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b'This podcast and newsletter are free so please share with family and friends.This is not normal. Don\\u2019t let them get away with claiming that the now three-day Speaker election dysfunction is how democracy works. It is not.This is not normal. Electing a Speaker by the time it gets to the floor is a formality; it\\u2019s negotiated in advance. Republicans are all over the news and their media saying this is perfectly normal, which is more Kellyanne Conway style gaslighting. Let\\u2019s set the record straight.Kevin McCarthy has lost a seventh vote to become the next Speaker of the House.They don\\u2019t get to rename an assault on our democracy and institutions to avoid accountability. It is lies like these that further the divide in this country and buttress election lies that have led repeatedly to violence. And yes, this is yet another form of election lie.Kevin McCarthy is now on day three of trying to get elected to the Speaker of the House position he took so for granted he has already moved into Nancy Pelosi\\u2019s office.When Republicans try to claim this failure is perfectly normal, it\\u2019s \\u201cThe People,\\u201d at work, that is a lie. It\\u2019s 20 people, 20 far-Right radicals, upset that they aren\\u2019t being catered to. Where did they ever get that idea? This is tyranny of the minority again. Republicans\\u2019 own tactics being used to destroy them \\u2014 in front of the whole world.They\\u2019re doing this for their own power. It\\u2019s disrespect for the institution and The People it\\u2019s meant to serve. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts/podcasts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Of course, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is to blame ultimately. What kind of leader goes to the floor repeatedly for a vote without being sure he has the votes? To make matters even worse, McCarthy is reportedly threatening the \\u201crebels\\u201d behind the scenes, according to them, and it\\u2019s easy to believe that\\u2019s true given that Kevin McCarthy made a \\u201cjoke\\u201d about how it would be hard not to use the gavel to hit Nancy Pelosi.Kevin McCarthy is not a man known for his leadership skills. Every would-be speaker has to face \\u201crebels\\u201d in their own caucus. The good leaders know how to finesse these negotiations to be a win-win. But to be fair to McCarthy, this gang doesn\\u2019t seem satisfied with anything he offers them. It seems they are unwilling to accept him as leader, but this is something he should have addressed prior to the 6 votes we\\u2019ve endured thus far.Tomorrow it will be two years ago that 139 House Republicans voted against certifying the presidential election.\\xa0 That was a profound abuse of the public trust and disrespect for our institutions. And here they go again. They remain a threat to democracy. Nothing has changed.It\\u2019s not normal no matter what they say. Some of their own members acknowledge this: Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) compared the process to Dante\\u2019s nine circles of Hell, saying, \\u201cI\\u2019m in at least one of them right now.\\u201dBut so are we all, especially when two other options being thrown out are Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan. Republicans are now whining that Democrats need to help Republicans by voting for a Republican to show bipartisanship. Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) had the nerve to say that if Democrats had only voted for Rep. Byron Donalds yesterday, the fight over who will be speaker would be over. The entitlement expecting Democrats to fix this by voting for a Republican is astonishing.Republicans need help, so they need to do the compromising. This should be pretty basic. And I hate to break it to them, but no Democrat is going to vote for Steve Scalise, who has not only addressed white nationalists before but reportedly introduced himself with this charming shorthand, \\u201cHe told me he was like David Duke, without the baggage.\\u201d Or Jim Jordan, who called a ten-year-old rape victim a liar in his effort to deny that abortion is healthcare, and then deleted his tweet when the rapist was charged.Before more demands come from Republicans for help from Democrats, let\\u2019s go back to this Kevin McCarthy: \\u201cI want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it.\\u201d He said that after Pelosi had been a target of a 1/6 assassination attempt from McCarthy\\u2019s own shared base of Trump supporters.Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), chair of the Freedom Caucus that is leading this fit, sought a presidential pardon for his role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election, but yesterday he claimed that he\\u2019s learned to \\u201ctake fire\\u201d for the American people as a way of explaining his role in this shameful attack on our democracy. This man literally tried to steal my vote and the vote of the majority of voters in Pennsylvania. Perry justified investigations into the 2020 Election with wild claims, including alleging that Italian satellites changed the votes here.Lest you think that was just more conservative crazy talk, \\u201cA call was actually placed by Secretary Miller to the Attach\\xe9 in Italy to investigate the claim that Italian satellites were changing votes from Trump to Biden,\\u201d Adam Kinsinger said. \\u201cThis is one of the best examples of the lengths former President Trump would go to to stay in power.\\u201dPerry is not \\u201ctaking fire\\u201d for the American people.And of course, the four Republican members of Congress who were referred to the House Ethics Committee for failing to comply with subpoenas are: Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry and Andy Biggs.If they did not honor a Congressional subpoena, how could anyone expect them to lead Congress. They do not respect the power of the institution to do its job.According to testimony from former aide to Trump\\u2019s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows Cassidy Hutchinson, among the Republican House members who asked for a pardon: Scott Perry, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, and Louie Gohmert. They asked for a pardon for their role in trying to steal votes and overturn an election, and now many of them are trying to suggest that what we are witnessing is totally normal and is actually for The People.Marjorie Taylor Green threw her fellow conservatives who are not supporting McCarthy (Matt Gaetz, Scott Perry, Lauren Boebert, etc.) under the bus in a video clip, saying that one of them didn\\u2019t even vote to overturn the election on January 6th, which is what the base wanted.Now, I suspect that this is where the idea that what they\\u2019re doing is for \\u201cThe People\\u201d comes from, but of course that is disingenuous. Who lied to the base claiming election fraud? That\\u2019s right. Trump and these MAGA Republicans.As I got into in my pod about what Harry and Meghan\\u2019s Netflix documentary exposed about how the media works, the Right wing media deliberately elevates the lowest voices from the internet, wash them to give them legitimacy while also providing cover for the \\u201cjournalists\\u201d who are just \\u201creporting\\u201d on these neo-Nazis types\\u2026 and then the far-Right, astrofurfed, populist puppets like Marjorie Taylor Greene et al repeat these talking points and want to investigate them, thereby inserting them forever into history as something legitimate.They are taking 4 Chan, 8 Chan, white nationalist message board talking points and inserting them into the mainstream. They\\u2019ve been doing this for a decade. Doing the work of enemies to democracy, presumably for the personal glory and power. All of the dark money flowing in our politics and going to these Republicans, who are then parrotting these talking points that serve the agenda of foreing power, makes it impossible to know.So when they claim they are doing the work of the people, the MAGA base, that is a base that these same people have propagandized to, radicalized, and used. Many of them are in jail now after January 6th, but not these Republicans who lied to them.And, of course, why is Marjorie Taylor Greene so mad? She\\u2019s mad because she\\u2019s been promised great power by Kevin McCarthy. Like the rest of the MAGA crowd, MTG is just here to stroke her own ego, to get on Fox News and other far Right cable hits, to be powerful.What\\u2019s happening here is this gang is not fit for governing. They can\\u2019t handle it. They can\\u2019t even pick a Speaker. And before that gets normalized, here\\u2019s what President Biden said about this mess:Remarks by President Biden Before Air Force One Departure (sent to PoliticusUSA by the White House press office, edited by me for brevity and clarity):Q\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Mr. President, are you concerned about the implications of there not being a functioning House of Representatives at this point? \\xa0THE PRESIDENT:\\xa0 Well, obviously, I am. For two reasons.\\xa0 One, it\'s embarrassing for the country.\\xa0 I mean, literally.\\xa0 It\\u2019s just the reality is that to have a Congress that can\'t function is just embarrassing.\\xa0 We\'re the greatest nation in the world.\\xa0 How can that be?\\xa0 And we\'ve had a lot of trouble with a lot of trouble with the attacks on our institutions already.\\xa0 And it just - that\\u2019s what worries me more than anything else.We\\u2019ve had a lot of trouble with attacks on our institutions. Indeed. What he didn\\u2019t say was that the attacks mostly came from these same people. There have been relentless, ongoing violence, dangerous propaganda, and lies coming from the Republican side of the aisle since 2015.Yesterday, these people \\u2013 who tried steal votes from millions of Americans \\u2013 were on the House floor claiming what we were watching was the American people are in charge. \\xa0Coincidentally, a lot of bot type and newer accounts were tweeting this is the government working and this is how democracy works.It\\u2019s not.This is how Trumpified government works. This is what you'