Oct. 7, 2023 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
50:48
20231007_Hour_1
|
Time
Text
You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, happy Columbus Day weekend.
What a show we have for you this evening.
Welcome.
This first Saturday in October, the fall weather has hit the South, and it has been absolutely magnificent.
Hard to even come inside the studio.
Today was so glorious.
But here we are nonetheless and eager to get at it.
James Edwards and Keith Alexander.
And back with us again this evening is former United States Representative Steve King in Iowa.
As you know, he spent 18 years on those front lines of the political battlefield.
And our man in D.C. I tell you, even with all of the experience that he had, he didn't experience anything like this because it is unprecedented what we're going to be talking with him about tonight.
But first, let's say hello to him and welcome him back to the program.
Congressman King, great to have you always.
Night we mark on the calendar, especially this week.
Yeah, for sure.
How are you?
Well, there's just so much.
I'm boiling over, I think.
Although I've been streaming it out for the last ever since Tuesday, I haven't stopped talking, but I haven't run out of things to say at all.
It's a dramatic time in history.
It's a dramatic time in the United States Congress.
It's a most dramatic holdover weekend that I think I've seen, and it's very dramatic globally, too.
Not to mention there was some good football today.
So there's plenty to say.
University of Iowa, right?
Well, they actually won a game again.
Oh, I thought they got.
Come on, man.
Keith, you got to check that screen.
No, I'm five and one now.
So I just disappointed in their offense.
It just doesn't seem to do much.
But we've got a guy that he's our hometown boy, Cooper Degene.
He grew up, what would he be, about 10 miles from where I live right now.
And his mother played ball out there with my kids when they were in school.
I mean, she played on the girls' team.
My boys played on the boys' team, and they knew the difference back then.
But the son, Cooper DeGene, he's just a phenomenal player.
And he had another interception today and nearly brought it up to pick six.
So we're happy about that and happy that the Hawkeyes won.
And then I would say maybe the most thrilling game had to be Oklahoma, Texas today.
I'll tell you, it would take someone like you, Congressman, being on the program tonight to pull Keith out of Oxford, Mississippi, where Ole Miss is playing a home game today.
He normally stiffs us for those games, but he heard you were on, and so here he is.
Who did Penn State?
He's got a DVD, though.
We both know that, don't we?
Yeah, that's for sure.
That's for sure.
He actually puts him still on the VHS tapes, but nevertheless, Keith, work must intrude anyway.
So anyway, as you probably gathered, folks, Steve King is back on with us this evening to offer his opinion and insight on, as we mentioned, the unprecedented upheaval that has recently gripped Congress going back now about the last 10 days.
Hardly know where to start.
I guess if we do go back about a week or more, you had Matt Gates threatening to make his move to remove Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker.
McCarthy said, bring it on.
And he did.
Congressman, you have watched this play out up to this point.
You've undoubtedly talked to others who are in the current mix.
What's been your reaction?
Well, boy, first I would say with Gates, the 48 hours of when, right before he brought the motion and up until the press conference afterwards and including that, I'm not the greatest fan in the world of Gates, but he was bold.
He was strong.
He was courageous.
He was principled.
He was articulate.
And the gaggle press conferences that he did were stellar.
That's the kind of thing you'd want to send, you'd want to send your congressman to to school.
I mean, just he was, he was excellent in all of that.
And so that needed to be done.
Of course, I've had my own difficulties, significant difficulties with Kevin McCarthy.
And really, you know, we've got a lot of people now that are whining, 45 of the moderate Republicans, and I say that gently.
They signed a letter that they want to tighten the regulations down and never let this happen again.
And I think that instead, we got along for over two centuries with a motion to vacate the chair could be introduced by anyone.
And so they want to change the rules now that they didn't win by them.
But this happened.
McCarthy was removed from this speakership, not because of what happened most recently, because they elected him as speaker back in January, and they all should have known better.
They did the best thing they could do is that they more or less had a contract with him, which was verbal, I'm sure, but he was on tape and some of that.
A whole series of things that he was supposed to follow through on.
And those conditions are why he got the votes to be elected speaker, and he didn't follow through.
So for me, it came down to this, that if Matt Gates or one of the others don't bring the motion to vacate the chair, then they didn't keep their word because they said, if you don't keep your word, Kevin McCarthy, and you don't have a history of keeping your word.
If you don't keep your word, we're going to bring a motion to vacate the chair and we'll remove you from the speakership.
So that's what they did.
Matt Gates kept his word and so did seven others.
This was, of course, one of the major concessions that McCarthy had offered.
He had to make them in order to become the speaker.
During that 15 rounds of voting back in January.
And by the way, folks, Congressman King was on with us in that second week of January of this year to break it down as it was happening the first time.
But let's ask the why.
What were the reasons for the Freedom Caucus's action here?
Now, Gates is getting, I guess he's sort of the face of it, but as you mentioned, it was Gates and seven others.
Funding for Ukraine, I believe, was a big one.
And if I'm not mistaken, they wanted the ability to vote up or down on the funding for certain agencies and projects as opposed to a yes or no vote on the thing as a whole.
The 45-day stop gap that McCarthy struck with the Democrats was another point of contention.
Is that close to accurate on what sort of brought this to a head?
Well, it is.
I think in the end, the CR, the continuing resolution, the 45-day resolution, which was a bundle of things they didn't get a chance to bring any amendments or anything to, that was the final straw.
But the commitment was to bring all 12 appropriation bills to the floor.
We've got 12 appropriations subcommittees, and their job is to develop the expertise on each of the topics that are before those subcommittees and produce a bill that has the best judgment of the well-informed committee members, bring that to the floor,
and then that appropriation bill, all 12 of them, need to come to the floor under an open rule so that any member can walk down there and write an amendment on a napkin if you want to and toss it down and lay it in front of the clerk and take that amendment up, debate it, and force a recorded vote on it.
And I played that card over and over again when we had open rules before this thing melted down and we went into the forever continuing resolutions because leadership would shut down my legislation, but I could always get amendments to the floor.
And so when Jeff Flake was in the House running for Senate, they accused him of not passing any bills.
And so his staff went back and did a spreadsheet of the most amendments that had been brought.
It was Jeff Flake.
I was second.
And then I was a close second, actually.
And then the highest percentage of those, I was number two in most amendments offered.
I was significantly above anybody else in percentage of amendments passed.
Those amendments often are bills themselves.
So the leadership shut that down because they couldn't control what was happening on the floor.
And the reflection vote of we the people was showing up by the actions of the members of Congress.
And leadership wanted to run the whole show.
And that's why they shut.
Oh, by the way, I should tell you why they shut this down too.
It was the Democrats, Democrats were bringing amendments to the floor under the open rule, under appropriation bill.
And they started bringing amendments that any place where there was any kind of federal hook, they would take down any symbol of, let me, any symbol of the South, the battle flag of Northern Virginia, call it the Confederate flag for shorthand.
They would take that down everywhere and amendment after amendment.
And they were just beating up on Republicans, beating up on white people and turning it into a race situation.
And I walked through my office while this was going on and I saw, actually, I think it was Kakeem Jeffries on the floor at the time.
And I saw what was going on.
I thought, and I just asked my staff quick, what's happening down there?
I remember yesterday, of course.
As soon as I understood what was going on, which probably took about 10 seconds, I ran to the floor.
And I got the floor and I was able to claim it for five minutes.
And I gave a speech down there about the pride of the South.
So this flag doesn't represent slavery.
This flag represents Southern pride.
And as it flew over the armory of Northern Virginia, when General Robert E. Lee, when he surrendered to General Grant, he asked if he said, he said, when that negotiation, he said, I want to be able to, can we keep our weapons?
And Grant said, you can stack the arms.
The officers can keep their sidearms.
Well, he said, let my boys keep their horses.
It's their horses that they're bringing to war and they need to go home and farm.
And Grant said, you can keep your horses.
And then that was more or less the deal of surrender otherwise.
And when that went out, a northern regiment then fired off a volley in celebration.
And Grant shut that down.
And he said, that's no way to celebrate from this day forward, these rebels are our countrymen.
And that said, keep your southern pride, keep your horses, and keep your sidearms.
We're going to be countrymen together.
And what they were doing was dividing that.
And so that was pretty much the speech I gave that day.
And I was probably the only Republican that voted against those amendments because our guys were, they were running for cover, afraid to have a debate on race.
And that's what really divided this thing to where that shut down the open rules.
And we've been doing continuing resolutions ever since.
And members have not had an opportunity to weigh in.
Well, so that's what ties your story together, which, of course, I think the listeners of this audience will famously remember.
And of course, I came to know you that day through that, even though we hadn't spoken before.
We wouldn't speak until sometime later.
You became a hero of mine that day.
But that is how you connect that to the current unrest.
Keith, a question, we've got so much more to cover with the Congressman.
We're skipping.
Congressman, this is Keith.
What was the real bummer contention, the straw that broke the camel's back that made Getz and his allies swing into action on this?
Well, that's, yes, that in my view, and I think I'm right on this, of course, but it was that McCarthy didn't put the votes together in order to keep the government open.
One of the big reasons is because he didn't have these appropriations, these 12, coming to the floor under the open rule, which was the agreement.
But the bigger piece of that was that he cut a deal with the Democrats to pass an appropriation bill, the big continuing resolution, the 45-day extension.
And cutting a deal with the Democrats and undercutting the conservatives, that is what took John Boehner down.
That's what made it discouraging for Paul Ryan, and he eventually resigned.
And then that also is, that is what took, that's what took McCarthy down.
And I remember the look on John Boehner's face when he realized that.
I won't go into that long old story, but I just, these points along the way, we've got, what shall I call them, rhino Republicans that they're sanctimonious and they think they should be running things.
And they don't have a principle that would be reflective of either the Constitution or the platform.
They just want to be money managing Republicans and raising money and doing stuff.
And they resent the conservatives.
Some years back now, when Eric Cantor was the majority leader and Boehner was the speaker, Canter's chief of staff would give a little, they'd have a meeting with all the chiefs of staff that happened about once a week.
One of those, that Canter's Derek Canter's chief of staff, Republican majority leader said to the Republican chiefs of staff, including mine, we love to beat the conservatives.
That doesn't come out of a mouth in a place like that unless it's real.
And I saw a pattern over and over again.
Why am I fighting with Republicans when it's the other side that isn't supposed to believe in these things?
And why are they pushing against the platform?
For the same reasons that we didn't get Obamacare repealed, we didn't get a wall built.
That's the same element that has been supporting McCarthy.
I could go into his psychoanalysis whenever you're ready, but I hope that's close to an answer for you, Keith.
That is a fantastic answer.
We've got many more questions to get to about this.
I want to take a well, it's not a departure, but I would like to get your take on this.
Your take on the media's take, how the media has covered this story.
As always, they are reporting with...
And also, someone else has been following these events very carefully, Vladimir Putin.
I was reading his comments too.
Hold on.
One thing at a time.
But the handful of representatives who brought this change about are naturally, and it really was a mixed bag because there were some that you might have expected to see, like maybe Paul Gozer or Lauren Boebert, who weren't with the eight that we're talking about.
But nevertheless, they are being dismissed as either far right or extremist or obstructionist.
But I don't know.
I kind of see these eight as like Lot's family in the Old Testament and the rest of the house maybe like a little more like Sodom and Gomorrah.
But two-part question.
Very quickly first, your reaction to how this the band of eight, Gates eight, have been portrayed by the media.
Well, what I've seen is just they're being undercut over and over again, a very voracious appetite to drub, especially Matt Gates, but the rest of them too.
And I hear not only by the media, but I didn't hear exactly what Mark Levin had to say.
I know that he unloaded on him, though.
And I did hear what Newt Gingrich had to say, and he called them traitors.
That is way over the top.
That was coming out of the media, of course, in a media interview.
And so, okay, Newton knows what a traitor is.
The number two definition of traitor is one who commits treason.
The penalty for treason is a minimum of five years, and the maximum is the death penalty.
That's pretty serious for exercising the rules on the floor of the house and representing your constituents.
Right or wrong, the constituents need to decide that about Matt Gates and the seven.
And so I say they exercise their rights.
They use the tools that were there in front of them.
They kept their word.
And I think the other side ought to learn from that.
And things are happening, though.
Like I said, the 45 to sign the letter that want to change the rules and make sure this doesn't happen again and figure out a way to punch the eight.
You've got that going on out there.
And one of the things that surprised me was Tom Cole.
I know Tom Cole very well.
He was my whip contact.
And I like him personally.
He's been a steady hand.
And I dealt with him very well throughout it all.
But when I see the quotes that says, well, we gave, I don't know if you said kids.
And it's something like kids playing with, gave them sharp knives to play with.
I don't think that was constructive.
He's usually, he's the sober voice in it all.
But when I see the division spilling out into the press, it's coming from the other side.
I don't see division now coming from Matt Gates and the others.
They're saying, I could vote for Scalise, I could vote for Jordan.
It's time for us to have a new speaker.
And what I said first minute of this was, you've got to find an honest broker.
We've been dealing with a dishonest broker.
And so let's find the honest broker.
And from where I look through it all, Jordan is as close as we're likely to have as an honest broker.
And I think he's the person that's likely to emerge next week.
Are we still on?
Did I lose you?
You're still there.
Do I have you guys?
Connect me?
Jake, yeah, are you there?
Can you hear me, Congressman?
I can now.
Yeah, I missed.
All right, sorry about that.
Yeah, little hiccup there.
But no, I want to talk a little bit more about who is positioned to win the battle for the gavel, as we're calling it.
But first, did it surprise you?
Well, for what reasons do you think that the Democrats voted in unison to remove McCarthy?
I mean, to me, as a layman, I guess it's simply them believing that this upheaval will make the GOP look dysfunctional.
But what is the agenda that they have in this?
Well, I think there are plenty of reasons from the Democrat perspective not to save him.
But one of them would be just policy differences that they have.
And they knew that it would create disarray in the conference and that they could exploit that politically.
I don't think they're thinking far enough ahead to realize that their conference can actually be brought together under a reliable honest broker speaker.
And so as I read that, I didn't think that actually, I'm going to wait.
I'm going to back up and see what did I say back then before they actually happened.
And I said, I thought they would come up with enough Democrats to save McCarthy's speakership.
Yeah, that's sort of what I don't have nearly the obviously experience.
You have to say the least, but I was a little bit surprised.
Yeah, it seemed to me that they would just put up just enough votes or enough of them would vote present or take a walk that McCarthy could survive.
I thought they would do that.
And then when, what, an hour or so after the gavel came down, when Patrick McHenry was in the chair, I thought he was going to break the handle on that gavel when he finally came out.
Called that notice that that was second as dramatic as I've seen it up there.
I haven't seen anything so dramatic since Nancy Pelosi tore up Trump's speech up there.
And so as I read that, and then within what, within an hour or two, he'd issued an order to kick Nancy Pelosi out of her Capitol office and Stanny Hoyer.
And so the reason that they give is: well, the speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry, needs an office to operate out of.
Why doesn't he operate out of McCarthy's office?
That's the speaker's office, isn't it?
And the pro tem's replacing the speaker.
I would think everything could be all set up there to run.
And you just probably inherit the staff and just seamlessly sit down in McCarthy's desk and get on with it.
But instead, they booted Nancy Pelosi out of her office and they booted Stanny Hoyer out of his and the former majority leader.
And so when I saw that, it's like, yeah, I get it now.
In fact, back channel to me, well, before the press speculated, it came, and I believe it is that Nancy Pelosi was expected to produce those votes to save McCarthy.
And when she didn't, I think the order went directly to Patrick McHenry, boot her out of our office.
We've got to send a message.
But I could take the other side of this thing that maybe they did need the office, but they kicked Stanny Hoyer out of his too.
So I'm going with that.
I think Nancy Pelosi maybe had a deal, maybe a wink and a nod.
It probably wasn't said explicitly, understood perhaps to be a promise, but maybe not a direct one.
And when they didn't come through with the votes and McCarthy's bounce, then that was a piece.
That piece of that was payback, in my opinion, and maybe all of it was payback.
Yeah, it was interesting.
I definitely looked with interest as they removed her from the, even the media was calling it her hideaway office there in the Capitol, even though, of course, she's not there anymore.
No, but you know, it's not unusual for a senior member that's held a decent position to maintain an office in the Capitol, and there's a whole scattering of little hideaways, like you say, scattered around the Capitol.
Senators are more known for that than House members, but I recall this is kind of vague, so it may not be specifically correct, but it seems to me that Dick Cheney kept an office in the Capitol as a vice president.
I know which office it was, and I think it was when Pelosi came in.
She booted him out of that office.
So there's some of that trading around that goes on, and some of it's protocol, and some of it might be vindictive.
This one, I don't think it was protocol.
There's no precedent for it because this had never happened before.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And we'll get, we're coming up on the one break we are going to take this hour.
It's our bottom-of-the-hour news break.
But when we come back, we're going to talk again a little more in depth with Congressman King about the frontrunner that he just mentioned and why that would be perhaps in some ways a superior choice to McCarthy.
We're going to talk, well, we've got many more things to cover in terms of how this would play out because I guess, you know, you got to say, as unprecedented as this was, I mean, did you believe?
Let me ask you this, Steve.
Well, there's the music.
Well, ask Congressman Steve King, steveking.com.
Much more about this when we continue.
Stay tuned.
It's coming right up.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
USA News, I'm Skip Kelly.
The largest healthcare strike in U.S. history will end without a contract deal.
Kaiser Permanente employees will begin returning to work this morning at hospitals in California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington.
A Kaiser spokesperson has confirmed that another bargaining session will be held October 12th.
A union representative says the two sides remain far apart on the issue of wages.
Kaiser employees are seeking annual pay increases and higher staffing levels.
A recent study reveals that the U.S. economy suffered nearly a $4 billion blow due to the United Auto Workers strike.
The losses encompass reduced worker wages and production dips at GM, Ford, and Stellantis.
The research firm Anderson Economic Group based in Michigan also factors in added expenses for suppliers, dealers, and consumers.
A former IRS contractor is planning to plead guilty in federal court after leaking former President Trump's tax records.
Charles Littlejohn is scheduled to enter into a plea deal next week in a Washington, D.C. court.
Between 2018 and 2020, Little John reportedly stole tax information associated with Trump and thousands of the nation's wealthiest people and leaked it to the press.
He's not heading back home to California.
Kevin McCarthy is refuting recent reports suggesting his intention to resign from Congress.
Friday, news outlets had speculated that the California Republican was planning to step down following his removal as House Speaker.
McCarthy clarified to reporters that the reports are untrue.
He intends to serve until the end of next year and run for reelection.
I'm John Schaefer.
The average price of gas in the U.S. could fall to $3.25 by Halloween.
Oil prices are suddenly in freefall mode and plunged by 5.6% to $84.22 a barrel on Wednesday, marking the biggest one-day decline in a year.
The national average for regular gas currently stands at $3.77 a gallon, according to AAA.
This is USA News.
Right now, you can eliminate odors, mold, mildew, bacteria, and viruses in your home with the Eden Pure Thunderstorm Air Purifier.
The Eden Pure Thunderstorm uses oxygen technology that naturally sends out O3 molecules that seek out and destroy odors.
The thunderstorm doesn't mask or cover up bad smells.
It eliminates them, leaving that fresh, clean smell, just like after a thunderstorm.
The thunderstorm is small, plugs right into the wall and fits in the palm of your hand.
Put one in your basement, bedroom, family room, kitchen, or anywhere you want clean, fresh air.
It even includes a USB cord for your car or truck.
Right now, save $200 on an Eden Pure Thunderstorm 3-pack for whole home protection.
That's three units for under $200, a fraction of the cost compared to other air purifiers.
Go to EdenPureDeals.com and use discount code USA3 to save $200.
That's EdenPureDeals.com.
Use USA and the number 3.
Shipping is free.
Our producers are working feverishly to get Keith Alexander's mic back up and running.
Keith's mic's taking a quick siesta here, Mitch Show, but we're working on it.
Keith back in on this Congress conversation with Steve King.
Folks, if you want to know why every time we think we send a worthy representative to Washington and Mr. Smith ends up getting derailed, I would encourage you to go back and listen to that first interview we did with Congressman King.
He's sort of been like our holiday man.
He was on with us the week before Thanksgiving.
I should say, I guess immediately after Thanksgiving, it was Christmas Eve, no less, 4th of July.
He's a man of all seasons.
But that first one, listen to that interview.
It was the most, certainly the most eye-opening interview, or ear-opening, I guess you might say, that we've ever done on how the system works and perhaps how even well-intentioned people get absorbed into the swamp.
But much more than that, I think it was the best I've ever heard anyone produce.
Steve King wrote a book about it.
We'll talk a little bit more about that in just a moment and what may be coming for some of the people who have put this into motion.
But before we do that, you were mentioning it just a moment ago, Congressman.
Who's going to win the battle for the gavel?
Looks like, you know, Jim Jordan's getting some kind of a frontrunner.
Who's the momentum building behind?
Well, as it unfolded, just within minutes, I would say, or at least within the first hour, it looked like there was support that was galvanizing behind Steve Scalise.
And he has blood cancer.
He took a bullet for us all.
And so a lot of us thought, boy, that's going to take a lot of energy if you're going to fight off blood cancer and take on the speakership.
Plus, maybe it was this, that the closer you are to Kevin McCarthy, the less I want to see you be speaker.
Because, I mean, I saw this unfold.
I've served under, well, I'll say Republican speakers.
Nancy Pelosi is mixed in there also, but Republican speakers would be Danny Haster, John Boehner, and then Paul Ryan, and then Kevin McCarthy.
And when you add that all up, and I saw what happened with John Boehner, I did my very best to take this power that's pyramided clear to the top, intentionally pushed up there, to break it down and spread it out so members could have more voice.
And John Boehner and I locked horns over that.
And then I saw John Boehner cutting deals with the Democrats and undercutting the conservatives, as I said a little earlier in the program.
And so out of that became Paul Ryan.
Now, we went to work, and there were five of us that worked real hard to unseat John Boehner, maybe nine at the top side of that thing.
So it kind of fits with this number, too.
And we succeeded.
They would tell us then, you can't beat somebody with nobody.
Well, we did.
And they would say, also, if you strike at the king, you must kill the king.
I think that's Shakespeare, or maybe it's Machiavelli.
I'm sure it's Machiavelli.
And anyway, we didn't clearly kill him off.
And I mean, I figured it'll be, of course.
But so that battle with John Boehner was, he was taking Paul Ryan to school.
Paul Ryan was his choice for a successor.
And I went through a lot of battles to try to put somebody else up there other than John Boehner's choice, although I had a good personal relationship with Paul Ryan.
And that remains, I hope, and believe it does.
But then, so McCarthy was taking lessons from Boehner, taking lessons from Ryan, and believing this is the way you run the speakership.
You consolidate the power and you say what you need to say to get things done.
So, and in the room, this is really the answer to the question: in the room is Galise had to be in that room over and over again as these deals were being made.
We never heard a peep from him about saying, I want to go another way here.
Now, even back channel, I never saw that happen or the private conversations didn't tell me that.
Tom Enner would have Emmer would have been the next guy in line, and Emmer's in the room.
So, getting out of that room, why didn't they step up and say, This isn't keeping the promise, this isn't what we said we were going to do?
So, once you get out to Jim Jordan, I'm much happier with Jim Jordan.
He wasn't in that room all the time, but he was in the room some of the time.
And this is something that the listeners won't know that, but first, you know, I served on the Judiciary Committee with Jim Jordan throughout.
And we've traveled overseas.
We never really built that personal friendship, but we always had a good professional relationship.
And he's called me in weekends, and I believe I've called him also on weekends, just to bases and plans.
So, I think a lot of Jim Jordan, but what I saw happen was as one of the founders of the Freedom Caucus and one of the critics of Kevin McCarthy, and one of the people you think would lead the opposition to McCarthy being named speaker.
Um, that when the gel, when the chairmanship of the, when the ranking membership of the Judiciary Committee was coming up, Jim Jordan had a meeting with Kevin McCarthy.
And whatever went on inside that meeting, we can only speculate.
But he came out of that meeting saying praiseworthy things about Kevin McCarthy.
Flipped that nearly 180, and I noticed it right away.
And Kevin McCarthy, that same day, named Jim Jordan the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
And I thought, did I miss something here?
Didn't they have a time of a week or two where they slowly shifted their language around so you could see the evolution of the of the changing of opinions here?
Just to just for the public know, no, I went back and asked one of my most reliable people in Congress that had the closest eye on these things.
Did this actually happen all in one day?
Answer, yes.
It was abrupt.
It was like out of the office of the meeting.
Jordan went 180 and began to praise McCarthy.
And McCarthy went and began to, well, praise Jim Jordan and name him as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.
And then he ascended, of course, as Speaker when the majority was one back.
So that's kind of close, but it's not as close as being in the room when the deals are cut.
And Jordan has been consistent in this.
We need to do what we said we were going to do.
We have to do what we say we're going to do.
If there's any message that he'll stick with that one, I believe he will.
And something I remember from the time he was a freshman when he came in, you know, he's a two-time NCAA wrestling champion from the University of Wisconsin.
I don't know why he left Ohio, probably so he could wrestle a little better.
But in any case, two-time champion.
But he said as a freshman, he said, nothing good comes without discipline.
And I've used that phrase over and over again with my family, people that work for me, and the people around me to brace up their discipline.
So there's no question.
Jordan has discipline.
He can focus on policy.
He can put a string of things together and stream it out in a press conference and get it all right.
He does his homework, and that's part of the discipline he does.
So in the end, I'll say this: that I wish that he hadn't cut that deal with McCarthy.
That troubles me.
I don't know if there are others who noticed it that way.
I don't have hear him talking about it, but I think he's the inside track to be the next speaker of the House.
And Kevin Hearn, although Kevin Hearn has got some support out there and he was nominated for Speaker in last January, I think he's a steady hand and a reliable guy.
But if he's in this now, it's only to be there to pick up the pieces if there's an impasse on Scalise or Jordan.
That's how I would see it.
So right now, with Trump's endorsement and with the support that's out there for Jordan, I would predict that we're going to go into that conference and the bigger discussions on Tuesday is not going to be so much about who's going to be the next speaker, although that will be.
They'll give their speeches, they'll do their nominations, they'll do the votes, and they'll do the rounds of votes until one of the candidates gets a majority.
The low vote getter drops off, often throws his support behind one of the other candidates.
It could be a one-round deal.
It could be a two-round deal.
I don't think it'll be more than that.
And then there'll be the discussion about we are unified when we come out of here and nobody better be undercutting the next speaker of the house.
That, I think, can be achieved.
But the bigger debate is going to be the Tuesday group, I'll say it, the Rhino group, wants to change the rules to take away the motion to vacate the chair, at least as far as what would be offered by a single member.
And that motion existed for over 200 years.
Nancy Pelosi changed it when she became in speaker this last round.
Otherwise, as far as I know, it always has been one vote, or excuse me, one man can make a motion, one member can make a motion to vacate the chair.
And so is that radical?
I don't think so.
Almost all the rest of the world under a parliamentary system lives under that.
I had a conversation a couple nights ago with a very well-positioned Canadian, and I asked him specifically, I thought I knew the answers, but I asked him specifically, can one member of the Canadian parliament bring a motion of no confidence against the prime minister?
And he said, well, it's technically not correct because it has to come on an appropriations bill.
But other than that, any one member of parliament can offer up that motion to a motion of no confidence.
So if an individual can bring that in all the parliamentary systems around the world, why should we be afraid of it?
If you don't have the support of the majority of the entire Congress, then you ought not be leading.
You're not leading from a majority position.
And it's a heavy thing to do.
I don't know when there's been a speaker that so betrayed his promises as Kevin McCarthy has.
That's the anomaly here, not that they removed the speaker, but we have a speaker that was so untrustworthy that they wrote an airtight contract with him.
And he violated the contract as I knew he would.
So the mistake wasn't on the part of changing the rule back to what it had been for over 200 years.
The mistake was, was confirming Kevin McCarthy as speaker in the first place when they knew he did not have the support of the majority.
They knew he's not an honest man.
They knew he was going to deal with the other side.
They knew he'd lie to a lot of them.
So if we've got time, I'll go into the psychoanalysis of the man.
We do.
Okay.
Well, I just, I've done a fair amount of reading on this, and sometimes they call me Dr. King, but I'm not one of those PhD people, but I can read and understand.
And so I began looking into this thinking, how would you analyze Kevin McCarthy?
And it comes down to, this is my judgment, but it's an informed judgment, that he is a narcissistic abuser.
He has a personality.
Well, Steve got his mic back.
Good.
Well, I've been in torture for a while.
I don't have your mic.
He's back now.
No, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
But in different degrees, you could probably assign that to most of them.
Yes.
But this guy is clinically, he's got a lot of shrinking violence out there, do you?
Not a lot.
You can't be in that business and not have an ego.
As a matter of fact, the side story is I'm Catholic and I came out of Mass one day, I don't know, five, six years ago, something like that.
And we had this wonderful priest that got it all right, Father John McGurk.
And so as I walked out of Mass, he shook my hand and he said, you know, I pray for you by name every day.
And that's moving.
And I say, thank you very much.
And he said, but what specifically can I pray for you for?
And I said, well, Father, pray for my humility.
That's the hardest thing to come by in the job that I'm in.
And he said, okay, I'll pray for your humility, but you must pray for mine.
And it's why?
Why would a humble priest need prayers for humility?
And he said, you don't understand.
He said, everything I do, I get praise for.
I baptize a baby, I get praise.
I give a good sermon or homily, I get praise for that.
I give last rites and I get praise.
I give a eulogy, I get praise.
Whatever I do, I get praise for that.
And so it goes to my head, I need your prayers for my humility.
And I said, okay, I'll pray for your humility, Father, and then you'll pray for mine.
And he said, yes.
And when it comes to humility, you have an unfair advantage.
You have a wife.
Keep joking now.
Yeah, well, you know, I think you got it wrong.
You should have said, priest, I was asking for you to pray for my humility, not for my humiliation.
No, no, no.
Well, any of them.
What really happened was this fine man prayed for my humility consistently and it was delivered.
And I tried to call him off, but I it didn't work.
Well, you know, that's actually something after serving all these years in Congress as a conservative leader, you put this up on your website, steveking.com.
By the way, folks, get the book.
Get the book.
But you know, and we got to go back to the psychoanalysis.
I'm not trying to derail.
We chase rabbits.
We talk football.
We talk.
Let me ask one question.
Yeah, go very quick.
Yeah, go, Keith.
Is Jim Jordan going to be good for our side?
That's a good question.
That's a good question.
If that's the way it runs.
I think I can say he'll be a lot better for our side.
I don't think he can be in that position as conservative and solid as he himself is.
And so I think that it's going to be a significant improvement.
I think you're going to see that Jim Jordan is an honest broker.
And I think in those straight conversations, he'll tell it how it is.
And if he can't deliver, he'll just say, I can't deliver.
And he'll try to bring things out of them out of the membership.
But I've never been in a place where Jim Jordan had a leverage over me, like a gabble that I was serving on his committee or anything like that.
So I don't know, but I hope that he carries this philosophy.
And that is that the leader of a group, whether it's a chairman, a speaker, whatever it might be, their job is not to impose their will on the group.
Their job is to bring out the will of the group and then bring that to the floor.
If we see that, if he's bringing out the will of the group, he could emerge as an outstanding speaker.
He could be a speaker for all time.
If he does what he says he's going to do, if he keeps his word, he brings out the will of the group.
If that happens, everybody knows what the will of the group is, and nobody can whine about that.
They shouldn't anyway.
So I think he can be a good speaker.
He tends to be a great speaker.
He's going to be an improvement for sure in every category that I can think of.
But also, I don't think he can just ram route a conservative agenda through there because we've got so many, those 45 that signed the letter be among them.
So that's how I would describe it.
Maybe we could put a percentage on it if 100% is what we'd all like here.
And maybe we're going to get 70% of that.
What was McCarthy?
That's a big improvement.
What percentage was McCarthy, in your opinion?
Less than 50%.
I'd put him a third of what we wanted to do.
And I say that because, I mean, he stuck his finger into everything.
This narcissistic abuser that we may have time to analyze and maybe not.
But, you know, you can't measure even the conference.
The will of the conference isn't the will of the people.
And not completely because Kevin McCarthy's raised money like nobody ever raised money.
He went into Republican primaries and used it against principled conservatives in order to elect a moderate Republican that he knew would vote for him for speaker.
He did that in race after race.
So what he did was take the conservative meter that would otherwise be in the House of Representatives by the natural flow of things in the local elections, and he turned that meter the other way and he made it far less conservative than it would have been.
And that was in an endeavor to become Speaker of the House.
So it's going to take a while to get that cleaned up.
And furthermore, McCarthy's sitting on, I haven't looked at the number myself, but in a conference I was in, they said $100 million in his accounts that he controls.
So when they said McCarthy was going to resign, I thought, I don't think so.
He's been active.
Well, he said that he said he's not.
Is he going to emerge as the leader of the opposition to Jordan?
Well, I hope.
Or do you see another group stepping into that role?
I think there will be a group that will emerge that will test Jordan and push him.
And I think, and they're already, you know, they're threatening to cut a deal with the Democrats to get the rules changed the way they want them.
So that's there.
Some of it's led by Don Bacon out of Omaha.
And I know Don.
I get along him well personally, but he's on the other side of the spectrum from where I am.
But I think that Jordan can be a really good speaker, but we ought to be watching Kevin McCarthy and what he does because he's vindictive.
And that $100 million may well get spent just for that reason.
I'm going to ask you one more question, and you are our guest.
So you talk about what you want to talk about.
And I'd love to hear your treatment on the psychology.
I actually do really want to hear that, but I want to ask you this personal question first.
You're watching all this action.
Answer this and then go right into it.
We've got about eight minutes left.
Do you wish you were back in the middle of this striking a blow for the good guys right now?
You're watching all of this happen.
Do you want to be back in the middle of that?
Or do you think to yourself, you know what?
I'm good.
Glad to be on the sidelines.
There's been two times that I wished I would have been there in the Capitol, there in the conference, behind closed doors, and there on the floor during the debates and the votes.
And that was when throughout the 15 votes for Speaker that McCarthy emerged from.
And then these votes that took place last Tuesday to remove him as Speaker.
And one of the big reasons for that is I'd just like to maybe see the look in.
I'd like to watch McCarthy's body language.
And he's, you know, you all know if you read my book, you know what he did to me.
And I don't want to be looking at it right now.
Well, in that, I was careful not to put anything in there that was either vindictive or anything that said the poor me's.
This is what happened.
And I'm living in a happy life now.
I've got five-year-old granddaughter running around the house here.
We went out and picked a bunch of onions today and sliced up a bunch of cucumbers and had some fun together.
I hadn't been a chance to do that.
I missed so many years of it.
And so I'm happy.
But those are the times I'd like to be back there for these intense battles.
And I don't think McCarthy would have been elected speaker the first time had I been there.
And he didn't think so either.
One of the big reasons why he made that move against me.
Let me ask you a big question.
How is it?
Go, go, go quick.
We got to let him have this.
I want to hear it.
Go, go, go, go.
What is going to happen between now and the 2024 presidential election?
Oh, my God.
That's another hour.
Well, how is this?
Will this have an effect on the Republicans or what?
It's like we're getting excited.
Go ahead.
I can do the answer.
The best answer I can do on that is that I think Jordan will solidify that conference.
I do.
I think he's about an 85 or 90% chance right now, in my opinion, to be speaker.
I think he'll solidify it.
He'll stabilize it.
I think he'll sit down and talk to the Tuesday group, the Rhino group.
And they're going to have to figure out how they can come along too.
And he can also reason with the Freedom Caucus.
They don't have to be pushing back against a dishonest speaker anymore.
Some of that was because of McCarthy's persona and because he had lied to him so many times.
So that won't be there.
And Jordan is respected, I think, throughout.
So I think it could be stable.
And I think Republicans could have a better reputation and get some things done going into the election.
But a lot of that rides on the presidential race.
And so we shall see what that is.
And it looks now like that's, of course, that's a whole nother hour for another Saturday night.
Well, we got to do it.
I've gotten to about half the question.
We got to do it again.
There's never enough time with you.
You got five minutes, Dr. King.
Give us the psychoanalysis.
Okay, the psychoanalysis.
We know they're crazy, just how are they crazy?
Okay, go, go, go.
This is my learned and studied up analysis.
Not a diagnosis of a psychiatrist, but I can't find a psychiatrist that'll disagree with me.
I haven't looked that hard either.
And it's this, that a narcissistic abuser, that's somebody that they are their own center of gravity.
And everything that they evaluate, evaluate, it's all how it affects them, what their aspirations are, whatever it is that they like or dislike, whatever their agenda is, they want everything to be compatible with that.
And so and his agenda from the day he came into Congress as the former chief of staff for Bill Thomas, the former ways and means chair in the house out of California in Bakersfield area, when he came in, I didn't realize it the first month, maybe not the first year, but after a couple of years, I could look back on his pattern and I could see where he was.
He was moving to be speaker of the house.
That was his singular endeavor in life was to be to be able to have that gavel and be the speaker.
And so everything he did revolves around that.
And it's what it gave.
I said he achieved it.
Now I guess he can go right off in the sunset, right?
Well, yeah, he's got it.
Well, he's going to have a different endeavor now.
And this is a hard, hard blow for McCarthy.
But a narcissistic abuser, then they're their center of gravity.
They evaluate everything around them.
They are your friend or foe, and that can change on the moment.
But he will use the carrot on one side and give appointments and hand out committee assignments and gavels, ranking membership, whatever it might be, and praise them, do fundraisers for them, put money in their campaign account, direct people to support your campaign.
So you think, boy, I've got a good friend here that's got my back.
And all those people that he greased on the positive side, they all think McCarthy is a good guy.
And the ones that he didn't think would vote for him for speaker are those that had their own way of thinking that didn't follow McCarthy's wishes or will.
He used the other side of that.
He used the stick.
And that was, for me, took me off of all of my committees for a misquote in the New York Times.
And look what he's done.
So that was, it's a whole longer story, and a lot of it's in my book, Walking Through the Fire.
I won't go into that, but the plums that get handed out, the praise that gets handed, and bringing that to him because that's how it reflects his effort.
On the other side, anybody that he thought needed to be muzzled, somebody that had too much influence in the conference, if you're taking a leadership position and he's determined he's going to be the leader, you're a threat to him for the same reason that the boss lion eats all the male cubs because he can't have competition.
And so that's what goes on in the mind of a narcissistic abuser.
And then so with all of that, then he has duped many of the members because he succeeded in gaslighting them.
It's just what narcissistic abusers do.
I think they invented the term.
And then, but the people that he couldn't gaslight, like Matt Gates for one, Andy Biggs for another, they become the people that he had to shut down or marginalize.
And that's more or less the clinical description of a narcissistic abuser.
That is what he is.
The ego is the strongest and one of those folks of anything I know.
And what happened when he had to step away and when he was defeated, he was stunned that that could happen to him because his ego is so strong, he believed he was in control.
That's why he said, bring it.
Well, he said, bring it.
And yeah, so he didn't expect to lose.
I think he did not expect to lose.
And now he is still stunned.
And I don't know how he licks his wounds.
I don't know how he acts, but he's going to rationalize this thing.
And he's not taking the blame in his own mind.
That's another piece about a narcissist.
He obviously didn't ask his priest to pray for his humility, did he?
Steve, let me ask you this.
Folks, you've got to go to steveking.com and get the book about how it works in Congress and the pressure that it's put on good people.
But we know the story of McCarthy and how he fought against you.
30-second answer on this.
And by the way, that was a very succinct and very sharp treatment, I might add, my friend, that you just gave.
But how much trouble is Gates in?
I mean, are they going to come after Gates and these other seven, hammer and tong, or wall the plank?
They want to come after them.
I can say that.
They want to come after them, and they'll have support from that Tuesday group, the Rhino group.
They will want some kind of payback.
And you hear this popping out of that other side, the left side of the Republican conference just consistently that they think there should be consequences.
Well, so expect that to happen, and they're going to have to raise their money someplace other than where it was coming from from the PACs on that.
But I think we ought to be able to do it.
I'm sure Gates went in.
That's right.
And I'm sure Gates knew that he was walking into something.
And surely he considered that.
But listen, folks, SteveKing.com, get the book.
Congressman, I would love to have you back on in December.
We'll celebrate the birth of Christ.
And I'd like to talk to you about what may be coming in 2024.