 Welcome to American Issues Take One. I'm Tim Appalachille, your host. And today's title is, Today's GOP. Speaker McCarthy's out. Historic moment took place this week. And that is the house speaker of the House of Representatives is out of a job. The position is vacant. Why is that? Well, we have this thing called the MAGA GOP in Congress, House of Representatives. And the MAGA GOP is the tail that wags the dog. And who's the tail? Apparently it's Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz didn't like the fact that Kevin McCarthy worked with the Democrats, a grievous sin, worked with the Democrats to keep the government open. And so that it did not shut down and he negotiated that portion of, he struck the bargain to keep the government running. Well, that was a bridge too far for Matt Gaetz and the vote took place. And as mentioned, Kevin McCarthy's out of a job. So no matter what the GOP would have gotten, the MAGA GOP specifically, it would not have been a good enough. And why is that? Because Donald Trump wanted the government shut down. And we all know that the government shutdown is what trumped. Basically, I guess the exercise is power and influence. And bottom line is the GOP is now Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the GOP. So with that topic, we're going to talk about what the GOP looks like today. And with me is my great co-host, Jay Fidel. Good morning, Jay. Morning, Jay. You know, what is the GOP today? And where is the GOP going to look like in 2024? And how do we connect the dots with the events that we see taking place, specifically with McCarthy out of a job? Well, you know, we've been asking ourselves the question, can the base still like the GOP? Can the base still like Trump? And he managed to get by until now. But I ask myself the question, I'm not in the base, by the way, Tim, I asked myself the question, you know, how are they seeing this? How are they seeing this? This chaos in the House of Representatives, chaos with a capital C, in fact, it's all caps. How do they see his behavior in court, you know, in his outbursts in court about attacking the law clerks and the like? How do they see that? They have got to see what he's really about. On the other hand, I don't convince myself when I answer that. So it may be the base still supports it. It may be the prognosticators who prognosticate that he will win the election in November, still support him. But from a rational point of view, this is just another, you know, chink in the armor. This is just another keystone dropping out of the arch. I can't imagine how anybody would support him. And we all know that he's controlling Matt Gaetz. And we all know that these bizarre moves of Matt Gaetz, and for that matter, Kevin McCarthy are coming from Trump. That's my reaction. You know, recently we had James Carville, former Clinton advisor, also nicknamed the Rage and Cajun. He'll probably talk about something. That is, today's GOP, what does it mean if you're gonna vote for the GOP? And some of the things he mentioned, you know, really struck a chord. Instead of drug costs, trying to get prescription costs down, they seem hell bent on impeaching Biden with virtually no evidence that supports an impeachment. So they're in that impeachment process or that impeachment inquiry, spending a lot of time and energy in areas like that. Or instead of trying to restore voting rights or making votings more fair or open the access to other voters via mail ballots, instead of working on legislation like that, we got them spending a majority of their time trying to vindicate Donald Trump that he's not a crook. What else? Well, how about women's healthcare? They're spent all their time trying to get a national ban on abortion, which includes incest and rape of all things. So their time spent and their energy spent really doesn't seem to be so much centered on policy, but cult of personality. And who's the cult of personality, of course, is Donald Trump. Jay, can you think of other things that the GOP now kind of represents? That's their trademark, their hallmark of when you think of GOP, do you think of other things, other positions they're taking? Guns, guns and shooting children in school, guns and shooting people on the street. So then of course, of course, and his one for you. So they accepted funding for Ukraine. The deal, well, that Kevin McCarthy struck in his moment of clarity with Democrats, excluded further aid and weapons to Ukraine. Why that? Why that exclusion? It's so bizarre. It's not only that these people don't care about the country or all those issues we've just mentioned. And they don't care about democracy and the constitution and the rule of law. It's that they don't care about the world. They don't care about Europe. They don't care about the liberal world order. They're completely upside down on everything. They're into destruction. And I guess that comes from Donald Trump too, but I just wish I had been a fly on the wall when they decided to exclude aid to Ukraine. What was that about? So I mean, it's like everything backward, everything upside down, everything destructing and negative. But especially that one. You see, we're in space. You know, I think you just asked the rhetorical question you answered actually, it's coming from Donald Trump. And I don't know, but over the years, I've seen Donald Trump be more than supportive to dictators around the world and specifically Putin. And I think Donald Trump, along with his mega GOP, wish to see Putin succeed over Ukraine. And then other desires that Putin has in the world, they support that too. And I don't know where that's coming from or know why that's the case, but it is the case. And a vote for Trump is a vote for Putin, hands down straight across the board. That's how it is. Yeah, all the things to be accepted, you know, Ukraine. So I say to myself, this is consistent, just as you suggest, with some nefarious relationship between Trump and Putin. Putin's got something on Trump. Trump wants something badly from Putin. And the two of them are connected at the hip just as they were in the 2016 election, just as they were when Trump tried to corrupt the FBI, the stopping and investigation into that relationship and the Mueller report to stop, you know, revealing what was going on in that relationship. It's been all the way through. And one has to conclude just rationally, just you and me using our critical thinking that there's really an unholy relationship and Trump has, rather, Putin has Trump. This is very disturbing. And it means, of course, that we all know this too, that if Trump is elected, reelected, gets back into the Oval Office, on day one, just as he said, he will hand Ukraine to Putin and it will be the end of the liberal world order. And it's worth mentioning that because that is the one thing that sticks out from this whole affair with McCarthy. Good point. I like to talk about some other characteristics of our current GOP. And I always try to separate GOP from MAGA GOP, but that line is severely blurred now in my mind. And so let's go over a couple more characteristics. Let's look at the GOP and their cultural, how should I say their cultural possession of rejection of science, specifically climate change, the complete rejection of climate change. Also, let's look at their behavior during COVID, a rejection of science as it comes to immunizations and the nature of the disease to begin with. So what's that all about, Jay? A rejection of science. Why is that of Donald Trump influence or is it beyond Donald Trump that they somehow embrace or just have a disdain for education and science, which is part of education? And it's all pubescent. And it is from Donald Trump, who is pubescent. You know, when you remember back to high school, you remember there was always a bully in the crowd who had it backward. And whatever you said, he went insult you. Whatever position you took, he would take the opposite one just to try to show that he knew war was better and you were less. It's a kind of national insult. And it comes from him, this gotta come from him. And he's managed to ingrain it in the GOP. He's managed to ingrain it in a lot of people in the country. It's all about destructive positions. Whatever position Biden takes, Trump will take the opposite. Whatever position Biden takes, the GOP will take the opposite. So in the case of climate change, I mean, any rational human being in the planet knows how dangerous. How many wildfires do you need to have? How many floods and rainstorms do you need to have? How many examples of Mother Nature getting back at us do you need to have? And yet these guys deny climate change. Extraordinary. And come out of the confusion and the lethal confusion over COVID where Trump lucked it up to a fairly well during the administration. They're saying, oh, he was right. It's just a little sniffle. The CDC was wrong and so forth. It has a number of effects. The first effect is to confuse everybody with lies. And the second effect is to distance them from government to undermine the authority that government has or should have about science. So I feel that it's not based on even an analysis. It's based only on trying to destroy the country, trying to destroy the other side. I tried to take a position that is adverse to everything. And in that way, Tim, in that way developing more power, it's really the worst thing that can happen in a democracy. Clearly, you know, let's look at the twin brother of the rejection of science. And that is the embrace of conspiracy theories. Number of people in Congress, and I'm thinking of Marjorie Taylor Greene as one of them seems to be full-throated support of some of these wackadoodle conspiracy theories. And I'm thinking of the one back in 2018 where she accused the Jewish space lasers creating the wildfires of Northern California. But she was dead serious. This was not a joke. And so how did the GOP, a rational, sane party, maybe a little conservative, not so caring about certain things? But I was a GOP for a long time. And I just don't know how a smart thinking party like that could just go off the rails and adopt so many conspiracy theories. I'm not saying the whole party has adopted conspiracy theories, but I'm saying there's a significant number of them that embrace these kind of wackadoodle concepts. Your thoughts on that? No, you know, the Republican Party was a rational choice 20 years ago. But it is no longer a rational choice. It has changed. It has morphed into some sort of, you know, crazy animal. And it is populated with people who are crazy animals who follow Trump, who are part of the cult. And so you can never see, you know, it's nomenclature. It's icons. So if Trump stands in front of a lot of American flags, does that make him a patriot? Or any of his acomites, they stand in front of American flag? Does that make him patriots? Oh, it doesn't. It's just using symbols. And GOP, it's a symbol that goes way back, but it's not the same as it was. And it has morphed into something very ugly in the recent past. Under Trump, he's managed to touch something and use primary as a technique and somehow separate them from rationality. You know, I remember a friend of mine told me that years ago, if you walk through the halls of Congress, you would feel a sense of prestige with Republicans and Democrats alike. These were the leaders of the country. They looked good, they looked smart, they dressed well. They had, you know, curricula vitae. That was valuable and qualified them to lead the country. And they did, in their own way, lead the country. Now you walk through Congress and you see it, a bunch of jerks, because so many of them have been in the media saying jerky things and doing jerky things on the floor. And so it's not the same. It is not the Republican Party that people used to know. I think a lot of people are full, oh, Republican, it must be like the Republican Party. It is not the Republican Party, it's the Trump Party. And what is troubling is not so much that, you know, there are tinfoil spacemen out there driving Marjorie Taylor Greene, is that the people on her left and the people on her right, the people in front of her and behind her, her co-quote Republicans end quote, they let it happen. They should be shouting her down as a moron, all of them, together now. But they don't do that. And so I lay it on. Well, what do you think it is? Why do you think they're mama about that specific thing? Because it's not just conspiracy theories, it's a whole host of things they should be sparking up about. Well, why is that, Jay, in your opinion? Oh, I think it's Trump. Trump has had the effect of scaring people into, you know, being passive. And if you attack him, you're gonna get his retribution and his wrath. And he's gonna do something to kick you out of office or publicly insult you or who knows what, or get his base to attack you physically without a hammer, whatever it may be. And so that's one thing. But the other thing is that these people are, they think that Marjorie Taylor Greene is an agent of Trump, represents Trump. So if they attack her, they're afraid that Trump will come for them. And the process will be the same because he stands with her. Same thing with Matt Gates, same thing. And so it's Trump's influence is that, not only as a guy who has no policy and except to destroy the country, but who is out there to destroy the independent thinking of all the people in Congress. He's working hard at it. And somehow he's found the sweet spot. And he's found an awful lot of people in the house who go along with his craziness and are afraid to stop those who represent him. Well, is this two important things you just mentioned that Trump's agenda is to destroy the country and destroy the independent thinking of Congress. And he does so by fear and intimidation, which I still don't understand. You know, we just went through a kind of a long list of things that are characteristics of today's GOP, but let me just suggest the one that comes to my mind time and time again. And I'll be thinking about in the 2024 election campaign. And that is the GOP is looking to support and elect a strong leader, the strongman. And that means set aside the rule of law that we currently base our country on, the judicial independence of the Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, all the agencies that fall under the Department of Justice, nullify or diminish the effectiveness of the media, the press, fill them with the same intimidation, if you will, that they should not report on anything that's critical about Donald Trump. And last but not least, he will clean up the ranks of the federal government to make sure that they're replaced by his loyal lackeys that don't have any oath to the Constitution, but an oath to Donald Trump. Those seems to be the beige characteristic that I see for 2024. What do you see? I see the same thing that happened in Germany and Italy and for that matter, Russia. I see a population that is being swept into a fascist state, people like Trump and they don't realize that he's a fascist. They don't realize what he will do when he gets into office, how he will destroy independent thinking, independent reporting, how he will destroy Congress. He is going a long way to destroy the Supreme Court already. Our government is at great risk and when he gets in, as he gets in, it will be the pennies on the eyes. He alone will do everything. He will be a complete fascist and you better run for the hills, Tim, because I think at that point in time, the country will not be comfortable for you or me. So what we have here is a situation that has been actually growing for a long time and he has been the catalytic force, but we have a situation where kids do not study civics in school, you know, everybody says all that, protect the teachers from burning books and all the, you know, the Santas controlling the curriculum and all that. The fact is the schools have not been up to snuff and Trump did a lot during his one term where he accelerated that. So you have how long does it take? One generation, two generations where the kids don't understand anything about government. They don't understand three branches of government. They don't understand anything that happens in Congress or the Supreme Court. Well, we had a president that didn't understand it as well. Yeah, thank you, that's true. And he spread that. So the result is you have an ignorant country who doesn't know the difference between doing it right, doing it democratically or not. And they go along on his freight train. So I think it's fertile ground and he is the catalytic agent that is turning it. And I think that the country gets what it deserves. You know, we just talked about him hollowing out the Department of Justice. I want to throw in an idea that he also wants to do the same thing about the United States military. Remove the generals that take an oath to the Constitution, the support of the Constitution and fill it with a note to the great leader, Donald Trump. We've seen some examples of that recently. Where are you immediately? I mean, basically said that General Milley needs to be executed for his past comments and total lack of support and loyalty to Donald Trump whereas General Milley was taking his oath to office for the Constitution and the preservation of the Constitution and not involve the military in Donald Trump's political agenda. Your thoughts about Donald Trump's influence in the past and moving forward, if he gets another shot at it, what will the military look like? That leads to a sad answer actually. You know, an autographed fascist, we're trying to destroy the press, destroy the legal profession, even destroy the justice system and he will try to bring people in that will support him. He will corrupt the FBI, he'll corrupt the intelligence agencies and he will corrupt the military. Remember all the military people he had around him in violation of law, you know, they're not supposed to get into the White House within X years, I think, of the time they served but he appointed them anyway, surrounded himself with military. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to control the military. Remember too, that when Black Lives Matter became, you know, somewhat threatening to him, he was going to use the military under the quote, insurrection act to squash that protest. He was gonna use troops to squash that, he was ready to do it and his more sane advisors told him not to do that but the reality is he seized the military as an instrument by which he can enhance his power, that's why he appointed all those military people in his cabinet around him as advisors and so forth and although Mark Milley recently made a speech telling the members of the armed forces that they swore in to protect the Constitution as an impassioned speech so-and-so that Heather Cox Richardson put it on her website and we put it on our website. The fact is that he is attacking Milley. Milley said that, you know, he would probably go to jail if Trump were elected again and so this is a problem because you can see that he's still trying to corrupt the military and the military may be corruptible. If he gets into office, he will spend a lot of time and energy corrupting the military, making it work for him, using the insurrection act as he tried before and controlling the country that way, just like Mussolini, just like Hitler. Yeah. You know, we only have a few minutes left and before we end the show, I've got to bring up the news story that came up this week about former Trump chief advisor, General John Kelly. Yeah, if you remember back in 2020, we did a show and it was based on the Atlantic story written by Jeffrey Goldberg and in that story, he mentioned that his source specifically was told the falling about the dead veterans, the 1800 Marines in World War I that gave their lives in the Bellawood area of France and Trump's refusal to go see the gravesites at that time because he thought they were suckers and then we had the area in France, the N-Mond area and again, gravesites of World War I American soldiers in the ground, heroes, veterans and he called them losers. And then at Arlington, in front of General John Kelly, his son was in that ground, killed in action in the Afghanistan war and this was section 60 of Arlington graveyard and Trump looked down at the graves and he said, I don't get it. I don't see what they got out of it. And then just recently was mentioned and we didn't know this that Trump didn't want any of the disabled amputees anywhere near the camera and Trump has said, it doesn't look good for me that he didn't want disabled veterans to be in the eyesight of anyone. There's a lot of veterans in the GOP. There's a lot of veterans that are mega GOP yet I know that for veterans that time that they serve this country and served it well is a big pride point in their life. It's a huge point of identity. How does that identity conflict now go in line with we now know the source of that 2020 article in the Atlantic was indeed General John Kelly. We also suspected it but we didn't have confirmation of it because it was a protective source as most journalism is, your sources are protected. How did those veterans of the GOP reconcile or wrestle with confirmation that Donald Trump's a monster and he could care less about veterans and he couldn't care less about their sacrifice? Jay, your thoughts? I always think first of Bones Perce. I think first that his father set him up during Vietnam to be in draft dodger and get a phony opinion from a phony doctor in Queens and to get him off the hook because of some fabricated Bones Perce, one of the many lives that they shared together and so he never went to Vietnam. It was chicken and that has pervaded, you know that same attitude that got him exempted from military service back in the time of Vietnam demonstrates the view that his father had that he had to terribly cynical view to dunk on the military and our tradition and our history and our constitution, it's all connected. And it also goes back to life in high school where you take an adverse position to everything and you make yourself powerful by doing that. So yes, there are people in the military who are very conservative right wing and members of his base. I think that's clear enough. But some of them are generals. You know, Mark Milley was embarrassed to be at the Lafayette Park incident. And after what he said, gee, I was embarrassed to be there. I was being used and presidents should not use generals for that. But Mark Milley was there. He went on that march in Lafayette Park. Why didn't he say something before? It's a question of timing. And if you look back at Kelly, Kelly was there. He was there as a member of Trump's advisors and cabinet. It took him how many years? I mean, it was a half step, the right the article. It took him how many years to actually come out on it? So yes, okay, thank you very much for revealing all that. But why so late? What happened to you? You know, you're a guy who wouldn't put himself in harm's way, risk your life for the American ideal, but you won't sign your name on the article. What kind of chicken is that? So I'm not terrible. I'm not terribly impressed with the senior military officers. They can be corrupted. They were corrupted and they can be corrupted again in large numbers by using the same bag of tricks that Trump used before and that he has used on other federal organizations before to gut them and to make them his. And as I said before, there's a substantial risk that if he takes office again, he will do that to the American military despite these late statements by people like Millie and Kelly. Great point, Jay. You know, I remember distinctly many veteran groups and veterans saying, well, it's an unnamed source that Jeffrey Goldberg is basing this story on and because it's unnamed, it lacks credibility. If you remember Donald Trump's words after the article was published, and by the way, he was horribly embarrassed to buy it. He wasn't happy that that story got out. He said, what kind of monster would say such things? That's a direct quote from Donald Trump. Guess what? Guess what? What kind of monster would say those things? And I believe General John Kelly and I believe the article back in 2020 in the Atlantic and I believe they hit it spot on and Donald Trump once again self-confessed who he really is and what kind of monster would say such things? Are we grew up veteran? Yeah, go ahead. When we grew up in Queens, there was a thing called and I've told you this before, ranking. And ranking was kind of a contest of insults and whatever the other guy said, you were challenged to make an insult that was more insulting. And that's exactly what happens here. You're insulted, the truth comes out about you, so you insult the other guy. And that's what he always does. Now, the point I was gonna make here in the last few minutes of our show, is that Trump can do this and largely because the people who heard Kelly speak, the people who have heard what really happened and this is not limited to the military context that we're talking about. They forget and Trump knows this. Trump knows that the fickle finger of the media moves on and if something negative happens to him on day one, by day five, it's forgotten. And the base will forget anything negative that happened to him, any revelation along these lines and they will listen to him going forward. And that's what he's got to hold on to. And to do that, he uses his ranking mechanism by attacking the people who revealed what he did. So, you know, you could say that the military should be really sore about his remarks and his lack of loyalty to the people who put their lives on the line. But in fact, they're gonna forget. They forget everything and he knows they're gonna forget. He moves the needle, entertains them with something else. It's a power of distraction. Well, I'm gonna go soak my head in some cold water after this show, because I'm sorely depressed. Okay, last question. For the sideshow of Carney showbarker, the fascists wanna be, how should Republicans look at their vote for if Trump's the party's nominee? Just go along because to get along or put your critical thinking powers in a closet and don't be a critical thinker. What's in store for the GOP that aren't Trump mega GOP, that they're just GOP folks? How do they get through 2024 and how do they vote? You're talking about the general election in 2024. I am. Well, you know, it goes back to a number of things that we talked about today. One is the GOP people, a lot of them are thinking about the GOP 20 years ago and they're loyal to it and they haven't noticed that it is completely morphed into a fascist organization that supports only Trump at all. And they don't see the difference. So how do you correct that? How do you clear that up? Well, you can have everybody saying the GOP isn't what it was. That's not enough. Actually, I think what you need is a new party. You need a new leader. And you need a good Democratic candidate. You know, you and I have talked about this before. Look at the headlines every day. Look at MSNBC, which, by the way, Trump has threatened big time. He's going to destroy it if he's elected. Look at all the media that we look at anyway and it's dominated by Trump. You hardly hear about exactly what Biden is doing in his core campaign. How's he doing? He's getting 20% of the attention by the media, not 80. Trump is getting 80 or 90 every time he does a scowl on his face. The media is fascinated with it all day long and he's getting what he wants. He's getting out there. Just spell my name right. That kind of approach. And he's always done that. He did that in real estate in New York. That's what he did. So I think the media has got to correct itself and they have got to stop with this both sides. Both sides is, you know, that that's been reported. And of course, we've talked about this before. Biden doesn't have the energy. It may be too late to make a switch but we really need a stronger or invigorated candidate on the Democratic side who will match up with Trump. We don't have that. So, you know, these vectors and factors and phenomena are not pointing in a good direction. I'm sorry to say. And I don't think that the GOP has got Trump's number. I don't think that the voters have Trump's number because he keeps on entertaining them. And this is the biggest, you know, what do you call it? Show, reality show that the world has ever seen and it entertains an awful lot of people. All right, Jay, thank you for your comments. We'll leave that there. Thank you for accurately describing and defining today's GOP. If there's any people folks out there watching this show, why don't you opine? I'd like to hear from you because convince me that we're wrong because I don't think we are. And to my last comment is to use Donald Trump's word is what kind of monster would say such things? Well, when it comes to our heroes, our dead veterans, I don't care if it's World War I, II, Vietnam conflicts, Afghanistan, Middle East, any of those conflicts to say such things about dead heroes is beyond reproach. And there's a special place somewhere where Donald Trump belongs for those comments. And I had one more point. If you think about what happened in Europe in the 30s, think about how the lives of ordinary citizens changed. Think about how the rug was pulled under them, their families, their civil liberties and their lives. Think about that because those matters are an issue if he is reelected. Good point and think about, if you're going to vote for Donald Trump, think about why you're going to do that. Thank you, Jay. I'm Tim Apachele for American Issues Take One. Why don't you join us next week? And until then, aloha.