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Oct. 4, 2023 - RadixJournal - Richard Spencer
12:28
Just Nominate Trump For Speaker Already!

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Mr. Speaker, my friend from Oklahoma says that my colleagues and I who don't support Kevin McCarthy would plunge the House and the country into chaos.
I don't think voting against Kevin McCarthy is chaos.
I think $33 trillion in debt is chaos.
I think that facing a $2.2 trillion annual deficit is chaos.
I think that not passing single-subject spending bills is chaos.
I think the fact that we have been governed in this country since the mid-'90s by continuing resolution and omnibus is chaos.
And the way to liberate ourselves from that is a series of reforms to this body that I...
Well, Matt Gaetz has blown his wad on this one.
What he could not accomplish back in January, that is finding a speaker other than Kevin McCarthy.
He certainly...
Now, the thing that Matt Gaetz will struggle with is to really justify what he's doing.
Over the long haul, but also more immediately just to find another speaker to take his place.
And I think in commenting on this, I think I'm just going to jump right to the chase on this one.
I think that this will be remembered as an utterly useless and futile gesture.
I believe that's the quote from Animal House.
Unless they do something very bold and actually put Donald Trump into the Speaker's chair and make him two heartbeats away from the presidency and perhaps, I'm not a lawyer, shield him from any kind of liability or criminal proceedings.
Now, I say this because otherwise...
None of this really makes sense or it seems exceedingly personal.
So, I've heard some theories about why Matt Gaetz has done this.
Kevin McCarthy is a corrupt politician.
He can be blackmailed due to various Native American funding schemes that went to his family.
I don't know anything about this.
I certainly don't.
I certainly don't think someone like Kevin McCarthy is above it, but that seems a bit like a rationalization.
All politicians have their issues like this, and I'm not sure that Kevin McCarthy is worse.
Now, there's also the theory that there was a years-long ethics investigation into Matt Gaetz.
He was investigated by the FBI and others.
But there was a congressional investigation, and Kevin McCarthy let this go through.
Is this Matt Gaetz's ultimate revenge of, you need to stick by me, and if not, I'm going to push you off the ledge?
Maybe.
Matt Gaetz is...
Denied that.
He said, I'm not mad about it.
I've been investigated and cleared, as he has been.
The justification that Matt Gaetz gave was, and that is the overt, rhetorical justification that he gave.
Isn't particularly compelling.
So I've listened to Matt Gaetz on a Twitter space, or X space now, I'm sorry.
I've listened to his speech on the floor of Congress, and I've listened to a couple of interviews.
And this is basically what I'm hearing.
You know, you say we're chaotic.
No, it's Kevin McCarthy.
He's chaotic because he doesn't keep his promises or something like this.
There was also a gesture towards the de-dollarization, which is apparently taking effect, which, you know, we need to solve the debt because of de-dollarization.
This sounds, I don't know.
Sounds a bit like Russian propaganda, to be honest, about the world moving off the dollar.
He also said some things that actually I agree with, and I actually imagine that the majority of the country agrees with.
Things like a line-item veto or a single-subject bill.
I guess he was focusing on a single-subject bill.
Line-item veto would be the...
Power of the presidency.
I remember this was talked about in the 1990s, where the president could veto pork here and there.
From Congress, they're saying a single subject bill.
So let's not have these continuing resolutions or these omnibus packages.
No single person has read the whole bill.
It would almost be impossible to do so.
It's the King James Bible and complete works of Shakespeare times 20 all put into something.
Why don't we have single subjects, Bill, and we'll be here working hard for the American public, getting things done, cutting the pork, doing what...
We say we're going to do, and there are no secrets.
Now, that's all fair, and I actually bet you could get the majority of the public to get behind that.
It's hard to kind of disagree with such a proposition.
The only problem is that he doesn't have, the Republicans don't have the votes to put forward something like this, but also, you're not anywhere closer to getting there by ousting I'm sure McCarthy agrees with that in principle.
Are you going to find some other person, some unnamed new speaker, Jim Jordan or Scalise or one of these kind of get-along boys who have enough friends throughout all the little factions of the GOP?
No.
None of this is happening.
So Gates is rhetorically justifying this action.
Through this kind of heady talk, almost Ron Paul talk.
You know, Ron Paul was tolerated for years, and he'd get down in Congress and be like, oh, we need to go back on gold and bring the troops home.
And on some level, it wasn't that what he was saying was in a way so inflammatory or controversial.
On some level, everyone agreed with him.
It's a very nice thing to say.
It's difficult to argue against outside of saying it's not very pragmatic.
So, Gates is justifying this move, which is absolutely chaos-generating.
It's knifing the leader of your party in Congress.
It is making headlines, getting everyone talking about it.
I mean, here I am.
But there's no real justification.
For it, outside of this kind of rhetorical flourish of, you know, one day we shouldn't have a national debt, and one day we should have single subject bill, and one day we should have term limits, and one day we should have a line item veto, and one day, whatever.
Gold standard.
Who knows?
Because it's all kind of virtue signaling.
It's all kind of feel-good rhetoric.
Doesn't mean I disagree with it, necessarily, but it is bullshit at the end of the day.
So, this does lead open the question of what is it really about?
Is it personal?
Is it grandstanding because Gates wants to run for the governorship of Florida in a few years once DeSantis turns out?
What is it about?
Why did Nancy Mace do it?
Kind of weird, you know, put her finger up to the wind, go this way and that Republican congressman.
She sounds like a Democrat.
She sounds like she's pro-life.
She sounds like she's pro-choice.
She sounds this.
She's pro-Trump.
Who knows what she is?
Why did she join this gaggle?
What is going on?
And I guess what I would suggest is that it's only going to be a stupid stunt.
Matt Gaetz does something that's actually bold and meaningful.
So before Kevin McCarthy was vacated, the Congress passed a kind of stopgap spending bill that I believe is 45 days or something like this, and it does not add new funding for Ukraine, but it continues the existing funding.
I mean, it's all very nebulous.
But there was no shutdown.
Things are going to keep going forward.
And I'm sure Gates would have loved a shutdown, but now he got this.
But again, it becomes a cheap political stunt unless there's some there there.
Now, Hannity opened up his show, and I saw the clip of this on Twitter.
He opened up his show saying that, you know, Donald Trump is...
Considering becoming Speaker of the House.
He's willing to help out the party, however he can.
You know, how selfless of him.
You don't need to be a congressman to be Speaker of the House.
That's not in the Constitution.
Maybe it should be, or maybe they thought it wasn't there when they wrote it.
But every Speaker of the House has been from Congress, but that's not a legally binding thing.
Donald Trump could become Speaker of the House.
He could be two heartbeats away from the presidency.
So he would only have to hang two people, in other words.
That is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and I'm, I guess, only half joking.
The other thing is that you could plausibly argue that he should have immunity of some kind from state and federal prosecution.
All of these civil cases need to be delayed indefinitely.
After all, he's doing the people's business.
How could you be...
Harassing him in this way, needless to say, throwing him in prison, when there's all this important work for the American people that needs to be done, and sleeves need to be rolled up, etc., etc., etc.
It also, I mean, I know it's crazy, and when we were on our members-only podcast today, I was kind of throwing it out there half-jokingly, and people chuckled.
I mean, it is kind of crazy, but then, in a way, could the Republicans vote against it?
I mean, do they really have the balls to vote against something like that?
It would be a bold move.
They all voted for Donald Trump twice.
They all declare their support for Donald Trump.
There are not very many Liz Cheneys in Congress.
She's gone.
Why not, in a way?
You're not going to get anywhere closer to any of these goals with Jim Jordan or Scalise.
You're just as far away, and you might even be further.
I think there's probably more love for Kevin McCarthy in Congress as a whole than there is for Jim Jordan, of all people.
So what are you doing if you're not actually achieving something?
You're making this statement that is going to be Again, I'm ambivalent about all these things.
I think the GOP is pretty crazy, but I don't know.
I find their insanity pretty entertaining.
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