Ep. 1155 - Who Blinks First In The Ultimate Republican Staring Contest?
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Kevin McCarthy loses another three votes to become House speaker, Democrat Katie Hobbs bans the press from her inauguration as Arizona governor, and Canadian libs try to take away Jordan Peterson’s psychology license.
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Actually, it's 12th night, but it feels like Groundhog Day because yesterday, for the second day in a row, Republican Congressional Leader Kevin McCarthy lost another three votes.
Now, I'm not saying three individual.
I'm saying they took a vote three times, and he lost all of them again to become Speaker of the House of Representatives after 20 conservatives voted against him, depriving McCarthy of the 218 votes that he needs.
The establishment is whining and crying as their preferred speaker candidate cannot seem to get over the finish line.
But the conservative stalwarts have every right to spike McCarthy for any reason they choose.
Policy, trust, because they just don't like the cut of his jib.
Doesn't matter.
The job of the House Speaker is to wrangle cats, basically, through a combination of love, fear, and persuasion.
The Speaker of the House needs to create consensus among his members.
The Speaker vote is the first test of a would-be leader's ability to do that.
And if the man can't get the votes...
Then he just can't get the votes.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
Welcome back to the show.
My favorite comment yesterday is from Noah Lynn, who says, Somebody should have just told Antigone that her brother wasn't getting desecrated by being left in the field to rot.
He was being human composted.
And that's okay.
Could have saved her a lot of heartache and Sophocles a lot of writing.
Such a great perceptive comment.
So true.
We could lose so much of our tragedy, of our sense of morality and human dignity if we just accept the libs tossing granny out into the garden to turn into worm food.
You're so right.
You make such a good point.
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The balance of power now, not just in the House of Representatives, but within the GOP, within the House of Representatives, is a little bit upset.
And people are getting very, very angry about this.
And especially the GOP establishment is furious.
This is getting nasty.
This is getting personal.
Typified perfectly by an interview last night between Lauren Boebert, who is one of the congressmen leading the charge against Kevin McCarthy in the House, and Sean Hannity, who spent much of his TV show last night Promoting Kevin McCarthy and attacking the conservatives who don't want McCarthy to be speaker.
Listen to this exchange.
Let me turn the tables, Congresswoman.
Kevin McCarthy has 202 votes.
Your side has 20.
So if I'm going to use your words and your methodology and your math, isn't it time for you to pack it in and your side to pack it in, considering he has over 200 and you have 20?
Sean, I understand the frustration, I promise you.
I'm not frustrated.
You didn't answer my question.
And we are hearing from many people who are still voting with Kevin McCarthy who are very supportive of what we're doing, and they're cheering us on.
So there are more for us than are against us, and they are waiting for Kevin to cave.
You know, the American people are certainly frustrated by it.
I'm frustrated by you not answering a direct question.
You said to President Trump, you said earlier today that President Trump needs to tell Kevin McCarthy, you don't have the votes.
We need to come up with a consensus candidate to elect a Speaker of the House.
You don't have the votes and it's time to withdraw.
He has 203, your side has 20.
Why is it time for him to withdraw and not you when he has so many more votes?
Well, Sean, he needs 218, and he does not have 218.
We've been trying to work this out.
Lauren's right.
Oh my goodness gracious.
I don't know Sean Hannity personally, so I've got nothing against him personally, and I am friends with Lauren.
But Sean is just completely missing the point here.
He's saying, well, Kevin McCarthy's got 200, you've only got 20, so why don't you drop out?
Because Lauren Boebert isn't running for Speaker of the House.
Matt Gaetz is not running for Speaker of the House.
Neither of them have suggested that they want the job.
It's not up to them to come up with 200 votes to become Speaker of the House.
It's up to Kevin McCarthy as the would-be Speaker, as the leader of the Republican conference in the House, to get the number of votes that he needs.
If he can't get the number of votes that he needs, then he's a weak leader.
That's that.
Okay?
It's not all that complicated.
I can't tell...
If Hannity was being obtuse or if he's actually missing the point here.
But the point is, being speaker is a very difficult job.
Being a leader of either party in the House of Representatives, but especially of the Republicans, where there's a far greater variety of perspectives than in the Democrats, who are pretty much all lockstep on the progressive side.
Among the Republicans, you've got the moderates, you've got the libertarians, you've got the traditionalists, you've got the populists, you've got this, that, and the other thing.
It's a difficult job.
And if you want to be Speaker, you've got to get, at the bare minimum, the sufficient number of votes to become the Speaker.
If Kevin McCarthy does not have the votes, that's not Lauren Boebert's fault.
That's not Matt Gaetz's fault.
That's not Paul Gosar's fault.
It just means that McCarthy couldn't get it over the finish line.
As I mentioned yesterday, this is exactly what happened the last time McCarthy was up for the job.
The last time McCarthy was up for it was 2015.
John Boehner was stepping down as Speaker.
McCarthy was the heir apparent, and he couldn't get the votes.
And so there was a compromise candidate in Paul Ryan, who now seems much squishier than he did then.
At the time, he was considered one of the more conservative members of the House.
And Paul Ryan was acceptable both to the establishment and to the House Freedom Caucus.
And so he became the Speaker.
This is not even a particular knock on McCarthy's integrity or his beliefs or anything like that, but it just means that McCarthy was not able to muster the love, fear, deal-making, whatever you need to get the votes, okay?
And so Sean Hannity can yell about it and interrogate Lauren Boebert all night and cut her off and try to bully her into giving up the fight, but the fact is...
I think I'm going to go.
That's no excuse, okay?
The buck stops with the leader.
The leader has not been able to do it.
And so the establishment, they're not just calling on the Sean Hannitys of the world to go out there and bully the House Freedom Caucus.
They're calling on Donald Trump and Lauren.
This is going to be the Lauren Boebert show today.
I actually texted Lauren last night when this was all blowing up, and I said, hey, I know you're a little busy.
You got other things to do right now, but...
If you're free tomorrow morning and you don't have to be on the floor of the House of Representatives to lead this fight, I would love for you to come on the show.
So I think she actually might be able to come on the show, depending on when these votes are taking place today.
Obviously, stay tuned.
We'll keep you posted.
But in the meantime, Lauren called out even Donald Trump for supporting McCarthy and trying to bully the Freedom Caucus.
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.
It's a simple enough argument.
And what I'm hearing from the establishment right now is basically, but it's not fair!
It was supposed to be Kevin!
You guys only have 20 votes.
Yeah, 20 votes is enough.
How do you think this works?
Goodness gracious me.
There was then some fake news that was spread yesterday, which is that it was a truth social post or a save America, make America great again sort of letterhead that said, I, Donald Trump, am pulling my support from Kevin McCarthy.
It was a forgery.
Trump has disavowed that post going around, but it added even more to the confusion of this political fight.
There's an irony of this fight, too, which is that strictly from the standpoint of issues, strictly from the standpoint of policy positions, Kevin McCarthy would very likely be the most conservative Speaker of the House that we have had since Joe Martin in 1954.
He would.
From strictly the standpoint, you just look down the list of issues.
Abortion, immigration, trade, whatever.
You look down the list of issues.
On the whole of Kevin McCarthy's career, again, he hasn't been tested as a Speaker of the House.
But on the whole of McCarthy's career, you just look on his votes, you look at his policy positions.
I think he lands to the right of Paul Ryan.
Frankly, he lands to the right of Newt Gingrich.
Because Newt Gingrich, though a great conservative fighter...
Newt Gingrich said during the partial birth abortion fight that he would campaign for Republicans who supported partial birth abortion.
He tried to lobby against an RNC provision that would defund Republican candidates who were in favor of partial birth abortion.
He sat down with Nancy Pelosi and promoted a bunch of climate change stuff.
So, again, none of this is a knock on Newt Gingrich.
I really like Newt Gingrich.
I'm just saying, strictly from the standpoint of issues...
Kevin McCarthy is, I think, to the right of any of them in recent history.
There just haven't been that many Republican speakers of the House in the last half century or more.
But leadership races are not just about issues.
Frankly, I'm not sure they're even primarily about issues.
When you elect your congressman, you are electing him on issues because his job is to cast a vote on policy.
When the members of Congress vote for a speaker, it's about a lot more than that.
It's about coalitions.
It's about, do you trust this person?
Do you think this person will keep his promises?
Has he sided with you before?
It's kind of like high school.
What clique is he a part of?
What lunch table does he sit at?
Who is he giving money to in the campaign years?
Who is he defunding in the campaign years?
Is he loyal?
When the going gets tough, can he be counted on to stand firm?
And the simple fact is there are 20 members of the House of Representatives who are on the more conservative side of the GOP, who are members of the Freedom Caucus, who just don't think that Kevin McCarthy is the man for the job.
And you might say, well, those members, they're terrible.
They're wrong.
They're imprudent.
They're crazy.
They're showboating.
Whatever.
I don't want to hear the excuses.
What you need in a leader is leadership.
That is the primary quality that you need in a leader.
So if McCarthy can grab the votes, good on him.
I guess he passed his first test.
If he can't, then he probably was not going to be a very good or effective speaker in the first place.
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One of my favorite exchanges that took place at the Capitol yesterday was from Republican Congressman Kat Kamek, who got up and she said, listen fellas, the Democrats, they want to see us fighting with each other.
That's why they're over there indulging in all sorts of vices and enjoying themselves.
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 The house is not an order Oh The house is not in order.
Let's get some water.
The clerk would ask all members-elect to abide by the established decorum of the House while making nominations.
It goes on.
And Kat Kamek's, they were just laughing.
Just laughing.
You know how these Democrats, they're sitting with their booze and their popcorn.
I loved this clip.
And I love the Democrats getting all angry about it and clutching their pearls.
Because it made me think that Republicans, we don't want to be like that.
We don't want to be like the Democrats, clutching their pearls, all angry, red in the face all the time.
I think Kat Kamek's attitude is far better.
It's okay, guys.
It's alright.
This is democracy in action.
You can laugh a little bit.
The world is not going to end if Kevin McCarthy doesn't become the Speaker of the House within the next 15 minutes.
It'll be just fine.
You like democracy?
This is what democracy is.
You like legislative bodies in Washington, D.C.? Probably you don't like those things.
Because the legislative bodies in Washington, D.C. are also known as the swamp.
They don't have the best reputation in the world.
But...
I think I saw some poll that Congress was less popular than syphilis for different periods of American history.
But nevertheless, this is what we've got.
This is the system of government.
This is how it works.
They're all big boys.
Kevin McCarthy's got plenty of thick skin.
It's okay.
Let it play out.
This is democracy in action.
If you can't get a kick out of this sort of thing...
Get another job if you work in politics.
And if you can't get a kick out of this kind of thing, get another system of government.
Because this is what democracy is.
Speaking of the House Democrats, the House Democrats now, while Republicans are fighting over who the leader should be, the House Democrats, they've got him now.
You know the him I'm talking about.
Trump, they finally got him.
That roadrunner Donald Trump, he has evaded Trump.
Wile E. Coyote Democrats for about seven, eight years now.
But they finally went to Acme.
They bought the biggest anvil they can find.
They've got him now.
They're releasing his tax returns.
Didn't they already do that?
Didn't we already get Trump's tax returns?
Didn't my doppelganger over at MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, already read them on air and find out there was really nothing particularly interesting or lurid in them?
I guess.
But now the House of Democrats, they've got more of his tax returns.
Yeah, that'll show him.
And what did they find?
Pretty much nothing.
They got about 6,000 pages of information on how Trump handles his taxes.
And they found out, this is going to shock you, Donald Trump takes tax deductions to reduce the amount that he has to pay the government every year.
And he tries to minimize, in his accounting, the profit that his company makes to reduce his tax burden.
And he...
That's it.
He just does what every businessman has done, ever.
No evidence of any crimes, of course, is nothing.
They've got nothing, as they've always had nothing from the beginning.
And they're going to try again.
And I'm sure they're going to drag this issue out for another 10 years.
Donald Trump is going to have been in the grave for half a century.
They're still going to be trying to get him and prove collusion and tax crimes and all the rest of it.
The reason that this matters, though, is it's a real stain on the Congress and it's a real stain on the Ways and Means Committee.
And the Democrats are as stained as they can possibly be.
But it is a real stain on them because there was no legal reason to release Donald Trump's taxes.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't have much of a political consequence to him.
But citizens have an expectation when we file our taxes that the government is not just going to release them whenever we become political targets.
That's what the government has done here.
If there were some pressing national security, public interest reason to release Donald Trump's tax returns, then maybe there's an argument to do it.
But there wasn't here.
It was just a completely arbitrary exercise in power.
And it means for every citizen of the United States, certainly for every conservative, certainly for every prominent conservative, but really for every other citizen who might imagine that at some point the other party is going to get into power, you now think when you're filing your taxes, oh, this could just be totally public information. you now think when you're filing your taxes, oh, this Because the trust, whatever trust we once had with the federal government, that is evaporating by the very day.
Speaking of corrupt Democrats, Katie Hobbs has been sworn in as the governor of Arizona.
Carrie Lake, as far as I know, has still not conceded that Arizona governor's race.
With good reason, there was a lot of crooked stuff that appeared to go on in Arizona in the 2022 elections.
Election machines magically not working, vote counts taking a very long time to come in, precincts reporting hundreds more votes by the end of the day than voters who were checked in to vote at that precinct.
A lot of dodginess.
The person who was in charge of the elections this past cycle, coincidentally, was Katie Hobbs, then the Arizona Secretary of State, now sworn in as Governor of Arizona.
As Katie Hobbs was sworn in, She was asked to defend the Constitution.
I kid you not, she started laughing when she was asked to do that.
Hi, Kathleen Marie Hobbs.
Hi, Kathleen Marie Hobbs.
Do solemnly swear.
That I will support the Constitution.
Stop it!
I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the state of Arizona.
I solemnly swear that I will uphold The Constitution?
Oh, stop it!
Ha ha ha, tee hee hee.
Not a good look, lady.
I don't know exactly why she was laughing.
I hope that there was some explanation as to why she was laughing at the prospect of her upholding the Constitution.
But it's definitely not a good look.
And...
The reason that I'm a little reluctant to just write it off and say, oh, well, it's probably just a coincidence, is because the whole swearing-in was not a great look.
Katie Hobbs did not allow the press to cover her swearing-in.
She allowed, I think, one photographer from the Associated Press into the room at the state capitol while she told the rest of the press to just watch it on a screen somewhere.
Which is in keeping with Katie Hobbs' campaign, or lack thereof.
Katie Hobbs barely campaigned for the race, which I think lends a lot of credibility to the suggestion that the fix was in, that this was a...
Somewhat questionable election process.
Especially when you add on to it the fact that Katie Hobbs was the official in charge of running the elections.
When you add on to it the fact that the election officials in Maricopa County, where all the shenanigans occurred, even the ones who were nominally Republicans, were openly campaigning against candidates like Carrie Lake.
The whole thing just seems really dodgy and sketchy.
The whole thing does not seem...
Particularly democratic.
Are we allowed to suggest that?
I know that we're one day away from the most sacred feast of the liberal liturgical year.
January 6th.
The great solemnity of January 6th, according to the Libs.
And we're never allowed to question the sacredness of our democracy.
Unless it's convenient for the Democrats.
But I don't know.
What's been going on in Arizona doesn't look particularly democratic to me.
It's a new year.
But leftist companies are still up to their same old dirty tricks.
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Speaking of abuses of power, my colleague, Jordan Peterson.
Is being investigated by the Ontario College of Psychologists.
And he's being investigated by them.
He's being threatened by them.
They're suggesting that they might take away his license to practice psychology because Jordan...
Tweeted against political correctness, basically.
He announced the other day that the Ontario College of Psychologists has demanded that he submit himself to mandatory social media communication retraining With their experts for, among other crimes, retweeting the Canadian Conservative leader and criticizing Justin Trudeau, the big lib who's running Canada, and some people are saying the son of Fidel Castro.
I would never suggest such a thing.
Because he did that, because Jordan has tweeted in support of the Conservatives against the Liberals, they want him to be re-educated.
They want to send him to a re-education camp or...
He says he will face an in-person tribunal and suspension of his right to operate as a licensed clinical psychologist.
Preposterous, of course.
Now, they're not going to destroy Jordan Peterson's career.
Jordan Peterson will be just fine.
He's not going to starve if they take away his license to practice psychology.
But on people who don't have multi-million best-selling books and world tours and shows and movies and all the rest of it, this kind of power, the power of credentialism, could destroy somebody's life and career.
Some of you, maybe many of you listening to this show today, have very possibly faced this kind of question, especially during COVID. Even outside of COVID, though, if you don't say the right thing, if you don't do the right thing, then you're going to be blackballed from your job.
Then the licensing or credentialing organization, they're not going to give you your license.
Then the university is not going to give you what has become the basic credential of operating in our liberal culture.
You need to have the four-year college degree.
What do you need to have learned?
Nothing.
What skills you need to have acquired?
Absolutely none.
But you need to have that credential or you're not allowed to be admitted to the very special club to work in all the fancy jobs in our culture.
It's a problem of credentialism.
Now, this underlines a movement that you have seen for a long time on the American right.
Which is that we have, every day that passes, less and less respect for these kinds of credentials.
This was not always the case.
This is actually a trend that is going on.
And people call it populism, and people call it anti-intellectualism.
It's not that.
It's not our fault.
It's not the conservatives' fault.
It is the fault of the people who dole out the credentials for squandering their own credibility.
It's not my fault that a Harvard degree or a Yale degree or a Stanford degree doesn't mean what it used to mean.
50, 70 years ago, the New York Times used to report on the outcomes of Yale Political Union undergraduate debates.
Today...
At the Yale Political Union and similar sorts of debating societies, students will whine and cry and throw a hissy fit if Kristen Wagoner, a pro-life, pro-religious freedom lawyer, shows up and explains the law.
In fact, actually, I want to be fair, it wasn't the Yale Political Union where that incident occurred.
It was at the Yale Law School.
This was graduate students.
This was the professional students who were supposed to be lawyers, whining, crying, basically throwing a riot because someone has a different opinion.
It's not the fault of the conservatives now who mock all of the elite credentials.
It's the fault of the elite institutions, which have squandered all of their own credibility.
And right now we're at this difficult point where people are getting squeezed because the credentials still kind of matter.
There is still some power in them, but people know it's all kind of hollow and bogus, but it still sort of matters.
I very much look forward to the day where...
A psychologist will not need the approval of the Ontario College of Psychologists, who have revealed themselves to be nothing more than a leftist activist organization to practice psychology.
Or of any of these other gatekeeping institutions that have been totally captured by the left, that have crawled in like invasion of the body snatchers, hollowed out the guts of what these institutions used to be, and now they're walking around pretending that they still have authority. and now they're walking around pretending that they still have They don't.
The only way out is through.
There's no going back to those good old days, okay?
The only way that you're going to achieve good old days, good new days rather, is by pushing through and saying, screw it, who cares?
Who cares what the Ontario College of Psychologists...
If I want to talk to Jordan Peterson and have him try to fix my brain, I'm going to do it whether the Ontario College of Psychologists wants to or not.
And the Canadian government wants to come after him for doing that?
Well, maybe it's time that we have a little less respect for the Canadian government and all of these other liberal totalitarians who want to banish any sense of reason and tradition and normal life from our society.
Speaking of titles and credentials, I need you all to take out your violin cases, the tiniest little violin case you've got, open those tiny little latches, pull out that little miniature instrument and start playing the sob song for Prince Harry, who is very, he's very upset.
He's very hurt.
Prince Harry, who has spent the last several years Attacking his family in the most public way possible, as his grandfather and grandmother are dying, two of the most respected people on the world stage.
He's just lambasting his family, whining, woe is me.
He says he wants privacy, and then he just keeps going on TV all the time.
Well, now he's whining because apparently his family isn't being very nice to him.
It never needed to be this way.
The leaking and the planting.
I want a family, not an institution.
They feel as though it's better to keep us somehow as the villains.
They've shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile.
I would like to get my father back.
I would like to have my brother back.
This is so tawdry.
This is just so...
It shows you how dishonest and disingenuous the whole Meghan Harry phenomenon has been.
Because what they say is, we don't want to be in the spotlight anymore.
We don't, the press has been, we hate the press.
The press has been so unfair.
We had to leave England because of how we're in the press all the time.
And so what are we going to do?
The very first thing we do in our private lives, we launch a TV show.
We give an interview to Oprah.
We give an interview to The Guardian.
We write books.
We sell those books on TV. It's so tawdry and dishonest.
It reminds you that if things just continually are going wrong in your life, Everyone's going to experience tough times.
That's not necessarily your fault.
But if things are just consistently, if everything is constantly wrong in your life, Maybe you don't cast the blame on grandma or grandpa or daddy or brother.
Or maybe the person to look at is that guy staring back at you in the mirror.
And maybe what you ought to do is not just seek attention everywhere from the whole public.
Maybe it's time to look inward and see...
If you can fix something about yourself.
This would be a lesson that our friends over in the GOP might be able to figure out.
The sort of people who have been power in the GOP for a very long time might be able to figure out if they had an ounce of self-awareness, but they don't, so instead they're blaming Lauren Boebert.
We have Lauren on the call.
Lauren, thank you so much.
I know you're very, very busy right now, but thank you for making time to come on the show.
Absolutely.
Thanks so much for having me on, Michael.
So, Lauren, where does it all stand?
We've given a recap of the speaker fight through last night on the show.
Kevin McCarthy lost three rounds of voting two days ago.
He loses three rounds of voting yesterday.
You and those terrible, evil House Freedom Caucus Republicans, you're not budging here.
So what happens?
Well, let's begin at where it started.
This started in the summer.
We wanted to handle this privately and have a solution before January 3rd.
These negotiations began in the summer and they were dismissed because Kevin McCarthy thought he was going to have this massive red wave and our votes did not matter.
When he saw that the $300 million that he raised did not produce the red wave that he promised, he realized quickly he's going to need our votes.
And so some concessions were put into play.
It was very difficult to get them into play.
It was difficult to get them approved.
With our rules process, the way Washington, D.C. operates and functions, we want to fundamentally change this town.
It is broken.
It is less popular with the American people than cockroaches.
So we have to get something right here, and we cannot go along with the status quo.
Well, on January 2nd, Two of my fellow colleagues and myself, Matt Gates, Scott Perry, we walked into Leader McCarthy's office after whipping votes all day long and handed him 218 votes.
We said, here it is.
Let's seal the deal.
Here's some common sense issues that you can put forward, some promises that you can make, single member motion to vacate.
So there is accountability on the third in line to the presidency of the United States.
You cannot demand more responsibility and follow Nancy Pelosi's precedence of less accountability.
So this is our check and balance on the speaker.
And that was a priority for me personally, certainly, and for many others.
But then things like bring the Texas border plan to the floor for a vote.
Bring a term limits bill to the floor for a vote.
Any member who wants to reduce spending in an amendment will make that amendment in order so we can bring it to the floor and have a vote.
Earmarks, bring them to the floor individually for a vote.
This is spending money that we do not have So let's at least have a vote on it instead of packing it into a bill where we have no option to either swallow the whole thing or say no way.
These are things that we presented to him.
He solicited a list from us of committee assignments and All members provide committee assignment requests.
We know where our talents and skills are best utilized.
And we provided that list.
Kevin McCarthy made a great argument saying, listen, the people in this group only want two committees.
I need you spread out.
I want you to have more influence.
And we agreed with that.
And we said, you know, this is a time constraint on many of the members.
It's a lot of responsibility, a lot of pressure, but we're willing to take that sacrifice and have these committee assignments that bear more pressure.
And so we provided that to him.
And then January 2nd, when all of that was laid on the table, Kevin McCarthy laughed us out of the room, said that it was a selfish wish list, and would not take the deal.
Well, now here we stand, Michael.
I no longer have those 218 votes to provide to Kevin McCarthy.
So it doesn't matter if I go to the floor today and vote for Kevin McCarthy because there are now more than ever votes that he does not have to get to that speakership.
This is very important to know.
He walked out of that meeting and lied about what we requested.
Trust is absolutely broken if there was any to begin with.
And this is a huge problem.
We want unity in the Republican Party.
And I believe now is the time to start seriously considering consensus candidates who will unify the Republican Party so we can get to work for the American people.
This is really important context, I think, because what you're saying is over the summer, Leader McCarthy just didn't think he needed you guys because there were supposed to be more Republicans in the House.
And so he would be able to win the speakership without having your votes along because...
Because of what happened, that turned out to be a bad bet.
And when you make bad bets, you've got to pay the price for those bad bets.
And you bring up this other point, which is trust.
And I think this is really important because a lot of this debate has focused on On the issues, Kevin McCarthy is relatively pretty good.
We come from a world of John Boehners, so I guess Kevin McCarthy is more conservative than John Boehner.
But what you're saying is, no, it's really about trust.
When we're talking about leadership elections, we need to be able to trust the leader.
And what you're saying is, you don't think that Leader McCarthy has proven himself trustworthy.
Correct.
And that's why we wanted the tools implemented to where maybe we don't need to trust him because the individual member is empowered enough to get the job done and is not ruled by a dictator as a speaker.
This is not a kingdom that we live in.
We don't anoint a king.
I believe that this is how our founding fathers intended this process to work.
Our vote is there to be debated, not just rubber stamped and cast to the biggest fundraiser.
But you cannot have good faith negotiations where trust is absent.
And so that's why motion to vacate was so important to me, because that is the check and balance on this position.
If you break trust, if you don't do what you promised, well, buddy, you're out of there.
And he has already shown he's not willing to do that.
I still have not seen a public announcement of a single member motion to vacate.
He's lying to the American people saying that he gave us that.
For those listening who don't know what that is, what is a motion to vacate?
A motion to vacate gives us the opportunity to remove the speaker and have another vote for speaker if necessary.
This is something that does not get used, but it's available.
This is something Thomas Jefferson wrote and has been in effect for nearly two centuries.
And Nancy Pelosi was the first speaker in history to modify that.
She removed that individual empowerment from the from the member and and said, you no longer have a say in this.
I get to rule how I want and you don't have a check.
You don't have a balance.
Kevin McCarthy wanted to leave that as Nancy Pelosi had it.
There were concessions.
He got down to 50, got down to 20, got down to 5.
No.
Thomas Jefferson wrote it as one member.
Any one member can bring that motion to vacate the chair forward.
And that is our accountability.
This is something that was my red line.
And I've only heard from a staff member who chased us out of the GOP conference and begged us to vote for Kevin McCarthy.
We'll give you a single member motion to vacate.
And he said, that's adorable.
Where's Kevin saying it?
So I guess this is now where the rubber meets the road.
And I know you're short on time.
So...
What happens after all of this context?
I mean, I think you've explained your position very, very well.
I think that it is pretty clear that Leader McCarthy, he thought he had the votes and he didn't have the votes.
And actually, this same thing happened in 2015.
Let's not forget, Kevin McCarthy was the heir apparent after John Boehner.
He didn't have the votes, and that's how Paul Ryan emerged as the compromise candidate.
So what happens?
What could Kevin McCarthy come out and say right now That would win over your votes and maybe the votes of your colleagues in the Freedom Caucus, or if there's nothing that he could say, who would you support today?
I know that this is a little bit in flux, but who would you support today to replace him?
Right.
So we have been offering a menu of other candidates.
I don't believe that my switching to Kevin McCarthy matters because there are so many who are solidly, Kevin, you can issue a public apology.
You can change all the rules.
You can wear a straight jacket and just have a portrait that says that you're speaker and we get to run this place.
And they're not going to vote for Kevin McCarthy.
So at this point, we do have to start looking forward to other candidates.
And I can name 200.
Who are potential candidates right out of the conference GOP. I'm excluding myself, so that's why that number is 200, and Kevin's excluded as well.
But, you know, this is something that we have to start talking about.
We've presented Jim Jordan.
We have presented Andy Biggs.
We've presented Byron Donalds.
I've heard Jim Banks' name be voted on during these votes.
Maybe it's someone outside of Congress.
Maybe it's a Lee Zeldin who actually won us the majority.
Without his efforts in New York running for governor, we wouldn't have the majority.
And maybe it's someone who is in the conference, like a Kevin Hearn, who is currently chairman of the Republican Study Committee, which is the largest caucus in the Republican conference.
He was unanimously elected with 173 votes to chair that committee.
And he actually has a balanced budget that he wants to put on the floor, which is another thing that Kevin denied in our proposal on January 2nd.
So maybe it's someone like that who already has the trust of the conference and can truly get to 218.
Before I let you go, Lauren, is the trust now just irreparably broken?
That is to say, if Kevin McCarthy came out and issued a statement and said, okay, I'll give you a single-member motion to vacate, okay, I'll give you this, that, or the other thing, one, would that change your vote?
And two, would that change enough votes to put him into the speakership?
I know you've suggested maybe not, but just to be totally clear, are you saying that From the people you're talking to, McCarthy's speaker candidacy is actually dead.
It's dead.
Yes.
The nails are in the coffin.
And there are plenty of members who are cheering our efforts on who are afraid of retribution.
We were threatened in conference.
It was a nightmare in there.
We were threatened by steering committee members who actually assign committees to members of Congress that if we vote against Kevin at all, we will not receive committee assignments.
And Kevin McCarthy We're good to go.
Wow.
That's really, really big.
And I have to tell you, I know that people are pulling their hair out over this, especially in the establishment GOP.
To me, this is politics.
This is a constitutional republic at work.
This is it.
This is kind of how it works.
And if you're going to make bets in politics, then you got to make sure those bets pay off or you're going to pay the price.
And if you want a leadership role, I know you recently had an interview on television where the host who will remain unnamed was yelling because he said, well, Kevin McCarthy has 200 votes.
You only have 20 votes.
Well, I thought you made the point very well.
The first test of a congressional leader, someone who is in leadership, someone who's the speaker of the house is, can you get the votes that it takes to put you into the office?
Because Because the whole job is getting the votes and creating consensus.
Lauren, thank you so much for taking the time today.
I will be waiting with popcorn, maybe with some booze, as Kat Kamek suggested people do, to see how this fight plays out.
Thank you for coming on.
Thank you so much.
And I do believe that history is going to show that we are on the right side of this.
We're going to get it right.
All right.
Thank you, Lauren.
That's it.
I've run out of time.
I'm Michael Knowles.
This is The Michael Knowles Show.
We are heading over to the member block right now.
So do not go anywhere unless you're not a Daily Wire member.
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