He says not his problem, but it's embarrassing.
	You know, again, what seems to be more embarrassing is a president with applesauce for brains, but I guess when the focus is not on President Applesauce for brains, then the focus ain't on the guy whose head is mush.
	speaking just moments ago about ongoing negotiations on capitol hill over the speaker and more have a listen It's embarrassing.
	It's embarrassing, says Joe Biden, who is an embarrassment of a president.
	I have a generalized rule when it comes to politics.
	If Joy Behar is happy about something, that means that it's a stupid thing and that it's a thing that is a problem.
	Here is Joy Behar yesterday explaining how much she is enjoying the quote unquote demise of the GOP.
	We gotta figure out who's gonna get this house in order here.
	I had a little, what they call, schadenfreude watching this.
	You know, I sort of enjoyed that there's been such disarray because they deserve it.
	It was nice that they took a break from destroying the country and started to turn on each other.
	But I'm enjoying the demise because they are the most destructive force in politics in my lifetime.
	Whenever Joy Behar is happy about something, again, good indicator that Republicans and conservatives should not be happy about it.
	Meanwhile, all of this is providing Joe Biden with the cover he needs in order to essentially consolidate control, power, whatever elements of popularity he has.
	Joe Biden always does best when he's out of the spotlight, because the more spotlight is on Joe Biden, the worse he looks.
	Joe Biden is a terrible president.
	He has a horrible record.
	He had the worst stock market year in modern American history since like 2008 did Joe Biden last year.
	He has run up record inflation, record debt.
	He's allowing China to become quite aggressive on the foreign front.
	Joe Biden is not a good president.
	He surrendered Afghanistan.
	I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on.
	And yet Joe Biden is being allowed to escape the consequences of all that because the more Republicans provide a distraction for Democrats to focus on, the less the crowd is focused on the Democrats, which means that they can ignore the fact that Joe Biden is a nonsensical old man.
	Here was Joe Biden being a nonsensical old man yesterday.
	I've traveled over 140 countries around the world.
	I'll paraphrase the phrase of my own neighborhood.
	The rest of the country, the world is not a patch on our jeans.
	If we do what we want to do, we need to do.
	I'm not a patch on our jeans, and the rest of the world, and I'll travel around the country, and I'll rock your road, and I'll go jamming in Manhattan.
	That's Joe Biden standing in front of an unfinished bridge.
	Meanwhile, by the way, he was campaigning on the infrastructure bill that he signed with Republicans.
	And here I have to call out Mitch McConnell.
	Why in the hell are you campaigning with Joe Biden?
	Why?
	What is the purpose?
	What is your big win here?
	So I understand why Mike DeWine did it.
	Mike DeWine is a very moderate Republican governor of Ohio.
	He won by about 20 points in his last reelect.
	Mike DeWine did an event with Mitch McConnell celebrating the infrastructure bill.
	Now, Mitch McConnell voted in favor of the infrastructure bill.
	19 Senate Republicans voted in favor of the infrastructure bill.
	So the last two moves we've seen from Mitch McConnell, who is, I would say, proving himself to be fairly warm toward President Biden, is to sign off on a $1.7 trillion omnibus package.
	That is a disaster area.
	It's a complete bleep sandwich.
	He signed off on that so he wouldn't have to negotiate with House Republicans by waiting a month and a half.
	And then he did a campaign event with Joe Biden on infrastructure, according to the Wall Street Journal.
	President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell touted a bridge project made possible under the 2021 infrastructure bill during a trip to Kentucky on Wednesday.
	Now, what's funny about this is that that bridge that is behind them has been largely unfinished for about 10 years and it will remain unfinished because every infrastructure bill ends up being a giant waste of money on the federal level.
	The former Senate colleagues appeared together in Covington, Kentucky, where the White House announced funding to upgrade the Brent Spence Bridge between Ohio and Kentucky, as well as investments in other bridges around the country.
	Also scheduled to attend were Sherrod Brown, Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, former Senator Rob Portman, a Republican, and Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat of Kentucky.
	Biden then called McConnell a friend and colleague, and cited the bipartisan infrastructure law as an example of elected officials in Washington coming together to work together.
	Here is Joe Biden praising Mitch McConnell for the infrastructure bill.
	Again, Republicans handing Democrats victory on both the practical level as well as on the imagistic level.
	Mitch, it's, you know, it wasn't easy to get this done and it wouldn't have gotten done no matter all the work so many others have done and by writing the legislation and dropping it in.
	It wouldn't have happened without your hand.
	It just wouldn't have gotten done.
	And I want to thank you for that.
	Okay, so again, this is Joe Biden's campaign right now.
	Joe Biden is out there campaigning with Mitch McConnell.
	Meanwhile, the Republicans in the House can't get their act together.
	Now, I will say this for McCarthy.
	McCarthy said that he would punish, along with the House Republicans, any senator who voted in favor of that last omnibus package.
	You can hold him to that, and if he fails, then now you have a threshold of one vote to challenge his speakership.
	That can happen at literally any time.
	That is one of the concessions that has been exacted thanks to the negotiations that have been currently ongoing.
	But in the meantime, Joe Biden is making hay while the sun shines.
	He's got his vice president out there, Kamala Harris, in her indubitably foolish style, talking absolute argle-bargle nonsense.
	Here we go.
	When we invest in our infrastructure, we invest in our economy.
	We invest in America's future.
	President Joe Biden and I are making this better, brighter future real, and everyone here is an integral part of that.
	You're all a part of the future, guys, which means that you will exist, I think.
	I think that that's what that means.
	If you're a part of the future, that means that you will exist.
	Meanwhile, Joe Biden is heading down to the border, so he's going to use cover of whatever chaos is going on to head down to the border for a brief trip so that he can say that he has been to the border.
	We'll get to all that in just one second.
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	Okay, so.
	Joe Biden taking advantage of the chaos in the House to provide cover for the fact that he is a horrible president.
	He says that he is headed down to the border.
	He was asked about this yesterday.
	One of the big critiques about Joe Biden is that he has facilitated a massive border crisis but has not visited the border.
	So now he says that he probably will.
	Are you going to be visiting the border when you head down to Mexico?
	That's my intention.
	We're working out the details now.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, the president's comments came after the Wall Street Journal reported the White House was strongly considering adding a visit to the border to a Mexico trip.
	According to people familiar with the discussions, Biden is expected to meet Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, handsome Bernie Sanders in Mexico City for the North American Leaders Summit January 9th and 10th.
	The trip would be Biden's first visit to the border as president and also ever.
	One of the people said there would be no new policy announcement at the event if it occurs.
	The reason that Biden is announcing that, of course, is because he believes that he has momentum and he believes he has cover.
	Now, he could be suckered into a false sense of complacency here.
	Democrats did not do amazing in the last election cycle.
	Republicans just didn't do particularly well.
	And if Democrats continue to run to the extreme left, they're going to pay the price for that.
	I think that is why Joe Biden is actually using this as an opportunity to try to look moderate with things like infrastructure and maybe visiting the border.
	According to Politico, Biden on Thursday is going to announce plans to accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela in a border strategy that will be paired with the expanded use of Title 42 expulsions.
	The president, in a speech in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, will unveil a new humanitarian parole program for migrants from those nations, according to several people familiar with the planning.
	In other words, he's going to continue to rely on the temporary Title 42 program.
	At the same time, he is going to allow 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela into the country.
	Now, at least you can make the argument with regard to, for example, Cuba and Venezuela, that some of these are actual humanitarian asylum cases.
	Cuba is a giant communist hellhole and people who are willing to get on like a floating Cadillac and try to move the 90 miles from Cuba to the south coast of Florida.
	Those people, it seems to me, should be given some form of asylum.
	However, 30,000 migrants per month is a lot of migrants per month.
	This is Over the course of the year, 360,000 migrants that he wants to let in.
	The idea that this is going to alleviate the problem rather than exacerbating the problem is, of course, false.
	And exactly how are you going to make sure that these people are from the countries that they say they are?
	It is not as though somebody shows up at the border and they show you their Venezuelan ID and you're like, OK, well, I guess I guess now I can trust it.
	The new policy is modeled after the one ruled out solely for Venezuelans this fall.
	That created a narrow pathway for up to 24,000 migrants.
	But now we are talking about expanding that by a factor of, what, 15?
	Border agents have already turned away masses of Venezuelans using a Title 42 authority over the past few months.
	The program's unveiling comes one day after Biden announced it is his intention to make his first trip to the border as president.
	Many of the president's left-wing opponents are angry that he would expand the Title 42 program.
	So basically, he's saying, I'm gonna let in these people in order so that I can continue to use Title 42.
	He is likely to please no one, nor is he likely to stem any of the migration surge that we have seen, the illegal immigrant migration surge that we have seen over the course of Joe Biden's presidency.
	Apparently, up to 5 million people illegally entering the country since Joe Biden took office.
	How bad is the situation on the southern border?
	It's so bad that Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who's a Democrat, has been sending illegal immigrants to New York City.
	Remember that time it was horrible and evil for Ron DeSantis to send illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard?
	How dare anybody's winter vacation be ruined by illegal immigrants arriving there by the dozen?
	Like, one dozen.
	It was just horrifying.
	Meanwhile, Democrats are sending hundreds of people to New York City because they have more resources.
	And Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, is ripping on Jared Powell, who is a Democrat.
	Not a humanitarian crisis if a Democrat does it.
	That is the rule.
	And here's what Mayor Adams said about POLA sending migrants to New York.
	The governor of Colorado is now stating that they are going to be sending migrants to places like New York and Chicago.
	This is just unfair for local governments to have to take on this national obligation.
	Amazing.
	So, but he won't rip on Biden.
	It's Jared Polis' fault.
	Everybody's avoiding ripping on him.
	Here's the thing.
	Biden is so intensely vulnerable.
	He has been vulnerable his entire presidency because he's a bad president.
	So why is the focus not on Joe Biden being a bad president?
	That's where all the focus should be right now.
	How do you stop Joe Biden's agenda?
	What is your goal?
	How do you change the narratives that Joe Biden's agenda is first on the priority list?
	How do you make 2023-2024 into a referendum on Joe Biden's policy?
	He's the president, guys.
	Don't give Democrats shiny objects to focus on.
	Because again, when you focus on the situation on the ground, it's pretty ugly.
	No less a source than the unbelievably artistic, the Beethoven of our age, Cardi B knows as much.
	Cardi B put out a video over the last couple of days ripping into inflation and its impact on everyday people.
	Sounding a lot like a Republican.
	Every so often Cardi B has these between Rapping about her WAP.
	She has these weird bouts of sanity.
	Or she'll talk about how, why is all my money just disappearing in taxes?
	You're like, wow, Cardi B, you had a bout of sanity.
	Well, she had one the other day, pointing out that inflation is absolutely crippling people, particularly people who are making less money than Cardi B.
	Let me tell you something.
	When I be complaining about food prices, and y'all mother f***ers be like, ain't you rich?
	Why you complaining about lettuce?
	Why you complaining about this?
	That just goes to show me when you become successful, when you have money, you're gonna f*** it.
	You're gonna go broke soon because y'all not budgeting.
	I get a summary of the money that's being spent in my home every week.
	So, when I'm starting to see that, like, groceries is, like, tripling up, it's like, hey, yo, what the f**k is going on?
	I want to see for myself what the fk sh is being spent on.
	And, like, when I go to the f**king supermarket, like, I went to the supermarket, I'm seeing that everything tripled up.
	That, like, lettuce was, like, $2 a couple of months ago, and now it's, like, f**king $7.
	Of course, I'ma say something.
	The f**k?
	Because if I think that st is crazy, I can only imagine what middle class people or people in the hood is motherfking thinking.
	So yes, I'm going to say something.
	The f**k?
	And I have a big platform, so I do want anybody that's responsible of these fking prices to put that st the f**k down.
	They're gonna see my s**t and they might put it down.
	The Demosthenes of our age.
	But she happens to be correct.
	And all of the focus would be on inflation.
	All of the focus would be on a sinking stock market.
	All the focus would be on the fact that Amazon is about to lay off 18,000 workers, like right now.
	The biggest company in America, Amazon, it's labs are about to affect 18,000 employees, the highest reduction tally revealed in the past year to major tech company, as the industry pairs back amid economic uncertainty, according to the journal.
	The layoffs are concentrated in the company's corporate ranks and represent roughly 5% of that element of its workforce, 1.2% of its overall tally of 1.5 million employees as of September.
	The Seattle-based company in November said it was beginning layoffs, but the cuts concentrating in its retail devices business, recruiting, and retail operations.
	At the time, the Wall Street Journal reported the cuts would be $10,000.
	Now they are close to doubling that number.
	Again, the economy is on a razor's edge at this point, and Joe Biden is feeling none of the blowback of that.
	He's feeling pretty good about himself.
	Meanwhile, because we blew so much money into the pockets of the American people, we still have massive inflationary pressures.
	I understand everybody thinks inflation is over for no reason, considering it is still well above 7%.
	Remember, the goal of the Fed is supposed to be 2%.
	It is now more than triple that, and yet we're supposed to pretend everything is going hunky-dory.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, Federal Reserve officials offered uncharacteristically blunt words of warning to investors that cautioned against underestimating the central bank's determination to hold interest rates at higher levels to bring down inflation.
	Minutes of the Fed's policy meeting last month, released on Wednesday, highlighted the tricky communications task that has vexed the central bank over the past six months.
	The Fed's rapid rate increases last year have fanned investor hopes that inflation will slow quickly over the coming year.
	In the run-up to the December meeting, longer-term bond yields tumbled, reflecting optimism about a speedy decline in inflation and fears of a recession this year.
	Many Fed officials are saying, wait a second, the robust economics showing people continuing to spend means we're going to have to ratchet up those interest rates in order to ratchet down the inflation.
	So don't get so don't get so happy so fast.
	Any market rallies that ease financial conditions threaten to hinder officials efforts to cool hiring and wage growth, which in turn could prompt them to continue lifting rates or holding them at higher levels for longer, increasing the risk of a deeper or longer economic downturn.
	Some of the minutes of the Fed's December 13th to 14th meetings had, quote, an unwarranted easing in financial conditions, especially if driven by a misperception by the public of how the Fed is going to react, would complicate the committee's efforts to restore price stability.
	So they keep saying to the market, guys, we're raising the interest rates, we're raising the interest rates.
	Stop acting as though the economy is going to be OK and tossing more money at things.
	You need to stop pumping money into the economy.
	It's contributing to the inflation that we are attempting to fight.
	And really, really bad year for Joe Biden was 2022.
	And yet he escaped the consequences of that largely because of Republican incompetence.
	Less Republican incompetence would be a wonderful thing at this point.
	That's certainly be something worth shooting for.
	Because again, the more the focus is on Joe Biden, the worse it's going to be for him.
	Okay, meanwhile, I have to give you the dumbest and most hilarious story of the day.
	I do love this story.
	According to the UK Daily Mail, Photos obtained by the Daily Mail show how a person named Kay LeClaire was able to transform herself over the course of just two years from a white college student to an indigenous two-spirit, including even some in the Native American community.
	LeClaire identified themselves on Facebook as a white woman in July 2017 as they spoke of they nuptials with Adam Pagenkop the following summer.
	But by 2019, they publicly identified as a Native American two-spirit, which is a term many indigenous people use to describe a non-binary gender identity.
	Now, I do have to point out here that not only is this absurd and silly on its face, it is hysterical that the media has to continue calling this obviously female person a they.
	I can also point out they're not Native Americans.
	If a person says, I'm a Native American Two-Spirit and I wish to be called they, instead of everybody saying, we're not going to pay attention to any of that.
	We're just going to call you a white lady because you're a white lady.
	Instead, the media is like, no, we will call you they.
	We're just going to draw the line and saying that you're indigenous.
	The good news for Kay LeClaire is that eventually she'll end up presumably being a senator from Massachusetts.
	That's the way this works.
	If you pretend to be Native American, then you can run for president eventually.
	LeClaire even went on to co-found a queer indigenous artist collective in Wisconsin and started buying Native American art from Etsy, which they would pass off as their own and sell to unsuspecting buyers.
	Man, wokeness?
	You know, they say go woke, go broke, but the truth is, the truth is, that if you're talking about catering to a particularly stupid crowd, go woke, make a little bit of money.
	Go woke, claim victimhood, you do okay.
	It used to be, in the more racist days of the United States, that people, in order to escape the evils of racism, would sometimes attempt to pass as members of the white race.
	And that was an indicator of the evils of America's racial caste system.
	And it was a real thing that used to happen.
	Now you have white people attempting to pass themselves off as members of minorities, which should tell you something about the social circumstances surrounding race in the United States right now.
	You don't see a lot of black Americans attempting to pass themselves off as white, but you do see a lot of white Americans attempting to pass themselves off as members of minorities to thereby gain victimhood status in the new racial hierarchy of intersectionality.
	Some in the Native community have now said they had their suspicions about LeClaire, who went from a light-haired brunette to a tan woman with dark hair over the course of just a few years.
	LeClaire was ultimately forced to step down from their community positions last month, after it came to light that they were actually a Pretendian, a term Natives use for people who pretend to have Indigenous lineage.
	It is unclear whether they will face charges for their false claims, as profiting off a false Native American identity is a federal crime.
	By the way, that's kind of fascinating, that if you profit off a false native identity, that's somehow a federal crime.
	But if you profit off another false identity, like saying, pretending you're a man, or a two-spirit, or you're a man, and you pretend you're a woman, that's not a federal crime.
	Advanced Smite, a hobbyist genealogist, has laid out how LeClaire has claimed to have Métis, Oneida, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Cuban, and Jewish heritage.
	The anonymous genealogist told Madison365 they first became aware of LeClaire through a Facebook ad for the upcoming talk on indigenous feminism.
	It identified LeClaire under her native name, Nibi Wakamigkwe, which AdvanceMight said they found unusual because given the Ojibwe name is typically something that would be just used in ceremony or with other people who are Ojibwe or a part of your community, it's weird that you're publicly using it.
	AdvanceMight, who is also of indigenous heritage, conducted some research and found that while LeClaire is a common Native American last name, there were social media posts in which they identified as Anishinaabe.
	The genealogists then discovered that LeClaire had previously claimed to be Cuban, So this person seems to be some sort of sociopath seeking to take advantage of the woke status in modern America.
	This is bizarre.
	It's bizarre, bizarre stuff.
	And again, says less about this human being, because there are lots of crazy people in the United States, and much more about the incentive structure in the United States right now.
	The supply of racism does not meet the demand for racism.
	And so people are now claiming to be members of minority race, minority status, just so that they can claim to be victims in American society.
	Totally wild.
	One of the professors at University of Minnesota posted Facebook on Saturday saying, quote, I've sat with this Kayla Clare situation about going through all the emotions, hurt, anger, disbelief. I welcomed them into my home, brought them to ceremonies and bartered my artwork for their fakes. Others warned me, but I was hesitant to believe someone would weave such an elaborate web of lies. They were so kind and eager to help and share.
	They were a ray of sunshine.
	They embodied everything you would want in a friend. So I think that at some point we should You should stop calling this person they.
	This person is a she.
	So we are allowed to say that she is not a Native American, but you're not allowed to say that she is a she.
	It is pretty amazing stuff.
	Ah, what a wonderful country we live in.
	Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing right now.
	You're not going to want to miss it.
	We'll be getting into Walgreens now distributing the abortion pill.
	Plus, we have on an economist to discuss the problems with the interest rate in the United States and why stagflation looks like our future.
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