WTH Happened with the "Never Kevin" Rebellion? Chad Pergram Explains the Chaos in the House GOP

What the Hell Is Going On

AEI Podcasts

News, History, Government, Politics

4.4 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 11 January 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The 118th Congress has arrived, and after 15 grueling voting sessions, we finally have a Speaker of the House: Kevin McCarthy. This is the first time an election for speaker went to multiple ballots since 1923, and that is not the only element of the history-making chaos. To secure the gavel, McCarthy agreed to lower the number of members needed to begin a vote of “no confidence” from 5 to 1, and agreed to cap the levels of discretionary spending at FY22 levels; he has promised a slew of new subcommittees; agreed to re-organize appropriations; and the list goes on, to the point where Matt Gaetz, McCarthy’s nemesis in the Speaker race, “ran out of stuff to ask for.” As the drama unfolds, we find ourselves asking exactly What the Hell is Going On… who are these self-described “rebels” in Congress, really? What does this mean for defense spending and Ukraine, and balancing the budget in general?

These questions and more with our guest Chad Pergram. Chad is a Senior Congressional Correspondent at Fox News. He has won an Edward R. Murrow Award and is a two-time recipient of the Joan Barone Award. Prior to Fox he was a Senate producer for C-SPAN, producer and anchor for NPR, and a reporter for the Capitol News Connection.

Download the transcript here.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute.
0:03.0	If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell he's talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on?
0:01.1	Who in God's name
0:21.7	knows what it's all about. Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. And I'm Mark Thieson. Welcome to our podcast. What the hell is going on? Mark, what the hell is going on in the House of Representatives?
0:45.9	That's a very good question, Danny. It's a mess. Kevin McCarthy, who barely, barely squeaked out after five days of voting, a narrow victory to
0:58.4	win the speakership. But he gave away the store in the process. Matt Gates, who was leading
1:03.7	the Never Kevin Rebellion, he ended up voting present to let McCarthy go through. And he was asked
1:09.3	why he did it. And he he said because I ran out of
1:11.2	things to ask for. He literally got everything he wanted. When Matt Gates is, you know,
1:16.0	his Christmas stocking is so full to the bursting that he literally couldn't think of another
1:20.2	thing to ask for. You know the House Republicans are in trouble. Well, but that's it. What I
1:26.1	failed to understand about the debacle, and I'm sorry,
1:30.6	it was a debacle of the House leadership. A gentle word for it.
1:35.0	Yes, it is. Is this desire to air out dirty laundry, dirty ideological laundry, dirty political laundry, and dirty, sleazy, power-grabbing
1:49.8	laundry in public. Okay, we all know that behind the scenes, the sausage-making factory is a
1:57.8	sausage-making factory. It's not something you ever want to see. You know, it's
2:02.0	Thanksgiving dinner with your crazy uncle and your awful mother-in-law every day of the year.
2:08.6	But usually that's behind closed doors. What's gone wrong with the Republicans?
2:14.5	Well, here's the irony of what happened is that the reason that the House majority is so
2:20.8	small and the reason that we didn't win control of the Senate was because of these extreme
2:29.0	mega Republicans like Matt Gates, like Lauren Bober, who were leading this charge.
2:35.2	And by the way, who won election by like, I think, I want to say 0.7%, like 500 votes in a Republican
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from AEI Podcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of AEI Podcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.