Welcome to the commentary magazine, Daily Podcast.

Today is Thursday, July 22, 2021. I'm John Pajor, the editor of commentary magazine with me as always.

Senior writer Christine Rosen, I. Christine.

Hi, John.

Executive editor, A. Greenwald, Hi, Abe.

Hi, John.

An associate editor, Noah Rothman. Hi, Noah.

Hi, John.

Noah, you know, here's the thing. So we have two leaders of the House and Senate in Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

Chuck Schumer yesterday played this whole complicated game about a vote on the bill to this, the reconciliation, and he changed his vote at the last minute so he could bring up the vote again and failed, but it was a test.

And then Rob Portman said they would have another, they would have the infrastructure bill ready on Monday, but Schumer needed to see what the test was or blah, blah, blah, blah.

And maybe this was a good move. Maybe it was bad. Maybe it was procedural. Maybe it was smart. Maybe it was, but I, as I keep saying, like we actually don't know of Chuck Schumer's any good at this job he's never had it before.

And we don't know if he's skilled. We don't know if he's, you know, a good, you know, sort of Machiavellian or knows how to play this game.

And then, so that's one Democrat leader and then we have Nancy Pelosi universally thought of as a very skilled speaker of the House except, you know, that basically in 2019, she didn't want there to be an impeachment hearing and then there wasn't impeachment.

And there was an impeachment that Democrats lost and then she wanted to condemn Ilan Omar and she wasn't able to connect me on Omar and then there was this and there was that and so we're told, oh my God, she's magnificent. She is just the greatest speaker of all what a genius.

She is it's amazing to see her work and know what you think she has made.

Please give us your interpretation of Nancy Pelosi's latest move. I mean, I've been writing the website for years now that she's quite clearly lost a step and has demonstrated a real lack of strategic insight when she's, you know, trying to negotiate among her caucus and is rolled in fact by members who have no power whatsoever, including Ilan Omar, essentially seating them power.

The latest debacle in my view is regarding the January 6 commission, which Democrats voted into existence, which will include a bipartisan selection of members and among them, the Republican members of this commission, the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy gets the opportunity to suggest not, you know, a point, but to suggest members to this commission.

And he's selected two members, I think, who are probably going to, who are designed to represent what Republican voters, what they think Republican voters want to hear, which is a defense of Donald Trump's actions on January 6. Those members were Jim Banks and Jim Jordan.

Nancy Pelosi just summarily rejected both of these members as participants in this commission and did so with no discernible logic behind it. She said that it wasn't because that they rejected the certification of certain closely contested states in 2020.

It was more about their general demeanor that there's sort of a rassible. Guess what? That's every single member of Congress, not even just the House. All of these are performative players in this game.

And this only provides Republicans with all the fodder they need. They would have said this anyway, but more substance to justify the claim that this is all just a partisan effort to, you know, tar Republicans generally with the association with Donald Trump.

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