 I really hope in the next several days as we come together as a Republican caucus that we're able to resolve that so that we go unified to the House floor and deliver a speaker. I hope you don't take this personally, but do you guys have any idea how clownish you look? Well, you know, Jake, I'm very fond of saying that Congress is a light like high school, but even more so. So hopefully we'll get past this. And you know, I certainly have been part of the governing majority and I'm going to stay part of that and look forward to those who are on the fringes, hopefully coming together so that we can get a speaker. I said that to Congressman Wilmack last week, high school, and he said that that's an insult to high school students. It's more like junior high Congressman Turner, Chairman Turner. Good to see you. I hope you guys pick a speaker sometime soon. Great. Thanks, Jake. You just watched CNN's Jake Tapper ask Republicans the question that we all want to ask. But to be fair, Republicans have absolutely no self awareness whatsoever. So no, they don't have any idea how clownish they look nor what they care if they did. But here's where we're at with regards to the speaker race. Jim Jordan is officially out and nine new Republicans have stepped up to be speaker. Now before we get to the updated race, let's talk about what happened last week when Jim Jordan's bid to be speaker went down in flames. So on Friday, they held a third floor vote on his speakership and he predictably lost by an even larger margin with 25 Republicans voting against him this time. Now, remember, 20 Republicans voted against him the first time and in the second round, 22 voted against him. So it was clear that the momentum was not going in the direction that he wanted. And when you consider the intimidation and the literal death threats that Republicans received for opposing him, well needless to say, they were pretty much over Jim Jordan at that point, which all culminated in his speakership officially going down in flames during a secret vote. But in a last ditch effort to save Jordan's speakership bid, Matt Gates and the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy offered to be martyrs in a desperate attempt to appease the pro McCarthy side, writing in a sanctimonious joint statement quote, the recent passage of the motion to vacate the speaker has caused rank or hurt feelings and acrimony in the House Republican Conference. While we stand by our actions, it is our goal to proceed forward with our colleagues, our teammates, our fellow Republicans in a manner that embraces reconciliation. It has been suggested that the conference cannot move forward until there are consequences for each of us. While we violated no rule of either the House or Republican Conference, we understand some in the conference wish to punish us. Now, they go on to propose the following. If the holdouts who refuse to vote for speaker designate Jordan would be willing to vote with the team and elect him, the 56 speaker, we are prepared to accept censure, suspension, or removal from the conference to accomplish the subjective, how noble of them. Now, a day later, Republican Tom McClintock responded with a hilariously sarcastic letter of his own, which reads, your letter of October 20th, which you graciously offered to martyr yourselves as long as you get your way, is perhaps the most selfless act in American history. I was certain that our Republican colleagues who refused to vote with the Republican majority would have been inspired by your stirring example of party discipline and loyalty to vote with the team, as you so eloquently phrased it. We should have been moved by your willingness to suffer censure, suspension, or removal from the conference to enforce your personal preferences on the overwhelming majority of your unenlightened colleagues. We should have appreciated how you and 206 House Democrats saved us from a Republican speaker. We truly don't deserve you, so petty. But your sacrifice is not in vain. You have succeeded in replacing the outdated concept of majority rule with an exciting new standard that a speaker must be elected with 98.2% of the Republican conference. Someday a messiah will be born unto us who can achieve this miraculous threshold, and on that day your judgment will be vindicated and you will be hailed as the geniuses that you are. Now it goes on, but he signs it as your secret admirer, and he also attaches a resolution condemning the motion to vacate McCarthy. In other words, they're getting along really well. Now after Jordan lost the second vote and talks to temporarily empower McHenry started to gain steam, Marjorie Green responded to that and she went on a bit of a rant to the press where she actually took some shots at her friend Matt Gaetz without naming him, of course. This conference is absolutely broken, and the reason why we're broken is because Republicans worked with Democrats and put us here. It's outrageous. We have serious issues happening in our country. Terrorists have come across our border. War is breaking out in Israel. War is continuing in Ukraine. The economy is getting worse and worse, and inflation is crushing everyone's ability to afford to live. This is the most disappointing thing, and it has to change. So sad. Frustration there is palpable. Now I find that rant there funny because she's virtue signaling about all of these issues that she supposedly cares about when she spends 99.9% of her time doing the same grandstanding that she's denouncing right there in the same way that those eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy are grandstanding and virtue signaling. She does that most of the time, but what's funny is that the only reason why she decided to not join them and grandstand with them is because she sucked up to McCarthy to enhance her own power. So she still is supporting McCarthy and didn't go along with them for opportunistic reason. She wanted a good committee seat, and that's why she didn't do what they did. Otherwise, she'd be going right along with them. So you see, there's a lot of frustration over the whole Jim Jordan kerfuffle and the bid to oust McCarthy still. But the question is, what now? What do we do going forward? What's gonna happen going forward? And the answer is, who the hell knows? But there are nine new Republicans who decided to throw their hats in the ring, including House Majority whip Tom Emmer. Now he isn't necessarily the front runner, but he is probably the most notable speaker candidate simply because he has the most experience and the most rapport with other GOP members. Now on top of that, there is House GOP Conference Vice Chairman, Mike Johnson. There's Byron Donalds. There's also Kevin Hearn, Jack Bergman, Austin Scott, Pete Sessions, Dan Muser, and Gary Palmer. Now I'm pretty confident that you haven't heard of any of these folks, but here's what you need to know about them. As Jake Sherman of Punch Bowl News points out, with the exception of Tom Emmer and Austin Scott, all of these new Republican speaker candidates are election deniers that voted against the certification of the 2020 election. Also all of them with the exception of Tom Emmer voted against gay marriage in 2022. That's when that vote took place. Now also you can see their stances on Ukraine aid, raising the debt ceiling and the 47 day funding bill that McCarthy negotiated to avoid a government shutdown that ultimately led to his demise. And to be clear, they're all terrible candidates. I'll link you to a thread by Melanie Derigo where she kind of breaks down all of their donors and conflicts of interest. But having said that though, out of all of them, Tom Emmer is the most moderate by far, which of course means he has absolutely no fucking chance of winning. In fact, HuffPost reports that Trump's sick offense immediately tried to derail his campaign with Kerry Lake's advisor calling him Nancy Pelosi in a suit and Laura Loomer's saying that he's essentially a Democrat, which is hilarious. So I mean, if you're Tom Emmer and you're qualified to be speaker, but you haven't shown sufficient loyalty to daddy Trump, what do you do? Have you burned that bridge? Well, no, you obviously have to pucker up and kiss Trump's ass. And that's exactly what he's doing. As Politico reports, Emmer World is pushing back hard on the Whisper campaign against him and his allies have a retort for every charge from the fact that Emmer supported both of Trump's presidential bids to when allies insistence that he's never heard him say a negative thing about Trump to the autographed photo of the two of them that Emmer keeps in his office. This is so pathetic. Rather, they say, the entire conflict has been concocted by his foes in the house who have grievances that have nothing to do with Trump. They point to Representative Jim Banks who narrowly lost the contentious whip race last year even after many MAGA World figures weighed in against Emmer. And to allies of conference chair Lee Stefanik, whose orbit has also clashed with Emmer's, dating back to when the two sparred over her push for more women campaign recruits. The issue for Emmer is that narratives can be hard to change, particularly if Trump himself is buying them. When the Emmer critic predicted, there will be at least 10 hard nos ready to oppose him in a floor vote. And if that's true, 10 nos is enough to sink his speakership bid. So even though he kind of has the most momentum, at least he's getting the most media coverage, again, I don't necessarily want to call him the front runner, but he is the most notable person running currently and it already looks really bad for him. But I mean, if he can't convince Trump's loyalists that he's sufficiently loyal to Daddy Trump, it doesn't look like he's gonna be able to become speaker. Now he's not just trying to convince them by pushing back point by point against all of the contentions that they have with him, namely him being not loyal enough to Trump, but he's also putting in the work with Trump himself. So he is groveling directly to Trump and Trump talked about this when he was asked whether or not he would endorse Emmer. I think he's my biggest fan now because they told me yesterday they didn't tell me I'm your biggest fan. So I don't know about that. Well, we're looking at a lot of people and I'm sort of trying to stay out of that as much as possible, but they'll get it straightened out. But I've always gotten along with him and I get along with all of him. A lot of good people, we have a lot of great people. Embarrassing, just embarrassing. Now I'm sure that Trump is embellishing. I'm sure that Tom Emmer didn't call him and say I'm your biggest fan, but still just to call Trump and grovel, that is humiliating. But I mean, if you want to be speaker, this is what you've got to do. You've got to sacrifice your human dignity for Daddy Trump. And as you saw, all of that ass kissing still might not pay off because Trump did not endorse him. He's like, yeah, there's plenty of candidates that are good. So he's humiliating himself, possibly probably for nothing. Now the only other name that you've probably heard of from that list of nine is Byron Donalds, but it's hard to imagine that he's gonna get the votes as well because as AOC explained in an interview with Mehdi Hasan on MSNBC, I mean, the dude just got into Congress. So there's a couple of reasons why Republicans aren't gonna be down for that, but I'll let her explain. You mentioned your colleagues in the Congress. Before we run out of time, I've got to ask you about the House itself. You have no speaker right now. The Republicans defenestrated Kevin McCarthy. Couldn't agree on Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan. Now Byron Donalds, congressman from Florida, wants to be speaker. What do you make of him? I, you know, he's only served one term in the US House of Representatives. He, last thing that he did in an oversight committee was attempt to submit falsified evidence to an impeachment hearing. I think it helps to know where all the bathrooms are before you run for the US House of Representatives personally. And I think it helps to have some real experience in one of the most complex legislative bodies in the world before you try to run it. Now, to be clear, Republicans are not going to care at all about him attempting to submit falsified evidence. That's a non-issue to them at least, but his lack of experience is probably going to be a sticking point. As she said, he served one full term. He's only in his second term right now. And this isn't going to sit well with Republicans because A, they don't like the idea of being leapfrogged by some young rookie when they themselves want to be speaker and likely cannot be speaker. And B, he's gonna get rolled in negotiations with Democrats because he's in over his head. I mean, it is difficult to navigate the House of Representatives. So it takes years to build up the ability to be competent, right? And even if you've been there for years, like Jim Jordan, you still might not be competent. So how can he possibly become speaker? The fact that he is arrogant enough to run already is awesome to me. But look, we're again in the situation where all of the new candidates in the situation that have emerged all seem very unlikely that they're gonna be able to muster the support that they need to secure the gavel because each of these candidates are either too moderate or too extreme for either wing of the party. So that's gonna be difficult to reconcile these differences. So the question is, who's gonna be speaker in the end? I mean, your guess is as good as mine. But as I've said before, I'm really enjoying the shenanigans. So take as much time as you need Republicans because this is very entertaining. And I love talking about this. So please keep being idiots, keep embarrassing yourselves. I love every second of this. So keep it up.