Hamas Makes War, Republicans Play Politics

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Speaker 4 Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm John Favreau.
I'm John Lovett. Tommy Vitor.

Speaker 4 On today's show, Jim Jordan gets Donald Trump's endorsement as he faces off against Steve Scalise in this week's vote for Speaker. RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 announces he's dropping out of the Democratic primary and launching a third-party bid for president.

Speaker 4 And former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger stops by to talk about the mess his old colleagues in the House have made.

Speaker 4 But first, Israel is engaged in a full-scale siege of the Gaza Strip after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Saturday that led to what one Israeli military leader called, quote, the worst day in Israeli history, a 9-11 and a Pearl Harbor wrapped into one.

Speaker 4 Hamas killed, kidnapped, tortured, and terrorized thousands of civilians. More than 700 people in Israel have died, including at least 11 American citizens.

Speaker 4 More than 100 hostages are being held in Gaza, including elderly Israelis, women, children, and babies.

Speaker 4 At least 400 Palestinians have also been killed, and thousands more have been injured so far in a retaliatory strike that Prime Minister B.B.

Speaker 4 Netanyahu is calling the beginning of a long and difficult war. President Biden offered full support to Israel during remarks at the White House over the weekend.

Speaker 8 You know, when I spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning, I told him the United States stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults.

Speaker 8 Israel has the right to defend itself and its people.

Speaker 7 Full stop.

Speaker 8 There's never justification for terrorist attacks. And my administration's support for Israel's security is rock solid and unwavering.

Speaker 4 Let's start there. Tommy, I know you and Ben covered some of this in the special episode of Pod Save the World.
You recorded over the weekend. Everyone should take a listen.

Speaker 4 But what's your take on the Biden administration's response so far? And what are some of the risks you think they're worried about right now?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, I think still, there's another statement out today, a written statement, is pretty much exactly what I would have expected.

Speaker 9 When we heard Biden speak there, the terrorist attack was ongoing. So I think like expressing solidarity, pledging support makes a lot of sense.
Biden had just talked to Netanyahu.

Speaker 9 People up and down the food chain and the national security team are connected. So that's what I would expect.

Speaker 9 But to your point, John, I mean, now this gets a lot more complicated now because we now know that 11 Americans were killed in this attack.

Speaker 9 I've seen reports that say Hamas is holding up to 150 hostages, and the Israeli government is going to be under tremendous pressure to get them back, to get them back quickly, and to do it by using any means necessary.

Speaker 9 So, you know, we all lived through the 9-11 attacks here in the U.S. and the U.S.
response.

Speaker 9 We know that short-term political incentives often are more about feelings of revenge than fixing the underlying problems.

Speaker 9 And I think, you know, that feeling is understandable, but I worry it's going to lead to these hostages dying. I think it's going to lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.

Speaker 9 We know the IDF has launched hundreds of airstrikes into Gaza. There's reports already that hundreds of Gazans have been killed, thousands have been injured.

Speaker 9 This is, again, just the beginning because Netanyahu, according to Axios, said he's going to move ground forces into the Gaza Strip.

Speaker 9 The Israeli defense minister today ordered the complete siege of Gaza. He said that, quote, no electricity, food, water, or fuel would be allowed in.

Speaker 9 And just so everyone knows, the Gaza Strip is home to 2 million people. It's one of the most densely packed places in the world.
Half the population is kids. There's nowhere to go.

Speaker 9 There's nowhere to hide. It's been called the world's largest open-air prison.
And life is hell for the people who live for there already.

Speaker 9 The Bush administration in 2006, in their infinite wisdom under their democracy agenda, pushed the Palestinian Authority to hold elections.

Speaker 9 Hamas won those elections, and Gaza has been blockaded by Israel ever since. So, there's not enough electricity on a given day, the water is undrinkable, unemployment is at like 50%.

Speaker 9 So, there's no way for Israel to conduct a military campaign in Gaza that is targeted at just Hamas. Hamas lives in and among the people by design.
This will be urban combat.

Speaker 9 And now, Hamas is saying they're going to execute one person for every airstrike that hits Gaza. So this is very, very scary.

Speaker 9 I'm also very concerned about Hezbollah getting involved, launching maybe a second attack from the north.

Speaker 9 There's a lot of discussion about Iran's role here and the question of how Israel may or may not respond to Iran directly.

Speaker 9 So, you know, the Biden team, I mean, I think they're right to support Israel in this horrific moment for the country.

Speaker 9 But I also hope that behind the scenes, Biden is pushing Netanyahu to urge some restraint, to try to limit civilian casualties and then long term we have to get back to a process to fix the underlying political problems that lead you know the average Palestinian person to think there's some hope of living in a Palestinian state someday

Speaker 4 it also seemed I saw that administration officials were saying that Iran sort of wants to draw us into a larger conflict in the Middle East as part of this too, part of the response.

Speaker 9 And that would not surprise me. Although there's been some reports about Iranian involvement, how much or how little they may have been involved in this, and We just don't know yet.

Speaker 4 Aaron Powell, and this also sort of risks the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia that

Speaker 4 the Biden administration was trying to broker.

Speaker 9 Yeah, they've been pushing very hard to try to create normalization between the Saudi government and the Israeli government.

Speaker 9 It would involve giving a lot of incentives to the Saudis, but it would also, according to Mohammed Insalman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and according to Tony Blinken, who actually talked to me and Ben about this on Pot Save the World, there would have to be some sort of significant steps taken towards a Palestinian state.

Speaker 9 And I think the politics around that get a lot harder in the wake of this terrorist attack.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Love it.
Obviously, there's a broader context to this war that's not always easy to find if you're just wading through some of the shittier takes and debates on Twitter.

Speaker 4 What are your thoughts on the politics shaping the Israeli and U.S. response right now?

Speaker 10 Yeah, I mean, one of the things just was striking in how quickly people jumped to their instinctive and natural, previously held political stances while watching something unfold that isn't

Speaker 10 this isn't like a news event that is at, you know, at the speed of a 24-hour news cycle. It is something more in the context of like 50 years of history.

Speaker 10 And within hours, if not thousands, and within hours, you see people, within minutes, you see people jumping to confident takes.

Speaker 10 Confident takes and it was there is a I think I think part of it is you know you and Ben talked about this

Speaker 10 the intractability and the way in which the evil and darkness of what's unfolding puts even further away any possibility of a positive political solution I think that that leads people to not say

Speaker 10 what a solution might be or not be even willing to talk about about what people believe or know but can't say in a moment like this, which is, I think, something, again, you and Ben talk about a lot and you talk about even when the world isn't focused on this, which is there can be no end as long as there is no hope for people who live in Palestine.

Speaker 4 And the

Speaker 10 The thing I found really sort of depraved in watching it unfold is in the absence of any space for any kind of positive dialogue or any way to talk about what a solution might be, You see right-wingers going right to attacking the Biden administration and misinformation and propaganda.

Speaker 10 You see a ton of just virulent anti-Semitism.

Speaker 10 And then at the same time, I think on in some corners of the left, you see a more subtle version of anti-Semitism in which there is a leap made from legitimate, fair, deserved criticism of Israel's abuses and cruelty in Gaza to the belief that in order to demonstrate your understanding of that, it is somehow wrong to acknowledge or even look at the horrors and evil that Hamas is inflicting.

Speaker 10 And there is an instinct that I think is really toxic, which is to believe you can provide context to

Speaker 10 the murder of children and elderly people and innocent civilians and look at

Speaker 10 You know, that rave where, what, at least 250 people have been killed. The biggest mass shooting in U.S.
history was 60 people people in Las Vegas.

Speaker 10 And if your instinct is to see a moment like that and believe that your politics dictates, putting that in a larger context as if compassion towards those people is some kind of a limited resource, I think is

Speaker 10 morally wrong.

Speaker 10 And my reaction to seeing this all unfold was, this is a moral abomination.

Speaker 10 And it's not just because it is evil, it is terrorism, it is monstrous on its own face, especially when you consider that a lot of the people killed probably would feel quite at home at a U.S.

Speaker 10 college campus protesting the Netanyahu government and have been protesting the Netanyahu

Speaker 10 government for their abuses, but also because it is reprehensible in that it will not redound to the benefit of a single Palestinian kid. This will lead to more horrible abuses and more cruelty and

Speaker 10 more violence in Gaza. And so just like being willing to step back and just say, this is like

Speaker 10 a moral abomination, full stop, just should have been the first instinct.

Speaker 10 And you saw from both the right and on some parts of the left a refusal to just start at that place and look for the kind of the look for to go back to their sort of political priors.

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, a guy I interviewed on Patse of the World, who I consider a friend now, because we just, you know, we talk on DM, right? Like so many friends do these days.

Speaker 9 He is a reporter for Ha Haretz. He moved from Tel Aviv to one of these communities on the border of Gaza because he covered that community in one of the prior Gaza conflicts.

Speaker 9 And he was so inspired by the community's commitment to peace in the wake of, like, you know, you're in the line of fire literally from these rockets.

Speaker 9 And this guy, Amir, and his wife, and his one-year-old and his three-year-old, ended up sitting in the safe room in their home, which safe room doesn't mean room full of guns and supplies.

Speaker 9 It means your kid's room, because that's the most fortified in case it gets hit by a rocket for eight hours. And they were saved by Amir's dad, who rescued them.
So final story. Unbelievable.

Speaker 9 So love it. I think what you said was really well said because Hamas is responsible for what happened Saturday.
Like it was a terrorist attack.

Speaker 9 There's no defense for massacring a fucking music festival or kidnapping kids and babies. And I don't care who does it.
There's no defending it.

Speaker 9 And like the inability for people on Twitter to say that just like made my head explode.

Speaker 9 But to your broader point, you can't view this in isolation because there are these broader security and political contexts in Israel and the West Bank and Gaza.

Speaker 9 And it starts with the fact that there's no hope for a lot of Palestinian people. The talks have have been dead for a long time.

Speaker 9 The Trump administration pivoted to the Abraham Accords, which was just a bunch of efforts to incentivize countries in the region to cut deals with Israel, usually just giant arms sales.

Speaker 9 But the Palestinians were an afterthought in those talks, and they were an afterthought in the Biden administration, less so for the Biden administration.

Speaker 9 But, you know, listen, they were not. The focus has not been on a Middle East peace agreement or a two-state solution for a very long time.

Speaker 9 And meanwhile, life for Palestinians is getting worse and worse. We talked about Gaza, but Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel have limited rights compared to their Jewish counterparts.

Speaker 9 In 2021, one of the most influential Israeli human rights groups called it apartheid. Palestinians in the West Bank could be getting pushed out of their homes by settlers.

Speaker 9 There's been settler violence. That settler violence is often protected by the Israeli military.

Speaker 9 And so, you know, then there's Net Yahoo coming back into power with the most right-wing government in history, these ultra-Orthodox, ultra-nationalist ministers that he made common cause with to get power, to prevent himself from getting prosecuted, basically.

Speaker 9 But that, you know, has led to this context where people feel like they've just foreclosed any future for them.

Speaker 9 And so, again, there's no justification for what Hamas did, but we have to try to understand how the average Palestinian feels, how little hope they have, and how that context under occupation can fuel an armed resistance, it can fuel terrorist groups like Hamas, and that we need some sort of political track for a two-state solution to solve the underlying problems.

Speaker 9 There's no military response that's going to fix this.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think Bibi's promise, right, has been that you know, his right-wing government can keep Israelis safe through, you know, force and through the repression of Palestinians, and it couldn't, right?

Speaker 4 Like, that's the thing.

Speaker 4 It's not bringing lasting security to Israelis or Palestinians, right? And like, I just think, too, that you talked about the inability of people to just condemn violence, right?

Speaker 4 Like, if you're going to condemn violence against civilians, you have to condemn violence against civilians wherever it happens, wherever you, like, you can't just pick and choose.

Speaker 4 It seems very easy to me. I just like

Speaker 4 Bibi is a terrible right-wing leader of a right-wing government. Bibi did not force Hamas to target kids for murder and torture and take them as hostages.
No one forced Hamas to do that.

Speaker 4 Hamas chose to do that. And by doing so, they put Palestinian lives in danger as well.
And so it was not only barbaric, it was self-defeating.

Speaker 4 And now it's up to the Israeli government to respond in a way that is just and proportionate, lawful, that doesn't put more Israeli lives in danger as well as killing Palestinian civilians, right?

Speaker 4 So like, I don't know. It's just, you you know, Matt Duss was

Speaker 4 a Bernie Sanders advisor. I know you guys have talked to him a lot on Pod Save the World.
He did a great interview about sort of how the left sees this.

Speaker 9 One of the smartest voices in foreign policy on the left.

Speaker 9 Really?

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 he did this great interview with Alex Burns of Politico, and he said, you know, true anti-imperialism supports a world of rules and not might makes right.

Speaker 4 And one of those rules is the protection of civilians. It's like, yes, that's just basic.

Speaker 10 Right before we were recording this,

Speaker 10 or a couple hours before, Netanyahu spoke, and

Speaker 10 he, in that speech, talks about how important it is for Israel to be united, how important it is for Israel to come together. And

Speaker 10 obviously, true, there is strength that comes from being united. It was also true when he was making common cause with some of the most right-wing and despicable figures in Israel.

Speaker 10 It was also true when he was trying to pretend as if he could govern without consideration for the lives of Palestinians.

Speaker 10 There was a, in one of his depositions or interviews for one of his corruption charges, he said, it's impossible to reach an agreement with them.

Speaker 10 Everyone knows this, but we control the height of the flames. And no, you don't.
You don't.

Speaker 10 And,

Speaker 10 you know, we'll talk more about, I think, the way Republicans are trying to turn this around on Biden, but I think

Speaker 10 it goes to, I think, the fundamental way in which right-wing governments weaken countries.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 4 as you pointed out, Republicans have wasted no time blaming Biden for the attack, especially the party's presidential candidates. Here's Donald Trump in New Hampshire on Monday.

Speaker 12 They gave him $6 billion in ransom money.

Speaker 11 Joe Biden betrayed Israel. You know, when I see Bibi Netanyahu come and he tries to talk them into doing something, they never do it.

Speaker 11 I can't imagine how anybody who's Jewish or anybody who loves Israel, and frankly, the evangelicals love, just love Israel.

Speaker 12 I can't imagine anybody voting Democrat.

Speaker 4 The other candidates piled on as well, Tim Scott. Nice guy, Tim Scott, was calling Biden complicit in the attacks.

Speaker 4 And this is all because, in their minds, the administration agreed in August to make $6 billion in Iranian oil revenue available to Iran for only humanitarian purposes in exchange for the release of five American hostages.

Speaker 4 Tommy, why are Republicans saying that that makes Biden complicit in this attack? What's the truth about this, the criticism?

Speaker 9 Yeah, I mean, just a quick point, which is that the Obama-Biden administration cut a 10-year MOU with Israel that provided Israel with like $3 to $4 billion of military assistance per year.

Speaker 9 So a lot of the reasons people are being saved from these rockets attacks from Gaza are because of things that Joe Biden was a part of in the previous administration.

Speaker 9 In this case, what they're talking about is Iranian influence. So historically speaking, Iran provides financial support, training, and weapons to Hamas.
That is absolutely true.

Speaker 9 I think the State Department estimated it at about $100 million per year. This attack from J.D.

Speaker 9 Vance and Tim Scott and all these guys, this is a lie because what they're referencing is a hostage swap that the U.S. made with Iran earlier this year.

Speaker 9 We got back five Americans who were in prison in Iran. The U.S.
let some Iranians out of prison. I think a lot of them decided to stay in the the U.S., by the way.
They didn't want to go home.

Speaker 9 But as part of that, the U.S. agreed to allow $6 billion in Iranian funds that had been frozen in South Korea due to U.S.
sanctions to be transferred to a bank in Qatar.

Speaker 9 Again, this was not taxpayer dollars. This is not our money.
This is Iranian revenue from oil sales that at the time were illegal, but then later were sanctioned.

Speaker 9 So the money is being held in a bank in Qatar. It can only be spent on humanitarian supplies like food and medicine.
Those things are all approved by Washington. Qatar directly pays these suppliers.

Speaker 9 Iran doesn't touch this money. but most importantly this money hasn't been spent yet so even if you want to argue that money is fungible it couldn't have funded this terror money is fungible

Speaker 9 that's the it's like so crazy and clearly like hamas has been planning this for a long time they weren't waiting for like the big hostage check to clear so you know i also saw one journalist in israel tweet that no one in israel is talking about this no one thinks this happened because it was joe biden you know why they know that bad guys don't release hostages because you you ask them nicely in 2011 israel did a prisoner swap with Hamas.

Speaker 9 They sent over 1,000 prisoners to Hamas in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit. He was taken in a similar cross-border attack in 2006 and held for a very long time.

Speaker 9 So, you know, they get it. It's just, you know, our politics are so fucking stupid.
And by the way, just one last quick thing.

Speaker 9 Remember in early 2020, pre-pandemic, when the Trump administration assassinated the head of the IRGC, this guy named Qasim Soleimani, they all, Mike Pompeos of the world, they all told us that this was the deterrent we need, that now Iran would stop its malign activities, its support for terrorism.

Speaker 9 Absolutely not. The exact opposite has happened.
You can't kill your way out of these problems.

Speaker 4 Also, the whole fucking money is fungible argument,

Speaker 4 it's not as if the Iranian government was spending all this money for humanitarian purposes. And now that they know the $6 billion there, they're finally free to redirect those funds to Hamas.

Speaker 9 Finally, we can stop helping our people.

Speaker 4 It just wasn't happening, you know? I mean, but the Republican argument here is they want you to to believe that any attempt to use diplomacy instead of force is weakness that invites more violence.

Speaker 4 And no matter how many times they have been proven wrong about this, they will continue to make that argument because it's the only argument they have.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 anything that was a negotiation, any kind of diplomacy, anything else is weakness and responsible for any bad things that happen. Well, right.

Speaker 10 Well, if there's a... And if there's a...
terrible intelligence failure and

Speaker 10 a response that exposes a weakness under a right-wing government that nobody could have imagined a few days earlier. It must be some Democrat or some progressive or some liberal's fault somewhere.

Speaker 10 There must be some way in which we can protect

Speaker 10 our understanding of the world, which says that like a kind of performance of bravado and bellicosity and a refusal to recognize the value of diplomacy or even empathy, like we have to be able to protect that feeling.

Speaker 10 So it must be because of Joe Biden somewhere taking a nap caused all of this.

Speaker 9 Aaron Powell, Jr.: Also, the North Koreans are giving Russia like tons and tons and tons of artillery shells.

Speaker 9 Are people now attacking Donald Trump for having talks with the North Koreans during his administration? No, they just are following whatever the cult leader says.

Speaker 4 It's also, it is obviously a purely political attack to gain some kind of political advantage from an international crisis.

Speaker 4 And RNC chair, Rana Romney McDaniel, said the quiet part out loud on Fox News over the weekend. Let's listen.

Speaker 5 I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates to contrast where Republicans have stood with Israel time and time again, and Joe Biden has been weak.

Speaker 4 It's a great opportunity. What a good opportunity this is.

Speaker 10 She is truly, like, see, she's disgusting. And she has been disgusting every single day that she has been in that role.
She is disgusting.

Speaker 10 And, like, the, it's just like, we're so like a nerd to it at this point, but the fact that like all of these people, these 1% polling people, are looking at the news, Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, all of them, they look at the news over the weekend.

Speaker 10 They're like, I know what I'll do. There's got to be some way I can use this to get in the news cycle and attack Joe Biden is fucking disgusting.

Speaker 4 It really was. Republicans are clearly trying to make a broader argument that somehow Biden is a weak leader and the world was less chaotic under Trump.
How much do you guys worry about that argument?

Speaker 10 I worry about it, especially like the way they're doing it. Like I've seen a bunch.
I've joked about it, but like, you know,

Speaker 10 Joe Biden clearly fully engaged on this over the last, whatever, 72 hours. Today, no public statements, but working round the clock, the White House working round the clock on this issue.

Speaker 10 And then you see Republicans trying to make hay, like, oh, he's not going to the microphones. He's not speaking.
They put a lid on. A lid is just that he's not speaking publicly.

Speaker 10 But of course, he's working the phones.

Speaker 10 And the idea, too, like, all these people know what kind of person Joe Biden is who views himself as like a foreign policy expert and someone's cared about these issues for a very long time.

Speaker 10 Is there any doubt that Joe Biden as a person and a president isn't like deeply concerned and involved and understanding of the importance of U.S.

Speaker 10 involvement in this issue and in rescuing any Americans or coming to understand how many Americans were killed? Does anyone actually believe that Joe Biden isn't fully engaged on this?

Speaker 10 It's ridiculous.

Speaker 4 I think when, yeah, it worries me because I think when people see images of chaos, wars, conflict, economic instability, migration, they want order and they're more susceptible to the appeal of a strong man.

Speaker 4 And I think for Biden,

Speaker 4 they are remembering

Speaker 4 the crisis in Afghanistan and leaving Afghanistan and how it seemed like the images out of Afghanistan made him seem overwhelmed by the situation.

Speaker 4 And you can see now how they're looking at whether it's Russia-Ukraine, whether it's the Middle East, whether it's the southern border.

Speaker 4 And they just want people to see images of chaos on their screens all the time and say, hey, you know, this guy's the president.

Speaker 4 Doesn't he seem a little old and feeble and like he can't, you know, he can't fix this? And so, look, what do you do about that?

Speaker 4 Because you can't necessarily control events around the world, but you can go out, you can project strength, project confidence. You can, I mean, it's what Biden is doing right now.

Speaker 4 But I think he needs to show that he is acting to shape world events and not letting world events sort of overwhelm him. And that requires going out to the microphone and talking a lot.

Speaker 4 That requires all the, all the things that you'd want to do as a president and probably requires over-communication in a moment like this. But

Speaker 4 it does worry me a little bit.

Speaker 9 Yeah, it worries me too. I mean, I remember during the Arab Spring, you turn on the TV every night and there'd be like Chirons, like days of rage.

Speaker 9 And I think our numbers would would tick down because people just saw very scary images on their screens. And like, I agree with you that

Speaker 9 being a part of the conversation is important, like, talking about principles, what we stand for, what we believe is important.

Speaker 9 I don't think you want to get caught up sort of narrating the days of events for people. I think the reality is these events are entirely out of his control.

Speaker 9 I hope behind the scenes he's pushing BB really hard not to do something scary and stupid in Gaza, but I don't know that he has a ton of control.

Speaker 9 Like short-term, the politics of being tough and killing people, and that's really easy.

Speaker 9 But like ending conflicts requires diplomacy, talking to enemies, making concessions, and our politics just provides no space for that.

Speaker 4 And that's like the

Speaker 4 like the, I do think like the other half of this, and we'll talk about it, but like.

Speaker 10 I do think we need to be making this argument.

Speaker 10 Like what connects these stories is the way that like right-wing politics, the way it divides people, sows chaos, and just the way it focuses the attention to things that don't matter

Speaker 10 is so fucking dangerous and like leaves no space for anything other than peace through war.

Speaker 10 There's no space for nuance or empathy or diplomacy that any effort to compromise or think long term or think strategically is viewed as some kind of weakness.

Speaker 4 And all the promises of right-wing politics are empty.

Speaker 4 All the promises of peace and security and safety, it's all bullshit.

Speaker 9 Trump's messages wouldn't happen if I was president.

Speaker 4 That's right. And I do think

Speaker 4 part of the the argument Democrats need to make is that a second Trump term would be even more chaotic than the first. And so part of it is reminding people of what the Trump years were like.

Speaker 4 We remember very well, but maybe not everyone in the country. And then part of it is pushing it forward to say, this is a choice between two visions.

Speaker 4 And this is what a world under Donald Trump would look like for the next four years.

Speaker 10 And I do think there's also room for pointing out that America right now is weaker for Republican chaos.

Speaker 10 America is is weaker because of Republican scapegoating of abortion, meaning that there are positions in the military open or the Republican infighting over the border or refusal to fund Ukraine is the reason there's no speaker, which is part of the reason there isn't a resolution right now showing support for Israel.

Speaker 10 That Republican infighting, chaos, right-wing nonsense, scapegoating.

Speaker 10 It is all connected to our inability to solve big problems, to be a force for good.

Speaker 10 I would like to see, I'd like when Joe Biden goes to the microphones and scolds these fucking Republicans for not being adults and he's the adult in the room.

Speaker 10 I want that now too.

Speaker 4 Yeah, and that's sort of, you're totally right, Tommy. Like, I wouldn't want him narrating events because then you get tied to the events, but like that kind of, and look, this is hard, right?

Speaker 4 Because he's not going to do that all the time in the White House, right? This is going to be more of a campaign thing as the campaign gets going.

Speaker 4 Showing that kind of fight, I think, is going to be important.

Speaker 4 Democrats are already trying to turn this argument around on Republicans by pointing out that our response to this crisis is currently being hampered by the fact that we don't have a Speaker of the House.

Speaker 4 And Tommy Tuberville, the Republican senator you mentioned, is holding up all kinds of military nominations. Tommy, is that fair? Do you think that can stick?

Speaker 4 I mean, good question.

Speaker 9 Look, we don't have a U.S. ambassador to Israel, Oman, Kuwait, Egypt.
The State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator spot is open. The USAID administrator for the Middle East spot is open.

Speaker 9 Some of those have been open for years. You mentioned this moron, Tommy Tuberville, blocking all military promotions.
So look, it's a big world out there.

Speaker 9 Like Joe Biden needs his team in place to manage it all. Will it create political pressure? I don't know.
Like, Tommy Tupperville already said, he doesn't care. He's going to keep his hole going.

Speaker 9 Fucking Ted Cruz is holding up some of these other guys. So it's like the worst people in politics who are causing some of these things.
But I think it's worth messaging it and trying.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think what's believable and also true is that Republicans are focused on their own petty grievances and culture war bullshit instead of the shit that most people care about and are worried about.

Speaker 4 It is hard, though. I love it when you talked about the fact that there's no speaker and how that's holding up the resolution.

Speaker 4 I sort of laughed when I saw that, too, because it's like, they're like, there is a bipartisan resolution condemning Hamas and showing support for Israel, and it's all ready to go, but there's no House speaker.

Speaker 4 And it's like, oh, we're one resolution away from solving this.

Speaker 10 And look, to be clear, I understand the limits of a House resolution, but I do think it's like, if these Republicans are going to spend all day pretending that Joe Biden isn't doing his job while they're literally not doing their jobs,

Speaker 10 then we should be hammering on them. We should make this the issue.
The issue should be, what they're going to say is that, you know, Democrats are weak and feckless.

Speaker 10 Like, we need to make this this a debate about Republican chaos and the failures of right-wing politics and right-wing politicians to deliver on any of the promises that they make.

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Speaker 4 Let's talk about the race for Speaker because we got some more news there.

Speaker 4 It seems like Donald Trump's dream of holding the gavel won't come to pass after he endorsed Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan in his race against House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

Speaker 4 There will be a no longer televised candidate forum between the two on Tuesday.

Speaker 4 It was going to be Brett Baer was going to host something on Fox for like an hour and then it got canceled because everyone realized that was insane.

Speaker 10 And I believe they were going to, I think the way they did it, they were both going to be nude. Am I confusing my shows?

Speaker 4 I don't know. Sounds right.

Speaker 4 So nude or not, they're going to do a candidate forum on Tuesday. And then

Speaker 4 there's an internal Republican election currently scheduled for Wednesday.

Speaker 4 So So basically, just all the House Republicans get together internally behind closed doors, and I think they're going to try to have a vote.

Speaker 4 And it's unclear yet whether it will be, okay, a majority wins or it's unanimous.

Speaker 4 Because if it's a majority and then they go to the floor for the final vote with the majority, then it helps, I think, Scalise because Scalise thinks he can get just a majority of Republicans.

Speaker 4 But Jordan's people are trying to get it unanimous behind closed doors before they bring it to the floor, which then brings up the same challenges as trying trying to get, as McCarthy had, which is trying to get 218.

Speaker 10 Yeah, there's no unit. It's the same exact problem.
Scalise has the same voting block that

Speaker 10 McCarthy had. So they're trying to kind of say, like, look, if we all come to, we don't want to do the same 17 thing.
We don't do the multi-ballot thing.

Speaker 4 That's what they're trying to avoid. Right.

Speaker 10 But, but, you know.

Speaker 4 But one possible twist now. Huh?

Speaker 4 For some reason, Kevin McCarthy, backbencher from Bakersfield, held a press conference on Monday.

Speaker 4 And when asked if he's reconsidering his decision not to run for speaker, he said he'll let his fellow Republicans decide who unites them.

Speaker 10 I like it. He's like, someone thinks Kevin should run.

Speaker 4 Should Kevin run?

Speaker 4 What if Kevin came back?

Speaker 4 You guys ready for Kevin's comeback? The thirstiest man, Kevin?

Speaker 9 Thirstiest man in the world, pretending he needs to be drafted to the job. Okay, buddy.

Speaker 10 I want him back.

Speaker 4 He also pointedly declined to endorse Scalise or Jordan. Jordan, not as much of a surprise, though they somehow grew close during Kevin's brief tenure.

Speaker 4 But Scalesis is number two, and usually the speaker would endorse the number two in this, but there's no love for it. They don't know each other.
They have not liked each other for a while.

Speaker 10 I mean, Scalese has just been waiting there for this moment the whole time. They both knew it.

Speaker 10 And there's, you know, a lot of reports about McCarthy pushing Scales aside whenever any, whenever Scalise was given many opportunities to say kind and supportive words about Kevin McCarthy, and he always found the least number possible.

Speaker 4 I mean, I get what Kevin's trying to do here. He's thinking like the first two candidates are always

Speaker 4 that never works when it's it's this close. And so, he's thinking of like, he'll just be there waiting in the wings when neither Scalise or Jordan can get the requisite number of votes.

Speaker 4 But I think what McCarthy is forgetting is the eight holdouts that voted against him that cost him his job, they're still there. That Gates guy? They haven't changed their mind.

Speaker 9 I like the narrative that there's a foreign policy crisis and we need Kevin

Speaker 4 now. It's just like we need a bipartisan resolution.
We need Kevin.

Speaker 9 I literally read that somewhere.

Speaker 4 It's amazing.

Speaker 10 BB's on the phone with Biden being like, I need Kevin. I can't figure this thing out without Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker 9 Senator of the West Bank.

Speaker 4 Who do you guys think has an edge in this race? And do you want to talk about how a Jordan or Scalise run house would differ from life under Kevin?

Speaker 10 I don't know. It's really unclear right now.
But the thing that worries me is less about the distinction between the two of them and more that the lesson of the last...

Speaker 10 I can't believe it's been 81 days, but

Speaker 10 what worries me about it is that the lesson they learned is the reason Kevin McCarthy is not speaker right now is because he didn't allow the country to default and he did bring a clean

Speaker 10 CR to the floor continue resolution to keep funding the government.

Speaker 10 Though now in hindsight, it looks a little bit like he was just kind of fucked that up and thought he was going to pull one over the Democrats, but didn't. But regardless, like that's what worries me.

Speaker 10 It's less about how different they are as individuals between each other or from Kevin McCarthy and more about what they've learned about the dynamics of the House Republican caucus.

Speaker 9 You know what they say about speakers. The days are long, but the years are short.

Speaker 4 Oh, God. Damn it.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 9 I don't know. I'm going to ask Inzinger what he thinks.
Like, Scalise to me seems like kind of your typical, like, look, it's real bad that he once called himself David Duke without the baggage.

Speaker 9 We should never forget that.

Speaker 9 And there's more reporting in 2014, I think, from Bob Casa, about how close Scalise's campaign manager was with Duke's people because Steve Scalise attended this forum with David Duke.

Speaker 9 I mean, that is really troubling, but he seems like kind of a traditional politician that cuts deals. Jim Jordan is a weird, kind of crazy zealot.

Speaker 9 That makes me a little more nervous when it comes to like defaulting on her debt, but I don't know.

Speaker 4 I mean, I think that just to talk about sort of like who's got the edge here, I've been surprised by how many endorsements Jordan has, and along with Trump's, which is a big deal too.

Speaker 4 The list of Jordan endorsements is longer than the list of Scalise endorsements.

Speaker 4 I think Jordan has he's going to have all the crazies, the craziest, but then, you know, he has made a a lot of allies in leadership over the last during kevin's tenure but here's the thing you just look at the two pitches from both of them steve scalies pitch to everyone is like kevin mccarthy was a great fundraiser and i can also be i'm like the the next best fundraiser and jim jordan's pitch is like you've seen me on tv a bunch i annoy liberals and like that that has always worked better for this republican party well than the other than the fundraising but that but they get i don't know like it's it's hard to tell the difference between who's louder and who has the numbers.

Speaker 10 You know what I mean? It's like,

Speaker 10 yes, I think Scalia is like, I'll be Kevin McCarthy, but maybe a little bit smarter.

Speaker 10 And Jim Jordan's like, I am your retribution. But I don't know what happens when they're behind closed doors.

Speaker 10 Because it would make sense to me that a lot of people might find it useful to their politics to endorse Jim Jordan, but not endorse Scalia.

Speaker 9 Jim Jordan reportedly has a history of covering up crimes. That could be useful.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 that's a big part of this.

Speaker 9 That might be a selling point.

Speaker 4 And And trying to overturn elections.

Speaker 4 He was, of all the Republican members of Congress, he was probably one of the people who worked most closely with Trump and his goons on trying to overturn the election, which is so that's where we're headed.

Speaker 4 But yeah, to your point, Lovitt, Jordan also supported, I saw primary opponents for 12 sitting members of Congress right now.

Speaker 4 So there are people who are in their seat, Republicans in their seat, and they're like, Jim Jordan tried to support a primary against me.

Speaker 4 So I don't, it's hard to envision, again, a unanimous Republican caucus saying like, yeah,

Speaker 4 we're all in behind Jordan. Yeah, and I just there's no way he can get like the Mike Lawlers of the world and those and like Don Bacon and those people.

Speaker 10 Like the eight votes of the dumbest fucks on that caucus are worth the same amount as the eight quietest, most moderate. They just are.
And like there, there just isn't

Speaker 10 their majority is so slim that there just isn't a majority of the house for either one of these guys.

Speaker 10 So that's that's why I don't understand how it shakes out and why it actually does like open the door for something like for McCarthy to like throw his hat in and try to fix it, even though I don't understand how you get oh, yes to McCarthy, but not Scalise anyway.

Speaker 4 I do think that the entire Republican caucus looks a lot more like Jim Jordan than it does like anyone else these days.

Speaker 4 And so like if Jim Jordan was running five years ago, six years ago, I'd be like, no way. But I don't,

Speaker 4 they're pretty right-wing.

Speaker 10 I also just, I also don't understand, like, what are the people that don't want Jim Jordan want less? A Jim Jordan speakership or like a chaotic, unending fight over the speakership?

Speaker 10 Like who gives, who blinks? Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 4 Yeah, it depends on how

Speaker 4 hard people go to the mat for Jordan who are supporting him.

Speaker 4 Oh, God.

Speaker 4 Was not even trying. Was not even trying.
Like that. All right.
Finally, RFK Jr. Oh, man, what a

Speaker 4 real cast of characters today.

Speaker 10 This is why we can't have any fucking trains.

Speaker 4 RFK Jr. announced on Monday that he's dropping out of the Democratic primary so that he can run as an independent or third-party candidate for president.

Speaker 4 There's been a debate as to whether RFK Jr.'s bid would take more votes from Biden or Trump.

Speaker 4 And there's been reporting in Semaphore that Trump's team is actually worried about this and will soon begin dropping, quote, napalm after napalm on his head.

Speaker 4 That was a Trump advisor to Semaphore about RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 Meanwhile, there's also a big piece in the New York Times over the weekend about how outside Democratic groups are doing everything they can to keep third-party spoilers like Kennedy, Cornell West, and whoever no labels nominates off the ballot.

Speaker 4 In his announcement today, Kennedy claimed his candidacy will hurt both Trump and Biden. The Democrats are frightened that I'm going to spoil the election for President Biden.

Speaker 4 And the Republicans are frightened that I'm going to spoil it for President Trump.

Speaker 4 The truth is, they're both right.

Speaker 4 Mike.

Speaker 4 I will say just because you all deserve

Speaker 4 some fun here, that is not how the speech started. The speech started with a few hiccups.
Let's listen to this clip.

Speaker 18 I need my speech.

Speaker 18 You can't read anything.

Speaker 18 What?

Speaker 18 It's upside down. It's upside down.

Speaker 18 It's upside down.

Speaker 4 Well-oiled machine.

Speaker 4 What do you guys think about Kennedy's move here?

Speaker 9 Reminds me of my favorite political moment when Judge Janine Pirot was running against Hillary Clinton and she couldn't find page 10 in her speech. And she's like, has anyone seen page 10?

Speaker 4 That's such a good moment.

Speaker 10 When I believe it was the day that Obama was announcing that Hillary was going to be Secretary of State,

Speaker 10 it happened quickly. And so I had to, and we're still operating on facts

Speaker 10 at that time. And so

Speaker 10 I was at a hotel and I finished the speech. I printed the speech.
I grabbed it off the printer. I ran to a fax machine.
I faxed it to where her plane was landing. And then I was done.

Speaker 10 I walked back back to the room and then I found on the ground page six.

Speaker 10 I don't know that we got her page six.

Speaker 4 I'm not minding.

Speaker 10 But I just, whenever I hear about a missing page in a speech, I just go back to that.

Speaker 4 Five mid-level bureaucrats were left out of the announcement.

Speaker 10 Hey, Dude, there was some soaring pros on that page.

Speaker 4 She was going through the second page of acknowledgements.

Speaker 10 Hey, hey, there was a lot of important words about smart power on that page.

Speaker 9 I'd like to thank my counterpart at Echo Wasps.

Speaker 4 A couple of Madeline Albright quotes left on the cutting room floor.

Speaker 10 America's an indispensable nation. What if people didn't know?

Speaker 4 No, that was okay. Anyway, RFK? Yeah, what do you think?

Speaker 4 Why did he do this?

Speaker 10 I mean, remember when I freaked out and made us talk about this idiot the first time?

Speaker 9 This was my fear at the time. It was baseless.
And then I talked myself out of this being a possibility. But like, he was never actually trying to run for the Democratic primary.

Speaker 4 He knew that. We knew that.

Speaker 9 He just knew this was the hack. You pretend you're running for president to get pressed, and then you share your anti-vaccine views.

Speaker 4 But this is. But this is nerfed.
This makes me scary.

Speaker 4 Yeah, but this is what, and I remember you saying this, and it's what I thought then, what I think now is like, it's if he was saying I'm running on the Libertarian Party's ticket, uh, I'd be like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 4 But, like, as an independent candidate with no party, it's really hard to get on the ballot in 50s for sure.

Speaker 4 And it's also, we should say that Cornell West, who was running for the Green Party nomination, which made me pretty nervous because the Green Party is on the ballot in many states, including a lot of swing states, announced last week that he's also running as an independent candidate, not running for the Green Party nomination.

Speaker 4 So it's like, I don't know how Cornell West or RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 is going to, at this stage, get ballot access for, even if it's not all 50 states, at least a lot of them.

Speaker 4 Write him in, though.

Speaker 4 You can write him in. I don't think that.
I think.

Speaker 9 A write-in campaign is hard, but it's a little easier when your name is Kennedy.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I just think.

Speaker 4 I don't know. I think he's going to...
The thing that worries me the most is that he has a super PAC supporting him and so that they will spend a lot of money to to get him on the ballot. For sure.

Speaker 10 And get him on the ballot in a few swing states.

Speaker 4 But like, look, No Labels has been trying to get on the ballot for, and they've been spending a ton of money, and they've been at this for a year plus, and they're still not on the ballot everywhere.

Speaker 9 They're in 11 states, though. They're enough to be a spoiler.
I mean, that's the issue. You don't have to be on 50 states.
You have to be in the right states enough to be a spoiler.

Speaker 10 You can destroy this country in four states if you want.

Speaker 4 Right. But I'm saying, like,

Speaker 4 I'm very worried about No Labels, but I'm saying they've been at it for a while, and now our kid juniors are just going to start now. I don't know.

Speaker 10 I'm just like, I yes, I find the whole all to be just sort of of like a despicable, narcissistic, kind of pointless exercise. Everyone involved in it should be completely ashamed.
But the, the,

Speaker 10 the, um, the thing that worries me most is like that we have a politics that makes space for all of this noise, that like his name ID and the fact that there are all these sort of avenues for someone with these anti-vax like conspiracy theory views, like that there are all these sort of like

Speaker 10 organs that that exist to kind of get that in front of a lot of people's eyeballs. It just like, we don't have a good way to like keep, like to tamp down this kind of noise.

Speaker 10 And in a world where we're going to be in an election that could be decided by 30,000, 40,000 votes, I worry about all of them. I worry about no labels, but also about Cornell West.

Speaker 10 I worry about RFK Jr. I worry about these guys being able to get in front of enough people with their message.

Speaker 10 And because everything is so fractured and reaching people is so hard, what they're not going to hear is how a vote for them is pointless and might ultimately redound to Trump being president.

Speaker 10 And that to me is what worries me.

Speaker 4 Yeah, anything that fractures the anti-Trump coalition is a threat to Joe Biden.

Speaker 4 What do you make of the Trump people saying that they're worried about him?

Speaker 9 I mean, it makes sense, just intuitively.

Speaker 9 The MAGA base is anti-vaccine. They are anti-deep state.
They are hyper-paranoid. RFK Jr.
is strumming all those strings. You know, I mean, like, he's your guy.

Speaker 9 If you think that like the deep state killed Kennedy, he'll confirm that for you. So, yeah, I worry about about it.
Also, but it depends on how Kennedy runs.

Speaker 9 Kennedy could run attacking Joe Biden as he has been, or he could run attacking Trump for his policies. And I think he has a lot of agency here, which is scary too.

Speaker 4 And I think he'll probably do both.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I worry about it because I worry about the different levels of enthusiasm for the kind of people that might be susceptible to the message because the kind of like Trump has done, I think, a very good job catering to the kind of kookiest corners of the right.

Speaker 10 He's flirted with QAnon. He's obviously embraced a form of like kind of anti-vax

Speaker 10 vaccination skepticism. And like, so he kind of, he knows how to excite those people.

Speaker 10 And then the kind of people that might find a third-party candidate appealing on our side, the people that might be susceptible, they're less engaged. less reachable, less open to Joe Biden.

Speaker 10 So that, that asymmetry is the thing that worries me most.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I think the best you can say about all the polling on this is that it's mixed.

Speaker 4 I know Dan wrote a piece about this and used sort of the echelon insights polling, which shows that like it's one of the few polls that's tested a three-way race between Trump, Biden, and RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 And it has Trump leading by three in a two-way, and then Trump's lead going to four when you throw RFK Jr. in.
That's one poll.

Speaker 4 But then Nate Silver wrote a whole piece about this and picked apart the New York Times Sienna poll about RFK support. And he did point out that like RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 is relatively popular with people who didn't vote in 2020 at all for either candidate, which sort of makes sense. He also does worse among Biden voters than among Democrats.

Speaker 4 So that made Nate conclude that some of RFK Jr. supporters are anti-Biden Democrats who were not going to vote for Biden anyway.
And I do, you could see,

Speaker 4 I don't think that he's going to necessarily help Biden, but I don't know how much he's going to hurt Biden because it is hard to see someone with those views, a voter with all of the views that RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 has now and that are known about RFK Jr., who wasn't already going to,

Speaker 4 I feel like either that voter was going to vote for Donald Trump or stay home.

Speaker 10 That's sort of like the strange thing about that quote. First of all, it's grammatically confusing, napalm after napalm.
That's something. That doesn't make sense.

Speaker 10 That's napalm is not accountable set.

Speaker 10 But I also, it's like, it's a strange posture to take, like, even an interview like that.

Speaker 10 Wouldn't you want to be signaling like, oh, there are now two Democrats in the race, and we're going to destroy both of them? You know, I don't, I find it like I find it strange.

Speaker 4 Posture. I have a little anxiety over what happens if Democrats are attacking RFK Jr.

Speaker 4 as MAGA, and then Trump people attack him as a radical leftist, and then he, and then people see, oh, well, both sides are attacking him, so he must be, you know, he must be somewhere in the middle.

Speaker 4 So that dynamic worries me.

Speaker 10 And plus, he's such an inspirational figure.

Speaker 9 It just makes the whole thing so chaotic and so much harder to predict. And we just, we love in this country to repeat our mistakes.
You know, 2016,

Speaker 9 vote for Jill Stein. What's the problem? What's the worst that can happen? 2020.
Yeah, vote for Nader in Florida. What's the worst that can happen? You know, Gore and Bush, they're all the same.

Speaker 10 And by the way, to that point, also, there is a certain kind of brand of

Speaker 10 political pundit that just loves the polling that shows that Americans are open to a third-party candidate. And the questions are always written to be the most like, given the failures

Speaker 4 of politics?

Speaker 10 Yeah, do you find the failures of Democrats and Republicans so egregious that it leaves the door open to you supporting a third-party candidate? And everyone's like, yes, of course it does.

Speaker 4 It's like, how many people are like, no, I am a partisan hack.

Speaker 9 I'm blindly partisan.

Speaker 4 So the Times piece makes it seem like Democrats and Biden allies and Democratic officials are still most worried about a no labels bid more than anything else. Do you guys agree?

Speaker 4 I certainly do. Of course.

Speaker 9 They're on the ballot in Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina. That's scary stuff.

Speaker 4 It's the ballot access they have is the first thing that worries me, and the second thing that worries me is centrists, independents, moderate Republicans are not going to vote for Trump.

Speaker 4 They probably voted, a lot of them probably voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

Speaker 4 And if they don't like either Donald Trump or Joe Biden, no labels will give them a home if they don't realize that that home is going to spoil the election in favor of Trump.

Speaker 10 When Biden was asked about this in that

Speaker 10 John Harwood interview, his response was sort of interesting. Because he mentioned that Joe Lieberman is obviously

Speaker 10 his friend,

Speaker 10 but said that,

Speaker 4 look, I don't know. Joseph Breston Lieberman.

Speaker 10 He said, oh, you know, I've talked to my friend Joe about this. He has every right to run, but I told him I think he's going to help Trump.

Speaker 10 He's kind of like trying to take the temperature down on the whole thing. When Nancy Jacobson did that donor call and the donors are all like, hey, what are we doing? We think this might help Trump.

Speaker 10 What she said on that call was, if we're getting closer and it looks like we have no chance of actually doing meaningfully well, but might act as a spoiler,

Speaker 10 we won't put a candidate forward. And I do think that like, look,

Speaker 10 this is all so foolish and dangerous and stupid and selfish and counterproductive.

Speaker 10 But I think like if you look at the way Biden's talking about this, like, maybe there's some hope that as we get closer, there's a way to kind of walk this back. Boy, that'd be nice.
I don't know.

Speaker 10 I mean, look,

Speaker 4 you know,

Speaker 10 worse and better things have happened.

Speaker 9 $60 million. Who gave $60 million to no labels?

Speaker 4 Probably Republican

Speaker 4 billionaires. Yeah.

Speaker 9 Republican billionaires, you don't like Trump. Yeah, that's right.
I do think that

Speaker 4 the challenge is...

Speaker 10 Or who do you like Trump?

Speaker 4 You want to

Speaker 4 tell people that these are poor choices of candidates just based on the merits and what they believe and what they stand for.

Speaker 4 But you also want to communicate that these people are not going to win and that by voting for them, you're going to vote for Trump without being too heavy-handed and telling people, like, do not vote.

Speaker 4 You cannot vote for this person.

Speaker 10 Well, that's why you, that's like the Biden, Biden gets this. And like, that's why his tone was so like, everybody is America.
Everybody's got a right to run. I'm just worried for the country.

Speaker 4 Right, right, right. So it's a, it's a tough balance.

Speaker 9 This is a good lesson, though, for everyone on social media. You probably can't scold anyone out of their votes, whether it's Republican, Democrat, or third party.
You should try to convince them.

Speaker 4 Yes, that's right. Two quick housekeeping items before we head to break.
We just announced our guests for the October 19th live show in D.C.

Speaker 4 We got Senator John Fetterman. Hell yeah.
He's going to join us.

Speaker 4 Jose Andres, state Senate candidate Jennifer Carol Foy, good friend of the pod, and guest co-host Simone Sanders, also a great friend of the show. That's what a show.
That's a great, great show.

Speaker 4 See where else we're heading and get your tickets at crooked.com slash events.

Speaker 4 Also, you can enjoy new and old Pod Save America episodes completely ad-free when you subscribe to Crooked's Friend of the Pod community. That's right.

Speaker 4 No distractions, no fast-forwarding, just sweet, sweet takes. Look, it's a great community.

Speaker 4 I know the Friend of the Pod community gave you and Ben a bunch of questions on Discord that you answered during your special episode of Pod Save the World.

Speaker 4 There was a lively discussion about my interview with Cassidy Hutchinson on the Discord over the weekend that I had a lot of fun engaging in. A lot more fun than talking about it on Twitter.

Speaker 10 Why did you platform her, John?

Speaker 4 I platformed her. I platformed her.

Speaker 4 Platformed her.

Speaker 4 Anyway, crooked.com/slash friends. We have great conversation in the Discord.
Ad FreePod Save America. It's fantastic.
Check it out.

Speaker 4 When we come back, former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger talks to Tommy about his old colleagues and the party he now calls a cult.

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Speaker 9 I am thrilled to welcome to the show Congressman Adam Kinzinger. He is a former Republican congressman from Illinois, serving from 2011 to 2023.

Speaker 9 He is someone who has stood up to Trump since the very beginning. He refused to vote for him in 2016.
He voted to impeach after January 6th. He served on the January 6th Select Committee.

Speaker 9 Congressman, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 13 Yeah, it's great to be with you. I'm glad we can make this work.
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 9 It's great to talk to you again. I think we talked once for Pod Save the World about foreign policy nerdy stuff.

Speaker 9 But, you know, today, I want to talk to you because, you know, you served in Congress. I did not.

Speaker 9 You caucused with all the Republicans' leadership or, you know, who may soon be in leadership. You get the systems and the individuals better than I ever will.

Speaker 9 I was hoping you could just, like, we could start with some basics, right? Like, how much power does the Speaker of the House actually have?

Speaker 9 We know about the kind of line of succession, but, you know, what about day-to-day operations impact on members like you?

Speaker 4 Well, look, I think it depends.

Speaker 13 So when the Speaker is being held hostage, it does reduce his his or her power.

Speaker 13 You know, when every time it's, I saw this under Boehner, under Paul Ryan, and under McCarthy, obviously, you know, he might want to bring a bill forward that, you know, is decent.

Speaker 13 And then all of a sudden he's being held hostage by the far right that's just, you know, not going to let him bring it. They're going to deny him the votes.

Speaker 13 But in terms of actual power, it's quite a bit because they can control, you know, as we saw with Patrick McHenry, you know, evicting Nancy Pelosi, you control all those kinds of resources in the House.

Speaker 13 You get to set, you get to determine what comes to the floor and what doesn't. And it's good and bad.
You obviously need somebody with some power in this position because you have 435 egos.

Speaker 13 At the same time, I think we've kind of lost this reality that the Speaker of the House really was intended to be just that, the Speaker for the whole House.

Speaker 13 And it's really become the leader of a certain political party.

Speaker 13 So, but yeah, it's look, you know, I never saw Boehner or Paul Ryan really have the ability to do what they wanted because they were always like herding cats to try to get anything done.

Speaker 9 Yeah, that's very true.

Speaker 9 I know that I sort of assumed that Kevin McCarthy's tenure would be pretty brief.

Speaker 9 I know that you made public statements at the time saying the same because of the, you know, the devil's bargain he made to get the job in the first place, specifically allowing one member to offer a motion to vacate.

Speaker 9 But, you know, what do you make of his tenure? And what was your experience dealing with Kevin McCarthy in the House?

Speaker 13 So it's interesting. So the first, you know, really before Trump came onto the scene, the particular last couple of years of Trump, I mean, Kevin and I were pretty close.

Speaker 13 I would, you know, he's actually a very good politician. You know, if he came to my district once to raise money, for instance, and he really can hold a crowd's attention.

Speaker 13 And he's very good at storytelling, you know, and you've seen his personality. He's kind of an awesh.

Speaker 13 You know, he would, he would text my mom, like, which is odd, but that wow.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 13 And he does that with everybody's mom.

Speaker 13 But when I started, I always had thought that Kevin McCarthy had a red line, that he had like some kind of a soul, you know, because like he would, you know, he'd talk about, hey, Republicans need to get on board on climate change.

Speaker 13 And, you know, we've just got to figure out our way to do it. And, you know, Republicans need to reach out to Silicon Valley.
But he threw that all in the toilet.

Speaker 13 And I came to realize with Kevin McCarthy, he is nothing but a political opportunist and will do whatever he needs to win. And then, so what do I make of his speakership? Look.

Speaker 13 The fact that he got the debt limit done was actually a huge deal. I thought for the first time we were probably going to broach the debt limit.

Speaker 13 The fact that he kept the government open, but, you know, for 45 days, so who knows how that ends up going, I guess those can be achievements, but I think he was a massively failed speaker.

Speaker 13 I mean, the fact that he only lasted a few months

Speaker 13 is, you know, obviously huge. The fact that he's the first speaker to ever have his job taken away from him is huge.

Speaker 13 And the fact that he's the guy that, I mean, literally Kevin McCarthy, and I'm not exaggerating in saying this, he's the one that brought Donald Trump back to life politically.

Speaker 13 I mean, that like two weeks after January 6th, if you were in a Republican conference meeting, everybody had their heads down. It was really quiet.
Nobody knew where we were going with this.

Speaker 13 And the second Kevin McCarthy showed up at Mar-a-Lago, he resurrected Donald Trump. I think history is not going to be kind to him.

Speaker 9 I'm still reeling from the texting everybody's mom anyway.

Speaker 9 I can't get past that.

Speaker 13 My mom liked him better than me, not anymore.

Speaker 13 He became mean to me, but she liked me.

Speaker 9 Yeah,

Speaker 9 they turned.

Speaker 9 I imagine you don't think much of the Bring Back Kevin movement that was being floated in Politico Playbook this morning.

Speaker 13 No, I mean, you know, look, I think given what's been going on around the world, the timing couldn't, frankly, be worse. But I also have no love loss for Kevin.
I mean, Kevin,

Speaker 13 like I said,

Speaker 13 he's the whole reason I think that Donald Trump is back. So, no, I'm not super excited about the Bring Back Kevin movement.
But I do think, look,

Speaker 13 we need a speaker that's kind of normal. And unfortunately, I don't see too many names floated right now.

Speaker 9 Well, yeah, I want to get to that. So this week, Republicans are going to meet behind closed doors and eventually choose a new speaker, we hope.

Speaker 9 What are those meetings like? Are the rooms literally filled with smoke? Do you think people are deciding the day of, or is the lobbying kind of happening in advance? Like, how does this work?

Speaker 13 Yeah, so it's like... The rooms used to be filled with smoke when Boehner was speaker because

Speaker 13 he actually changed the rules so he could just smoke wherever, like anywhere but the house war, really.

Speaker 13 And which which I'll be honest, it's kind of every now and then smell a cigarette and you're like, oh, it's, you know, kind of takes me back a little bit to back up.

Speaker 9 To my parents' station wagon or whatever.

Speaker 13 They're like baseball games. All the dads are smoking.
But yeah, I mean, so there, it will be a very intense meeting. These will be intense meetings.

Speaker 13 I think for the most part, people have, I guess, generally started to make up their mind.

Speaker 13 You know, I've talked to a few members who are trying to figure this out, particularly when it comes to Ukraine. And I've tried to make the point to them, like, you guys cannot support anybody.

Speaker 13 You can't support anybody that's not going to put Ukraine on the floor. Whether they actually have the courage to do that or not, I don't know.

Speaker 13 So I think you'll see if you were in these meetings, everybody kind of lollygag, slaps each other on the back, and then you stand up at these microphones.

Speaker 13 So if you imagine, probably the candidates and those that are actually in leadership right now sit at the front of the room looking out towards the room.

Speaker 13 And, you know, they each stand up and give their little five-minute introduction or whatever, and we all need to unite and rah-rah-rah.

Speaker 13 And then usually have a couple of lines and all the members stand up and get a chance to say their piece and a lot of the times there's yelling sometimes there's people that think they're funny that aren't and um and i don't know if anybody ever gets their mind changed in these meetings but they're important to have i guess I love the idea of like some backbancher going up and doing like a tight five, you know, see if they can get rid of a laugh.

Speaker 13 It is exactly. So here's a really quick, funny story.
So Bruce Poliquin, I always had this like he was out of Maine and always somebody would stand up.

Speaker 13 I think it was always steve scalese and you know a couple people would clap and then he'd always steve scalees would hold thanks bruce and then bruce would make some joke this was like every time and then you know scalise would make some comment about go louisiana and then somebody in the crowds like no michigan ha ha ha okay let's talk about america's business that got kind of old after 12 years oh man that brings me back to my my time working in the senate and making like stupid mayor's bets when there was some playoff game or something

Speaker 13 oh yeah i'm gonna get ribs or we're going to give you a case of beer because we're cool and we drink beer.

Speaker 4 It's like,

Speaker 9 yeah, some sort of local cheesecake. Oh, God.
I ain't about to move. So, anyway, you mentioned Steve Scalise.
He's one of the leading candidates. Congressman Jim Jordan is the other.

Speaker 9 What do you think people should know about the two of them? You know, you just say we need someone who could be normal. Does anyone fit the bill there?

Speaker 9 And do you have a sense of who the next speaker might be?

Speaker 13 I would say the closest that fits the bill would be Steve Scalise. You know,

Speaker 13 he's got an interesting background, obviously, but generally, in terms of how he is, he's, I would call him a fairly mainstream Republican, but he's not a very strong leader.

Speaker 13 You know, he's a, he's a, I call him a smiley wiggie.

Speaker 13 Like, he'll smile at you, he'll shake your hand, but he's not really good at, you've, you know, as a speaker, you have to have somebody that's going to be able to sit you down in the chair and call you out.

Speaker 13 And that takes confrontation skills, which Steve Scalise doesn't have. I also don't know where he stands on Ukraine.

Speaker 13 And again, I really think the Ukraine issue right now is the defining issue of foreign policy in our generation.

Speaker 13 Jim Jordan, look, Jim Jordan is a true believer. He is a true Christian nationalist.
The reason he operates as he does outside of kind of extra-constitutional,

Speaker 13 you know, why does he ignore subpoenas from the January 6th committee? He's, yes, he's a politician at his heart, but he's a true believer. And that's what's frightening.

Speaker 13 He is somebody that really believes that you have to defeat the left at any cost and through any route because the left is doing the business of frankly the devil and so that jim jordan is is very worrisome to me because the fact that first off you know the fact that the party has actually come to a point where jim jordan is considered a possibility to be speaker blows me away but secondarily i think he's go he has the best chance of becoming speaker because as you know these right-wing echo chambers are going to start making these members of congress go on record with who they're supporting they're not going to let you have a secret ballot and and be quiet and if you say steve scales and this is what's crazy now you're a rhino if you're with steve scalise jim jordan is a real concern to me for this country

Speaker 9 man yeah me too i've never even met the devils that's not fair um i do want to talk about ukraine uh in a second but i mean i guess it i wonder if the look you got these crazy rules that that kevin mccarthy put in place to get the job including the sort of one member being able to kick the speaker out of the job by putting forward the the motion to vacate i worry that the house remains ungovernable unless you fix those bills.

Speaker 9 Do you agree? And do you think there's any talk of like fixing those kind of underlying problems?

Speaker 13 Yeah, there is talk of it. I agree with you.
And I have mixed feelings at the moment because part of me wants to be able to easily knock out the next speaker in this case.

Speaker 13 Because if it's Jim Jordan, for instance, and let's say he throws somebody under the bus, like Ukraine, I want some of my colleagues that are pro-Ukraine to be able to have that ability.

Speaker 13 The problem is they won't. They're not the kind of people that would do that.
I think that rule has to change.

Speaker 13 And, you know, in the past, i think a single person could bring up a motion to vacate but that was never considered a realistic tactic and and as you know well in politics once you violate some standard once you violate some order some like kind of baseline thing you never go back up to accepting that as baseline again so when somebody said we're going to move to vacate the chair and that actually happened that is now in people's playbook for in essence every bill they disagree with going forward so yes for the sake of the country that needs to change.

Speaker 13 I wouldn't mind if they waited a few months on it, but it does need to change.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I hear you.

Speaker 9 You'll see some talk of like a unity government between Republicans and Democrats where, you know, some moderates come together, they cut a deal, they try to govern in a way that's more bipartisan.

Speaker 9 That's treated by a lot of people. I think myself included, and maybe as kind of like West Wing fan fiction, but I don't know.
I mean, it shouldn't have to be.

Speaker 9 Do you think there's any hope of that kind of approach?

Speaker 13 Look, I actually am not as pessimistic about the possibility

Speaker 13 of that as a lot of people. Because look, has it ever been done? As far as I know, no.
Some state houses have. I think some of those have had to pull it off.
Texas. Yeah, Texas and others.

Speaker 13 And we're now in that territory of like things that have never been done before anyway.

Speaker 13 Here's the way that happens is if, you know, the Republicans can't settle on a speaker.

Speaker 13 And again, if we can get five to 10 brave Republicans, which I don't think exist anymore, I've learned that over the last couple of years.

Speaker 13 But if they can hold out and say, we're not going to vote for, again, somebody that's going to not put Ukraine on the floor as an example, you will force that.

Speaker 13 I mean, that's a way to guarantee that you force that.

Speaker 13 The problem is, is those people that would have the tendency to do that are the moderates who just like to get along anyway. So I don't think it's unreasonable.

Speaker 13 I think it's unreasonable to think it'll happen now or within the next week.

Speaker 13 But if we get down the lane and the Republicans can't put forward a candidate, imagine somebody like, I'll just throw a name out there, like a Fred Upton, okay, who Democrats respect.

Speaker 13 He's a moderate Republican. Republicans generally respect him.
And you can find, you know, enough Republicans to vote with the Democrats on this.

Speaker 13 It would be, that would actually be game-changing for the country.

Speaker 13 Can you imagine how healing that would be to actually have a speaker that creates a power-sharing agreement that says, my job as speaker is to actually just facilitate debate on the floor, facilitate votes?

Speaker 13 I think that would be essential.

Speaker 13 The way I look at it is I wouldn't put my money on it at this moment, but if the American people think about it and want it, they can actually make something happen.

Speaker 13 And I also wouldn't bet everything against it happening either.

Speaker 4 Okay, well, that's a little more hopeful than I mean, it would be incredible. It would be

Speaker 9 an important thing.

Speaker 9 So, you've mentioned this a few times. Both of us are big believers in the U.S.
continuing to provide support for Ukraine. I've been watching the polling on this pretty closely for a while.

Speaker 9 I've noticed it kind of ticking down further and further among Democrats, but mostly among Republicans.

Speaker 9 I'm wondering why you think that's happening and how hopeful you are that we can get another tranche of money through Congress because, you know, I suspect this is kind of the last shot before the 2024 election.

Speaker 13 Yeah, I suspect you're right. Look, I think, so broadly speaking, I think the president needs to continue to make the case for why Ukraine.

Speaker 13 I mean, the thing I learned in my time in politics is for generally the American people don't pay a lot of attention to foreign policy and they need leadership. That's where, you know,

Speaker 13 obviously we shouldn't have gone into Iraq, but, you know, you see George W. Bush making a case for Iraq prior to Iraq and brought the people along.
And that's where leadership comes in.

Speaker 13 And whether it's a member of Congress, somebody in the Senate, or the president making that case, that needs to happen more.

Speaker 13 But on the Republican side, I'm not sure Biden's going to be able to sway, you know, the right on this issue.

Speaker 13 And that is because of a lack of leadership on the GOP, who are too effing scared to just tell the truth. Like, look, Russia is our enemy.

Speaker 13 We're getting a bargain.

Speaker 13 This is the most fiscally conservative thing we can do is empower the Ukrainians to basically do what we've spent trillions of dollars to be ready to do if we had to against the Russians.

Speaker 13 It's not a hard case to make, but when you're scared to death of what Fox News or Newsmax or whatever is going to say about you, it's really easy to just be quiet. And so there's been a...

Speaker 13 absolute lack of leadership on the right in terms of this. Voices like Tucker Carlson, who is absolutely in bed with Vladimir Putin and with those, you know, the guy out of Hungary, just Orban.

Speaker 13 It is amazing to me to watch this complete, what used to be the party of Reagan that would brag about being, you know, a strong national defense, has shit that down the toilet.

Speaker 13 And I think that's the reason you're seeing this collapse on the right.

Speaker 4 And look, war is hard.

Speaker 13 War takes a long time. We are used to, as Americans, being able to go in somewhere and knock out an army in three weeks and then come home or enter a peacekeeping operation.

Speaker 13 That's not what happens when you don't have air supremacy in Ukraine. But I'll tell you what the most inspiring thing to me is, and frankly, something that has changed my opinion a lot on the left.

Speaker 13 I never saw the left in America as the enemy, right? Obviously now they're my allies because we believe in democracy.

Speaker 13 But watching the left generally stand up and stress the importance of defending democracy in Ukraine has actually made me realize that foreign policy from, I'll say just left generally, you know, actually believes in defending democracy.

Speaker 13 And my old party doesn't. I guess I'll say my party still doesn't, but I don't really identify as a Republican.

Speaker 13 And it's amazing to me also to watch, you know, a welder in Ukraine and an actor in Ukraine fighting together in a foxhole to defeat tyranny.

Speaker 13 It should be an inspiration to all of us.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I agree with that. I mean,

Speaker 9 I wonder how much you think the opposition to Ukraine in the Republican Party is,

Speaker 9 you know, earnestly held kind of isolationist views that, you know, we should be worried about things back home and not wars abroad versus, I don't know, like maybe reflexive opposition to something Biden does or like, hey, Trump doesn't like Ukraine, so now I don't either.

Speaker 9 I mean,

Speaker 9 I don't want to like assume that people

Speaker 9 don't, you know, aren't telling the truth about their motivations or intentions, but I just can't suss it out.

Speaker 13 Yeah, well, so look, there's a few that, and they're the guys that have been around forever. You know, the old Ron Pauls, the old,

Speaker 13 what's it, Rohrbacher, Dana Rohrbacher, that were always kind of isolationalists, but they were always a very small fraction of the party. I think the rest of this is

Speaker 13 let's own the libs, right? Let's everything that Biden does, we're against.

Speaker 13 Somehow, Vladimir Putin, through the internet, through, you know, social media, has convinced some on the right that he is this defender of Christianity, which is just the most insane thing I've ever heard.

Speaker 13 But some people believe that, that, you know, he's against whatever it is, gays or whatever they're angry about at the moment. And so he's our guy.

Speaker 13 And I think a lot of it is just this kind of reflexive anti-Bidenism, this reflexive, you know, kind of Western liberal ideology is anti-Christian, which isn't true.

Speaker 13 And I think that's what a lot of it comes to.

Speaker 13 I don't think many people, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, for that matter, or anybody, have a well-thought-out position on it, except in Tucker's case, I can make some money maybe it's a direct payment from Russia which I actually would not be surprised to find out or it's just being crazy and in driving people to him but there is no I think the opposition to Ukraine for instance is not really a serious thought out position because anytime you engage them in the debate they're unable to really argue their or articulate their position Yeah.

Speaker 9 Last thing. I know you have a book coming out.
It's called Renegade, Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country, released at the end of this month on October 31st.

Speaker 9 What did you write about and where can folks pick this up?

Speaker 13 Yeah, so again, Renegade, you can pick it up anywhere you get books. I just actually finished recording the audio book.
So if you want to hear my wonderful voice, yeah. How's that?

Speaker 13 Oh, dude, you just go blind when you're reading it.

Speaker 4 Obama hated it.

Speaker 4 It's hard. It's hard.

Speaker 13 But really, it's a humble and kind of self-like effacing, if that's the right word, kind of like, I admit my own faults and looking at

Speaker 13 what the Republican Party has done since I was a kid from where, you know, I was actually at the Christian Coalition meeting in 92, where George H.W.

Speaker 13 Bush came for the first time and addressed the Christian coalition. And you saw for the first time the Republican Party and kind of Christian nationalism join up.
And so I talk about that.

Speaker 13 I talk about what we've seen in the party. Obviously, tell a few stories about January 6th and some of the behind the scenes.

Speaker 13 But the big thing is just, I think, a humble look at where I've made mistakes, where the party has gone, and hopefully optimistically as Americans, like what we need to do to pull ourselves out of this moment.

Speaker 9 Well, listen,

Speaker 9 I think everybody should pick that up.

Speaker 9 I just want to thank you because I know that there would have been a lot easier political path for you or just saying, yeah, you know, shutting up about Donald Trump, maybe endorsing him,

Speaker 9 sitting in a safe seat, maybe riding that to, you know, going all in on Trump to win a primary, to run for governor in Illinois, right?

Speaker 9 There's a lot of paths you could have taken that didn't involve getting attacked by your own party, attacked by the president of the United States.

Speaker 9 And you and I don't agree on a lot of things politically, but I really do admire the courage to say this in that moment.

Speaker 13 Thank you. And I want to say, I mean, you and I have a decent relationship over time.
We've always respected each other, and I appreciate that.

Speaker 13 The thing that I took away from all of this, though, is, you know, like when I voted for the Violence Against Women Act and I was one of just a handful of Republicans, or I voted for immigration reform or whatever, it's the times you stand alone against your party that you're actually the most proud of because I think it proves to yourself that you have what it takes.

Speaker 13 Yes, it was a tough last couple of years and I'm still coming to grips with how much that impacted me.

Speaker 13 But I know that my kid who has the last name Kinzinger, which is not a common last name, will be proud to read his last name in the history books.

Speaker 13 And I don't say that to brag and I don't say that I wasn't courageous. I was just surrounded by cowards.
And unfortunately, we need more people than aren't cowards, at least in the Republican Party.

Speaker 9 Amen to that. Well, thank you for everything you did.
Congressman Kinzinger, thanks for joining the show.

Speaker 9 And again, Renegade Defending Democracy and Liberty in Our Divided Country will be out at the end of the month. So check it out and pick one up.

Speaker 13 But take care. Thanks.

Speaker 4 Thanks to Adam Kinzinger for joining us. Everyone else, have a great day, and we'll talk to you on Thursday.

Speaker 10 See you at the RFK Fundraiser, people.

Speaker 4 Pod Save America is a crooked media production. Our producers are Olivia Martinez and David Toledo.
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