I'm Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Brightbart News, and this is the Brightbart News Daily podcast.

Today we cover a fair bit of news in the opening, but we focus primarily on the race for the

Speaker of the House. As I semi-predicted yesterday, Kevin McCarthy did not get the votes necessary

to win the speakership. Of course, he was the frontrunner to get the most votes, but I didn't think he actually

had the math to get to the 218 necessary to get across the finish line that turned out to be

true, at least for day one. And I break down how and why. And while I don't have a dog in this

fight, other names that have been floated for the speakership as alternatives actually sound equal or even a bit better to me.

I continue to be pessimistic that whatever speaker emerges from this mess will be better than McCarthy.

And I kind of share some of my thoughts on that and some of the mechanics of it all, which is important in this very odd moment that we haven't seen in at least 100 years in this country,

that we are without a speaker. And technically without a Congress, I think if you want to be

really precise about it, which is interesting. So we'll see how this all plays out, but it might not

be anytime soon. It could be resolved today. It could be resolved months from now. But in the meantime,

there will be no investigations, which is bad, but also no crappy bills that waste a bunch of

your money, which I guess is good. So it's all very sloppy and we'll go from here. Of course,

we touch on a few more essential news items in the opening of the show from the pages of

brightport.com as well. I will say that we

got a new guest today, which is exciting to talk to Darren Beattie. He's a very popular journalist.

He has a website called Revolver News. And he's in some really heavy lifting covering the deep

state in January of the Sixth lies. And he's got some really compelling information,

but maybe even more interesting. He's got some potential solutions he offers to some of the

deepest problems. Facing the country, it's a real treat to talk to him because he's super

intelligent guy, which I always enjoy it. I know you will as well. I will tell you, we're probably

...