Sean covers the latest battle for the House Speakership and just how it matters! The concessions to the Speaker's power has been real but it's time to switch to governing now...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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| I knew we'd get there and we're getting there. | |
| Uh, the latest vote has Kevin McCarthy at 214 votes. | |
| He needs 218, as you know, And Jim Jordan got six. | |
| Now there are two other Republicans that did not vote today that had to go home for varying reasons. | |
| I believe one congressman's wife was having a baby. | |
| That's a pretty good reason to go home. | |
| But they are flying back, is my understanding. | |
| And according to sources that I'm talking to, they fully expect to be in session tomorrow. | |
| If they don't get this accomplished, it may even happen tonight during my show. | |
| And by the way, we have an audience show tonight, which is going to be a lot of fun. | |
| I hope you'll join us for that. | |
| Um, I realized uh, because I I do pay attention. | |
| Sweet baby James keeps me up to speed. | |
| Linda keeps me up to speed um because I don't have an email account, and I don't do social media. | |
| And uh, you know, they bring in certain sample copies of of things that people are saying or themes that might be out there. | |
| And I realized in all of this, and I said this partly yesterday, is that you know, I'm in the communication business, but clearly my communication skills are lacking because it's not becoming clear to everybody where I have been throughout this whole process. | |
| It's never been about a personality to me. | |
| That that really never came up. | |
| Uh I'm not mad at the 20 people uh that felt that they needed to fight for more assurances and insurance policies to so that we don't get burned again like we got burned, you know, Boehner and a bunch of other people over the years. | |
| We know John, but did you see Boehner when he went back with Pelosi crying again? | |
| I I mean it's just horrible. | |
| I never met that man one time in my life where I didn't get halfway close to him and he doesn't just reek of red stale wine and cigarettes. | |
| It's like, oh, he's in the perfect business now. | |
| He's in the he's in the marijuana business. | |
| He belongs there. | |
| Maybe that'll help him, help his breath. | |
| I don't know. | |
| Although this They do say when you smoke dope, you get happy. | |
| Happy and hungry, right? | |
| Like the seven days. | |
| I don't know. | |
| Does it make you cry more? | |
| Because if it makes him cry more, I'd tell him to go back to drink it because he cries an awful lot of time. | |
| I don't know that he ever stops crying. | |
| I wouldn't know the difference. | |
| You know, I I I don't get this public display of emotion like that. | |
| There's something off with him, but so the assurances have not been right. | |
| So let me let me really go back in time. | |
| And when I first became aware that this is going to be a problem, I had a lot of conversations. | |
| I won't reveal private conversations that I had. | |
| There are sources. | |
| I am a member of the press. | |
| Uh I am a talk show host. | |
| I've described my my job or given my job description out many times. | |
| We do news, straight news, investigative reporting. | |
| Uh we do opinion. | |
| We're out front about it. | |
| We do, I'm a conservative. | |
| I've been probably the biggest Freedom Caucus uh supporter over the years of anybody on radio or television that I know of. | |
| The great one Mark Levin is up there too, of course. | |
| Um, but not many people, Not many of us have supported them from day one. | |
| And you can ask Mark Meadows. | |
| You can ask Jim Jordan. | |
| You can ask Andy Biggs, who's mad at me right now. | |
| You can ask any of them if uh if I've not been anything but supportive of them. | |
| And I have been. | |
| But anyway, so my my involvement in this process goes back to December. | |
| And a big part of my vacation time, more than I wanted to spend was on the phone dealing with this issue with a strong admonition, advice, encouragement that everybody get this all worked out before January 3rd. | |
| They didn't do it. | |
| There weren't there was not the urgency and motivation that I would have liked to have seen. | |
| And I'm not blaming anybody. | |
| I'm not even I'm not mad at anybody in this process. | |
| I really am not. | |
| And at the end of the day, you know, everybody keeps saying the same thing and the same talking points. | |
| A lot of the things that you're just hearing about had already been mostly discussed and maybe if not completely agreed to certainly were on the table. | |
| And yeah, Kevin was was reluctant to give back on the case, for example, the threshold of the motion to vacate, where at first he agreed to five people. | |
| No speaker has ever done this in the past. | |
| He's now opening himself up to a check and balance of his caucus. | |
| In other words, if he deviates from his commitments to America, if he deviates from the investigations that he has pledged to allow oversight and various committees to conduct, then anyone now, he reduced it to any one Republican member can go forward with a motion to vacate, | |
| which would stop all business in the House, and it would be a confidence vote or no confidence vote, depending on how it comes out on Kevin McCarthy. | |
| Um I know that Kevin spent well over a year putting together his commitments to America. | |
| I've gone over it, went over it yesterday in great specificity and great detail, and he signed his name to it. | |
| So that to me is we can hold him accountable in ways that no other Republican speaker has ever been held accountable. | |
| To me, it's never been about Kevin McCarthy. | |
| It's never been. | |
| You know, it early on I can tell you that there were groups of us that had conversations about a lot of people being speaker. | |
| And probably the consensus candidate of all the people that I know and talk to was Jim Jordan. | |
| Kevin McCarthy knows this. | |
| And Jim Jordan from day one was an absolute dead set, no way not gonna happen. | |
| And I don't think he'll mind me sharing this with you, but he said he says nobody should want that job. | |
| That was one of the first things he said. | |
| He goes, honestly, Sean, you know, you asked me to run for Senate, and I'd I didn't want to run. | |
| Um I feel I'm where God wants me to be. | |
| I really want to run this investigation in the Judiciary Committee. | |
| And to be frank, there is nobody who can run it better than him, and that's the investigation into whether the FBI's been politicized or the DOJ's been weaponized. | |
| So what I've been trying to tell people is all of these issues that have come up and all of the concessions that have been made, all of this has been on the table for at least a month that I know of. | |
| And I've spoken to many of the people behind the scenes about all of this. | |
| Like that there's been more concessions made in the last 24 hours in an effort to close the deal. | |
| It's actually in writing. | |
| What am I what are you telling me to look at? | |
| It's now adjourned till 10. | |
| Yeah, tonight. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Uh, which is I'll tell you why it's adjourned till 10. | |
| Would you like to know? | |
| I would like to know. | |
| Okay, so the final tally is 214 to 212, but there are two Republican supporters of McCarthy that are flying back to Washington, and now the real number's 216. | |
| That means there are six people now left holding out, and and I've asked a few of them, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna divulge a private conversation I've had with some of the members. | |
| And some people actually didn't like the fact that I was I had an aggressive debate with with Lauren Boebert. | |
| I like Lauren Boebert. | |
| And we put her on the program. | |
| We've supported her numerous times, have we not, Linda, both on radio and TV. | |
| We have, and through the campaign and everything. | |
| And I And I still like her just because we have a disagreement doesn't mean I don't like her. | |
| Um Matt Gates just hates, he just hates Kevin McCarthy. | |
| You say Kevin McCarthy is like Alka seltzer and water. | |
| So, but that's fine. | |
| He's felt like that for a long, long time. | |
| And he's told me that for a long, long time. | |
| I won't divulge the private conversation I had with him. | |
| And all these conversations have by and large been very friendly. | |
| I've called a couple of people out because a couple of people that I really thought should be looking for solutions, people that got everything that they initially asked for that were moving the bar, and that pissed me off. | |
| You know, when you say that you want the right to vacate, and then you get it, and then you demand three new things, or you walk him the last minute with a list of 30 things, which literally happened, which would render the speaker a figurehead. | |
| At that point, I don't really have patience for some of these people. | |
| So to the extent that I've been following this, it's spent a lot longer, and I realize I did not communicate this well enough to people. | |
| And here's where I am. | |
| If the Republicans follow through on their investigations, that is the origins of COVID. | |
| That would be Anthony Fauci. | |
| That would be, is the FBI politicized? | |
| Did the DOJ weaponized? | |
| I personally think we we need a church committee or something similar because of what we do already know about how the FBI's been politicized, et cetera. | |
| But that's a different story for a different day. | |
| Looking into the Biden family syndicate and Joe Biden's lies about never talking to Hunter about his business background, really dealing with him leveraging a billion dollars to get a prosecutor in Ukraine fired, knowing damn well that that prosecutor was looking into his son being paid millions that had no experience. | |
| Hunter admitted he had no experience. | |
| So there's a lot of work to do here, and I understand people's suspicions. | |
| What I think that have not communicated well is when you look at the motion to vacate, and one member is now the threshold. | |
| When you look at the concessions to the freedom caucus, you know, for example, more members on the rules committee, that has never happened to the freedom caucus. | |
| I've supported the freedom caucus from day one. | |
| You have more positions of prominence, more say than ever before. | |
| Or the pledge on term limits having a vote there, the pledge on voting on the border, uh the pledge on appropriations, and that every 14 of the appropriations votes will take place independently and separately, or the ability of any one member to offer floor amendments during the appropriations process. | |
| None of this has ever happened before. | |
| So these are great changes, institutional changes, and I would argue you can call it an insurance policy. | |
| And I'll add this too, and I've said this all week. | |
| Nobody wants to hear it. | |
| If Kevin doesn't keep his promises, I will lead the effort to remove him. | |
| I will say you didn't keep your word. | |
| So between the investigations, now, just the headlines on the his commitments to America on the economy, fighting inflation, creating jobs, making energy independence a top priority, reducing the price of heating and cooling your home and and the price at the pump, | |
| uh, strengthening our supply chain, ending dependence on China, securing our border, combating illegal immigration, supporting our police, but still uh cutting spending in Washington, uh refunding the police, not defunding the police, | |
| holding prosecutors accountable that support no bail laws, uh putting a crackdown on on DAs and prosecutors that will literally are letting people out, even though people selling fentanyl to our kids for crying out loud. | |
| It's insane. | |
| Uh we're gonna his parental bill of rights is gonna move forward. | |
| Every student can succeed. | |
| School choice is on their commitments to America. | |
| Uh telecare, new health care options, modernization of our medical care system, important. | |
| It is the future, whether you like it or not. | |
| I like telecare. | |
| I like being able to call my doctor. | |
| I'm not feeling this, this, this, and this. | |
| What do you think? | |
| Do you feel that, that, and that? | |
| Yes, yes, no. | |
| Okay, this is probably what you have. | |
| I'll call you in a prescription. | |
| You know what? | |
| I don't have to get my ass up and go drive 45 minutes to my doctor, which is how far away he is. | |
| Um I like that idea. | |
| Holding government accountable, preserving our constitutional freedoms. | |
| It's all on paper. | |
| And for, you know, I talk about the liberals. | |
| I hate Donald Trump. | |
| No, I hate him. | |
| I double hate him. | |
| And then, no, no, no, I triple hate him. | |
| I quadruple hate. | |
| I hate him more than you hate him. | |
| And it's like you got this group of people, some on radio and TV, and they're just showboaters. | |
| They're just not telling you the truth. | |
| And they just weren't involved in it, perhaps, as maybe maybe it's utter ignorance on their part. | |
| And some even attacking me, and they have no clue as to what has actually gone on. | |
| And at no point in this process, the commitment to America is everything I believe. | |
| It is the America First MAGA agenda. | |
| The same with the investigations. | |
| They're all needed. | |
| They're all warranted. | |
| They're all uh, you know, they've been necessary for some time. | |
| And here's the last thing I'll say. | |
| You know what? | |
| Republicans got to learn something. | |
| When you win, you gotta learn to win. | |
| And maybe the lesson out of this is they should have done this before January 3rd. | |
| But we're now getting to the point. | |
| Kevin McCarthy at 214. | |
| If he really has two more votes that'll happen tonight, that's why that they've adjourned since I guess 9.30 tonight. | |
| Um, and we'll be live, so we'll be covering it all. | |
| But anyway, so we're there. | |
| I think that you'll get the two other people. | |
| And if he doesn't keep his promises, we'll hold him accountable. | |
| It's really now you have the mechanism to do that, but we had it for a while now. | |
| That's my point to you. | |
| And nobody's nobody ever seems to want to talk about that part. | |
| Um, and there's been a lot of demagoguing by people and a lot of bar moving by people that has been very frustrating on my part because I kept asking, what do you want? | |
| What do you need? | |
| Tell us what do you think will be better for the institution? | |
| I asked all those questions. | |
| I talked to all these people. | |
| Hey there. | |
| I'm Mary Catherine Hamm. | |
| And I'm Carol Markowitz. | |
| We've been in political media for a long time. | |
| Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane. | |
| That's why we started normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity. | |
| We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor. | |
| We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously. | |
| So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass. | |
| You're our kind of people. | |
| Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. | |
| I'm Ben Ferguson. | |
| And I'm Ted Cruz. | |
| Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. | |
| Nationwide, we have millions of listeners. | |
| Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court. | |
| And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else. | |
| We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family. | |
| So Dell a verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts. | |
| Hey there. | |
| I'm Mary Catherine Hamm. | |
| And I'm Carol Markowitz. | |
| We've been in political media for a long time. | |
| Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane. | |
| That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity. | |
| We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor. | |
| We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously. | |
| So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass. | |
| You're our kind of people. | |
| Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. | |
| I'm Ben Ferguson. | |
| And I'm Ted Cruz. | |
| Three times a week we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. | |
| Nationwide, we have millions of listeners. | |
| Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes, inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court. | |
| And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else. | |
| We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family. | |
| So Delaware, verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts. | |
| All right, as we continue, 214 now, the number for Kevin McCarthy. | |
| Uh, until sometime later tonight, around probably around Hannity time, uh, they'll be back in session. | |
| Uh, we'll be monitoring the developments. | |
| We have two absences. | |
| Buck and Hunt are out of pocket. | |
| They're flying back for tonight's vote. | |
| My understanding is both will also join the 214. | |
| That leaves six no votes uh among the six. | |
| That would be Andy Biggs, uh, Congresswoman Bobert, uh, Congressman Crane, Gates, good, Harris, Rosendale, Montana. | |
| Uh, to get to 218, you would need two of those six people that would have to join with the 216 that will be there tonight. | |
| Whether they can make that happen tonight, I don't know. | |
| Uh, will it happen? | |
| I'm pretty confident at this point. | |
| We're not going to get this close to the finish line and not cross the plane. | |
| You know across the plane means, right, Linda? | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| What? | |
| Use it all the time. | |
| What is it? | |
| Gonna get across that plane. | |
| What does that mean? | |
| I'm crossing that plane. | |
| What plane? | |
| Here I come. | |
| What does it mean? | |
| Watch out. | |
| It's like an Abbott and Costello bit. | |
| We'll continue. | |
| Oh. | |
| All right, 25 down to the top of the hour. | |
| Big moment in Washington today, as we uh finally expected. | |
| I knew we'd get to this point at some point. | |
| Um I'm I'm just I'm at a point where I guess I'm just in a different spot because of of all the conversations that I've had since December on this very different top very topic. | |
| Uh if I have any frustration, it's that it didn't happen sooner, it was all preventable. | |
| It could have been worked out behind closed doors. | |
| I don't know. | |
| Maybe it's just because I'm naturally more of a private person. | |
| I just you know, this this family business that you deal with that's only family business. | |
| That that's not meant for uh your friends or your your neighbors or other people in your life. | |
| It's you know, family business. | |
| You know, you have a family member that has a problem. | |
| Sometimes you keep it within the family so as to not embarrass a family member, but you work with them behind the scenes to help them. | |
| And that's the kind of stuff that keeps you up at night. | |
| I mean, literally, this is the stuff where you can't sleep. | |
| Oh, that's all true. | |
| I mean, you know what I naively once believed? | |
| Oh, you raise your kids once they graduate from college, your job is done. | |
| How stupid is that? | |
| That's the fakest news ever. | |
| That is that is so dumb on my part. | |
| Just the opposite. | |
| You get more worried, you get more concerned. | |
| There's so much bad stuff out there. | |
| A lot, man. | |
| Man, and then I worry about like you're a young parent. | |
| I really do. | |
| And I think about now you are a tiger mom, and you I'm not sure I subscribe to that. | |
| I believe that you're gonna be investigated as a domestic terrorist. | |
| I already have been. | |
| Because of your uh appearances my vocalness. | |
| Your vocal appearances at school board meetings, so we know whether we know what the FBI is doing on that in that regard. | |
| Here she comes again. | |
| And if we ever get two eighteen, Jim, Jim Jordan's probably gonna see your name there quite a bit. | |
| I love Jim Jordan. | |
| That guy's a big thing. | |
| Everybody loves Jim Jordan. | |
| Yeah, because he actually is a man of his word, and there's like, you know, not a whole lot of people like that. | |
| You know, the fascinating thing to me about all of this, do you know how many people went to Jim Jordan and said, Jim, why don't you do the job? | |
| Uh I think it was Lauren Boebert. | |
| People think that I don't like Lauren Boebert. | |
| I know I like Lauren Boebert fine. | |
| Can I comment on that for a minute as a woman? | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, uh boys. | |
| Uh here we go. | |
| A lot of people had a problem with the fact that they felt that you over talked her and that it was a heated exchange. | |
| It's a Hannity hot seat. | |
| That's what we call it. | |
| And and I watched the interview several times. | |
| I will say it was uncomfortable. | |
| It was. | |
| It was meant to be. | |
| And I think that you acknowledge that after the interview and the next day, to your credit. | |
| Um, I think that we all have moments of brilliance and moments maybe we can do a little better. | |
| I don't feel that way. | |
| I feel like perfectly. | |
| And again, it's as my opinion. | |
| So that's what I'm saying. | |
| Oh, it doesn't mean and I say it's I'm getting to the good part. | |
| You have to be patient. | |
| I know it's hard. | |
| It's hard. | |
| Um, but you know, this is one of those moments where you had opinions, she had opinions, and you discussed them. | |
| We are allowed to be friends and colleagues and partners and have differences of opinion. | |
| That's okay. | |
| She got her point across, you got your point across. | |
| There was a dig in a job here and there. | |
| We keep it moving. | |
| She's a good congresswoman. | |
| She'll continue to be a good congresswoman. | |
| Um, and I wish her the best. | |
| She had a very tough race. | |
| And which we supported. | |
| Right. | |
| And if uh if she finds herself in a tough race down the line, I I would support her in a minute. | |
| I think she's done a great job. | |
| I think she's courageous. | |
| And I don't really for me it's never been personal. | |
| For a lot of people, it got personal. | |
| By the way, I want to remind you of our friends of MyPillow. | |
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| So this is where we are, and uh we'll see what happens. | |
| By the way, Congressman Chip Roy, who was very instrumental in bridging this gap, very instrumental. | |
| And I've appealed to some people. | |
| I've actually had some arguments with people that you know I'm friendly with on this program, and I don't really care. | |
| I'm just like, tell me what you want. | |
| And what I would hear, you know, nothing but crickets, it was pissing me off. | |
| Because I feel the American people were getting hurt at that point. | |
| If there's something specific you needed, and there were people that gave me very specific things that they wanted, and I appreciated their honesty. | |
| And then I communicated it to you know every side, and I tried to, you know, do my little part. | |
| I by the way, I don't want to overstate a part I played in this. | |
| I'm just saying I talked to these guys, uh, a number of them, and with the goal of them following through on their commitments to America and following through on their promise to investigate. | |
| We only have one half of one branch of government here, and I want them to make the most of it. | |
| A line that I used with a lot of them was you will either all succeed together or you will all fail together. | |
| And that's just a fact. | |
| If they follow through on the promises that I think are kind of locked in cement, the investigations, the commitments to America, and and some of the new things that have been brought on that we've talked about ad nauseum, uh investigations, votes on term limits, on immigration, motion to vacate any one member threshold, et cetera. | |
| You know, look, you can go back to our conservative uh conservative solutions caucus. | |
| Right. | |
| I did what was that? | |
| 2014, I didn't. | |
| We wrote it over Christmas 2013. | |
| Economy, uh implement the MacPenny plan, our friend Connie Mack. | |
| Now it's got to be a nickel. | |
| That was a great idea, though. | |
| Great. | |
| It was if you took a penny out of every single spending dollar, you would have balanced the budget in less than seven years. | |
| Now it's probably gonna be five cents, maybe ten cents out of every dollar to ever get there. | |
| We health care and health savings accounts. | |
| Now you can add telecare to that, or our good friend Dr. Josh Umber uh in Wichita, and of course his healthcare cooperative, which has been duplicated well over a thousand times across the country with great success. | |
| You only pay fifty bucks a month as an adult for unlimited doctor visits. | |
| He negotiates directly with pharmaceutical companies. | |
| If you have high blood pressure, you leave his office with your blood pressure medicine and you paid five bucks for it. | |
| Uh, you know, it's just a great system. | |
| Telemedicine. | |
| You know, it's great that I can call my doctor and not drive 45 minutes. | |
| We were talking about this in 2014. | |
| Term limits, that was item number four, if my memory serves me correctly. | |
| Six years in Congress, two terms in the Senate. | |
| That's it. | |
| Education, school choice, immigration, secure our borders first. | |
| That was all on our conservative solution caucus. | |
| That was back in 2014. | |
| What year is this now? | |
| Eight years later. | |
| It's a terrible it's terrible. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Almost we're on going on year nine. | |
| Um, you know, and I I I love these wannabes out there. | |
| They just all they want to do is Hannity, you know. | |
| They have they know nothing about this process. | |
| Nothing. | |
| They know nothing about what has been discussed and what was being asked for. | |
| They know nothing about they don't even have a source in Washington. | |
| I've spoken to all of the key players in this throughout this process at some point or another. | |
| And some are mad at me now. | |
| And others have actually said that makes a lot of sense. | |
| And the idea was that you, the American people, get served. | |
| And the at the end of the day, the equation is what is in the best interest of the American people. | |
| You know, and then I hear over and over again. | |
| I keep hearing, well, we can't have another John Boehner. | |
| But you yeah, damn right. | |
| You're nobody wants another John Boehner. | |
| You know, or you know, uh Paul Ryan when he remembered he we had all these show votes on repealing, replacing Obamacare. | |
| Then when it mattered, it didn't happen. | |
| Well, Hannity, we don't need another omnibus. | |
| don't conflate what the Republicans in the Senate did that McCarthy and every Republican in the House was against and we were outspoken about it before we went on vacation it was a bad idea was bad from the beginning But you gotta get to a point here where common sense and a common goal wins out here. | |
| The great irony in this, and again, I'm I'm pretty objective to this process. | |
| There's no emotion in this for me. | |
| There's no personality. | |
| It's it's not personal, it's business. | |
| And this is about the business of making this a better country. | |
| It's about the business of them being public servants and serving you, the American people. | |
| It's the business of conservatism applied works. | |
| So I kept reinforcing, and I've been saying this all week, that the commitments to America are a lock. | |
| They will vote on those items. | |
| Those items will likely not become law until we get the Senate back and the White House back. | |
| But we've got to do that too. | |
| And then it's also about these investigations. | |
| All of this signed off on. | |
| Now, to have the assurances that the 21, they got them all. | |
| Chip Roy will bring us, you know, is inside the investigation as inside the negotiations as he wants. | |
| Uh, but he played a massive role in all of this. | |
| What are they going to accuse him of being a rhino? | |
| No. | |
| And I'm doing I don't fault the people for wanting assurances that we don't get another Boehner. | |
| I don't I really don't fault them for that. | |
| Uh however, when you have the assurances and you have your list and your list is agreed to, you don't add another 15 items to the list. | |
| That's when I get frustrated. | |
| If I do a business deal and I do some business deals, uh, and then we agree to terms, and then somebody comes back a day like, I want these other five things. | |
| That never that doesn't work in my world. | |
| It's like, okay, you negotiate it's called negotiating in good faith. | |
| And at some point here, there were some that I felt did not negotiate in good faith. | |
| However, you know what? | |
| It's time to move on. | |
| They got work to do. | |
| Uh there's no grudges here. | |
| Kevin McCarthy can't hold a grudge if he wanted to, because if he does, the threshold is one, and that is the motion to vacate, which could happen. | |
| Uh by the way, you want to know a really frightening thought? | |
| Um, we don't have a speaker right now, so that means Patty Murray was sworn in the Senate, President Pro Temp this week, making her second in line to the presidency until a new House speaker is named. | |
| I don't know there's a frightening scenario for me, even for the short period of time that it's going to be in play. | |
| Uh I don't see everybody laughing. | |
| I don't know. | |
| No, dude, I just I just said to Keity, we were in the break, and I was like, we were earlier before the show, and I was like, listen, I was like, Patrick Murray is one scary option. | |
| I'm like, this is who's next in line to run the country, God forbid. | |
| I mean, that is it's no good. | |
| Yeah. | |
| You know what? | |
| This let me go to Mike in North Carolina because he might help me make my point better. | |
| Mike in North Carolina, how are you, sir? | |
| Hey, Sean, long time caller. | |
| Yes, I'm listening, first time caller. | |
| Welcome aboard. | |
| Happy New Year. | |
| Happy New Year. | |
| Hey, I just had a real quick observation. | |
| Um, you know, we're talking conservative principles, and and here's where I come down on this. | |
| So when I look at a guy like Kevin McCarthy, and I look at his conservative review liberty score, he comes in at around 54%. | |
| I don't even know where where is the political liberty score come from. | |
| I'm not familiar with it. | |
| So that's from that's from conservative review. | |
| Um he comes in at 54%. | |
| When I look at the 20 holdouts, there are 11 that come in at an A rating. | |
| So in a 90% conservative, uh that they vote for conservative values and conservative principles. | |
| Three come in at B, and then the four uh newly elected aren't rated yet. | |
| When I when I look at the track record of those individuals, and I compare them with Kevin McCarthy. | |
| As a conservative, because I'm done with the Republican Party, I tend to side with those 20 holdouts. | |
| Let me ask you this. | |
| Because I think these are important questions. | |
| Kevin's made his promises on the investigations. | |
| Do you agree with them? | |
| I do. | |
| And I and I've been listening and then again. | |
| All right, now let me ask you another question. | |
| You've read the commitments to America. | |
| I've read them on air. | |
| Do you agree with that? | |
| Is that what we as conservatives believe in? | |
| By the way, Linda, post the conservative solution caucus thing as I wrote it in 2014 and put it up on the website on hen.com. | |
| But do you agree with the commitments to America? | |
| Because I, as a conservative, do. | |
| I I do, absolutely. | |
| But but what I but I what I think we have a problem with is when we continue to put guys like Kevin McCarthy or a Lindsay Graham, who comes in at 43%. | |
| Lindsay Graham endorses gun control. | |
| How are we putting them front and center on your show on other shows and saying, hey, this is what the Republican Party believes when they when those are the guys that turn around and stab us in the back at every opportunity. | |
| Here is where maybe because I was involved in this and I know where we ended up, All of the things that you just told me you agree with, and by the way, I'm not a Republican either. | |
| I don't want to be a Republican. | |
| I can't stand the Republican Party as it's currently configured. | |
| But remember, Kevin also has to deal with the Tuesday group, uh, the study group, uh, moderates, and and even liberal Republicans. | |
| So he's he's got a small margin, and he's got a thread of needle here, so I don't want to envy anybody taking that job, to be honest. | |
| But the bottom line for me is now that the agenda is set, I feel like, and there's no wiggle room for him to get out. | |
| I'll use Matt Gates' term. | |
| He's in a straitjacket, and there's a mechanism to get rid of him if he if he deviates. | |
| So we have it all set. | |
| Uh and to me, it's like once that's that's now locked down, now it's time to get to work. | |
| I'll give you the last word. | |
| And I could and I completely agree with you on that, Sean. | |
| But but to my to my second point, when we have a guy like Lindsey Grant, who's on your show at night. | |
| Yeah, Lindsay frustrates the hell out of me sometimes. | |
| I agree. | |
| I tell him to his face. | |
| I say you frustrate the hell out of me. | |
| Then why do we keep giving him a voice and putting him on every time it's election time? | |
| He's up there asking for money to keep control for the Republicans, and then he turns around and stabbed us in the back. | |
| That's that's what conservatives. | |
| I'm not gonna make this personal about Lindsay, but I will tell you what this Republicans in the Senate did with this omnibus bill is repulsive to me. | |
| And and I said it before I went on vacation, and I'll say it now that they did it. | |
| And they they hurt, they created a lot of warranted distrust. | |
| That's the Senate. | |
| Now they have we have control of the House. | |
| I think you'll be happy in the end with the results. | |
| Linda, put up the 2014 Conservative Solution Caucus. | |
| We were way ahead of the curve on all of this stuff. | |
| Not that anybody cares. | |
| All right, when we come back, the final negotiations that have been going on, Chip Freed being uh uh Chip Roy rather, being a big part of it, is gonna join us at the top of the hour. | |
| We'll get you your calls next hour as well. | |
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