All Episodes
Oct. 6, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
14:06
McCarthy Rejected By His Own Creation

This is a preview of the full Weekender Friday episode. To unlock the full 50+ minute show, and all future episodes, head over to patreon.com/muckrakepodcast and become a subscriber. You'll gain access to more content, as well as live tapings, and more. Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss how the whole motion to vacate went down for Kevin McCarthy, who will go into the dustbin of forgotten politicians after his utter failure as Speaker mercifully comes to an end. It leads them to the gag order of Donald Trump and the incredible speed with which he violated it. Sadly, the Biden Administration might actually continue to build a wall on the Southern border, and they then turn to more insightful questions from our lovely Patrons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hey everybody.
Welcome to The Weekender.
I'm Joe Jade Sexton.
I'm in a hotel.
I hate hotels.
I hate being in a hotel.
Nick Halseman.
I hate it.
I like hotels.
It's a, you know, counterpoint.
I like hotels.
You know, you and I have been in a hotel together and you seemed much more at ease in the hotel than me.
I want to go.
I want to do things.
I really dislike it.
Oh, I mean, but it also represents like you're traveling and whenever you finally get somewhere you can just like relax and lay down.
I'm not relaxed.
I don't know if the parking is right here.
My car might get towed.
I've got things to do.
I'm high strung about this hotel situation.
All right, well, you know, maybe this show will help you calm down and relax.
I doubt it.
We don't talk about anything that makes me feel more relaxed.
Hanging out with you, talking to the audience makes me feel relaxed.
Do you know what would make me feel more relaxed?
I don't know.
A sip of a cold beverage?
Well, a cold beverage helps, Nick, but also if the people listening to the free preview of this would go to patreon.com slash Montclair podcast in order to support the show, grow the show, and also listen to the rest of this pod.
Nick, I'm just going to give you my professional opinion.
A lot of things have happened in the past couple of days.
Oh, really?
Well, I mean, in the world.
You got the rundown.
I've sent you the rundown.
You've looked at it.
I have.
I know.
Yes, there is a lot of things.
And, you know, most of the things probably were extremely predictable as well, but they happened anyway.
They did.
So, Nick, we got to start this.
Mad Gates.
Matt Gaetz got Kevin McCarthy's ass kicked out of the speakership.
For the first time ever, there was an ousted Speaker of the House.
Basically, everybody in the House of Representatives not named Kevin McCarthy voted to get rid of Kevin McCarthy.
He has been kicked out on his keister.
I've got a lot of thoughts on this.
What were your initial reactions, Nick?
You know, we knew this as soon as he agreed to allow one person to bring up the motion to vacate, it was going, they were going to do it.
Like these guys don't have to mess around.
They're not asking for permission for that, just to have it.
So you knew, it's funny because remember the Young Guns?
It's, it's, it's never too early in a podcast to bring up the Young Guns.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna sing Bon Jovi, but, uh, you know, it was, it was, uh, gosh, Kevin McCarthy was one of them, Paul Ryan, and then Eric, right?
Whoever the hell, Eric something.
Boner!
Boner, yeah.
Yeah.
So, you know, they've all faded away.
They were all these young stalwarts, and they all faded away.
Well, at least Paul Ryan faded away in a similar way.
He ended up running the government like the government is kind of supposed to be, which kind of means you got to, you know, give and take a little bit, talk to the Democrats.
Kevin McCarthy did the same thing in some weird way.
But it turns out if you want, like, the other party to help you out a little bit, it might be a good idea not to.
Light them on fire and throw them under a bus both directions on the shows before that happens.
First of all, before we talk about any of this, because you've brought up a better subject, I got so pumped up as a kid watching Young Guns.
It was right at the right time for me.
I put on a cowboy outfit as a little kid.
I listened to Bon Jovi's, Wanted Dead or Alive.
I got in gunfights.
I jumped over the bed.
I rolled.
What a great time.
We need like another good fun Western, don't we?
We got it.
We need it bad.
We need Emilio Estevez shooting somebody out of a bathtub.
When it comes to Kevin McCarthy, You and I, how many rounds did it take?
28?
42?
105?
15 rounds for him to get elected.
We said, first of all, this is embarrassing.
It's absolutely an absurdity that he continued on this doomed quest to become Speaker of the House.
That he was going to get kicked out on his ass the moment that he ran across any of these crazy people.
If you would have given me odds, Matt Gaetz would have been my number one draft pick in terms of who was going to get him tossed.
It wasn't worth it, but also I love the part of this where Kevin McCarthy, who I do not feel bad for, whatsoever.
Nobody should feel bad for Kevin McCarthy.
This is a person who has sold his soul for so much less.
You know, Judas got more out of what he did than what Kevin McCarthy did.
And he has absolutely sold out America at every single turn.
He sold his soul to everybody who would even take a bid on it.
At the heart of this thing, though, Nick, I got to tell you, this is, it's such a sideshow.
It's...
It's such a ridiculous sideshow in every way, shape, and form.
And all it does is it shows itself to be a symptom that our government is not only dysfunctional, but it's absolutely irrevocably broken.
There's no way for this government to do anything that's completely by design.
For decades now, our government has been kneecapped, it's been reduced in power, it's been bought, it's been sold, it's been corrupted.
Things like this are going to keep happening.
The same way that we have an impeachment inquiry right now that has nothing to do with anything.
You know, if you get one of these people on Fox News after they've had a briefing, all they can say is Joe Biden did something when he wasn't.
President when he wasn't vice president.
This is just it's it's basically the equivalent of watching a dog chase its tail, but way less cute and way less productive.
I mean, yeah, it's like, well, if the dog dies after it's chastened, after chasing the tail.
Did you, by the way, let's do a little empathy meter here.
Did you feel bad for John Boehner when he was weeping in the same similar situation?
John Boehner, I gotta tell you, I kind of miss the days where John Boehner would start talking about how he was the son of a tavern owner.
That was fun.
What he did wasn't fun.
I'm enjoying new John Boehner, which is just John Boehner getting high and drinking wine and talking shit about all these Republicans.
So no, I didn't particularly feel bad for him because he was part of the Republican Party that created the modern republic.
Okay, fair enough, fair enough.
Now, you know, we can always try to find some positive lining here, or silver lining in this whole thing.
Like, if you might remember, Kevin McCarthy was in the situation to be up for speaker back in 2015 or whatever that was.
He couldn't speak.
I don't know if you remember, he had this weird, like, I don't know if it was an impediment where he would say words that don't mean what he thought they meant.
And he fixed that.
I don't know.
It was like, did they screw his head on high tire?
Or something happened where he was able to at least speak properly.
So that's good.
Hey, congrats to him.
Congrats.
But, yeah.
But this is like, you know, in another world, another universe, like this guy, McCarthy would probably enjoy some version of pain and emotional affliction.
Like, he's that guy that wanted it because he, this is all he did.
He accepted this role knowing that they were going to simply torture him for this.
And I think he figured, oh, they're just going to go along.
We'll get this deal done, whatever.
But, like, as soon as he did a CR.
Now, what you're talking about is...
As far as what the eight other people that joined Gates, this is all it is, it's minority rule, right?
This is the problem we've had with the democracy issue for the last several years, is that the minority has been controlled.
Sorry, not several years, for a long time.
The minority is controlling a lot of these things, but that is sort of the nutshell right there, is that we don't have any ability to reflect what the will of the people want.
No, there's no way.
And we would be remiss talking about this if we didn't mention the fact that the Democrats would have happily saved him.
They've even said as much, except for he basically stone-cold Steve Austin threw up double birds at him and just continually provoked them and pushed them.
And eventually they're like, okay, you know what?
Screw you, pal.
We're done.
That's it.
Congratulations.
You're in a crazy party.
They can't do anything, can't move anything forward.
What the House Freedom Caucus is doing and, you know, from a political analysis point, I'm going to go ahead and say something.
I'm going to take values out of it.
You know what I mean?
I'm going to go ahead and I'm not going to sit here and tell you that they're good people or that they have a good agenda because they're not good people and they have a terrible agenda.
They're doing What you're supposed to do.
You know what I mean?
These are the avenues that are presented to you.
Kevin McCarthy said, I'll make it to where one member can get me out of my seat.
What are you supposed to do?
Say, no, that's not fair.
You know, it's like a game of Monopoly.
If someone's going to hand you Boardwalk and Park Place, you take Boardwalk and Park Place.
Oh, I don't have to land on it?
Cool.
Do I have to pay for it?
Sure.
Like, that is what has happened here, is the House Freedom Caucus is taking advantage of the minoritarian systems that are in place.
And Kevin McCarthy, I don't know how to tell you this, not a good Monopoly player.
Like, I'm surprised he didn't choke on the pieces, Nick.
You know, that somebody didn't have to heim like a hotel out of his throat.
This is one of the most poorly played political hands that anyone has ever played.
It's embarrassing for him.
It's troubling for what the Republican Party is.
I've been telling people for years now that they're in the middle of a really bloody civil war that will determine a lot about what happens in this country.
And he's a victim of it.
He is a casualty that we'll look back on.
Nobody will remember him.
Nobody will remember this speakership for anything besides its futility and embarrassment.
Like, what did you do this for?
You know, we said it before, if Kevin McCarthy or anybody on his staff listens, like, it's not worth it, pal.
Like, this was never, ever worth it.
But now, it's just endemic of what's going on.
Like, this is who they are, and this is where we're heading.
Well, we have to also remember that, you know, in 2015 and into 2016, like the Republican Party was pretty much dead.
They were going to lose the election for the president.
They were going to lose control of all three branches or in the White House, Congress and Senate.
You know, it was really like the death rattle.
And then out of, you know, this most random announcement 10 days before with, you know, Mike Comey and all these different things.
Somehow resuscitated it, but this is still the death rattle we've seen over these last two years.
And that's really the problem.
Like, think about this.
Kevin McCarthy, like, started the Tea Party.
He was sort of the founder of the Tea Party, right?
And from that, out of that is what, you know, doomed him, even though he was the one who was part of that at Ground Zero.
So, it really is amazing to me that this is going to keep happening.
Now, the other thing that I think is interesting is that We keep saying that this is the first time this has happened.
First time we've had a president or impeached twice or a first time a former president has been indicted.
First time a speaker has been voted out.
That will not stop.
We are going to continually have more of these first time ever things, unprecedented things, which we'll get into the next segment, I suppose, because we now need to predict what the next first thing is going to be.
But that is also that that is what shows you.
I think that's the absolute proof that this party is dying.
It will have to die at some point and something else will have to come out of it because they can't govern if they're going to eat each other like this.
It's basically a drowning person that is either going to drown and fall to the bottom of the ocean or it will drown everyone else climbing on top of them.
That's all this is.
You brought up McCarthy's position in the Tea Party.
Nobody feels bad for Victor von Frankenstein when Frankenstein's monster comes after him.
You did this.
This is your handiwork.
You wanted it.
You got it.
It sucks.
Congratulations.
Also, the reason why speakers of the House haven't been ousted is because most of them have the good conscience to resign.
I'm always going to remember Nick, because there's little things that happen in our politics that kind of get lost.
He tweeted, bring it on.
Like, what did you think was going to happen?
You pissed off everybody?
The only friend that you have in Washington, D.C.
It isn't a dog.
It's Marjorie Taylor Greene.
That's it.
That's all you've got.
Nick, on this subject, by the way, like, we have to talk about this.
Who in the hell is going to do this job?
The two main contenders, well, I guess there's three now that I mention it.
There's Jim Jordan, whose name has been floating around.
There's Scalise.
There's a possibility that he could get there.
Everybody's talking about Donald Trump.
I got news for you all.
Donald Trump's got other things going on.
And on top of that, He wouldn't do it because it's a job.
He would have to go into work and actually do something.
It's probably going to be Jordan or Scalise, but why would either one of them want this job?
I mean, when Liz Cheney weighs in against Jim Jordan, then you know you probably got a bad choice there.
But yes, if we ever thought that, well, you know what?
It's like, okay, accelerate the whole process.
Let's get the whole house burnt down to the ground and then the basement too.
That's sort of what you'd end up doing with Jim Jordan there.
And Scalise in this white nationalist power hour, who knows what would happen there?
And you probably wouldn't get anything done.
Scalise, though, would pretend he would do that.
You know, he probably would get voted out, too.
Like, the question here is, can either of these guys assume the speakership and change the rules so you need more than one person?
But at this point, they had what?
They had six or seven.
So you need to make it where you had to have 10 or something, or a majority, to vote to begin the process of the motion to vacate.
You've been listening to the free part of this episode.
If you'd like to hear the rest of this great conversation, head over to patreon.com slash muckrakepodcast and subscribe for lots more additional content, including a Discord server and live shows.
We'd really appreciate it if you could give it a try.
Export Selection