House majority leader Steve Scalise has dropped out in his attempts of being the next House Speaker. The Republican Party had nominated him for the role, but he needed to face a full House floor vote on the matter, and [00:00:16] the opposition to Scalise had been hardening since yesterday. Some of that opposition came from representative Nancy Mace, so a fellow Republican who had some strong thoughts on Scalise. Let's take a look at that. >> Speaker 2: You endorsed Jim Jordan, so I'm assuming you voted for [00:00:34] Jim Jordan today. If the vote for speaker were today, would you vote for Steve Scalise? >> Speaker 3: I would not. I plan on voting for Jim Jordan on the floor. I've been very vocal about this over the last couple of days. I personally cannot in good conscience vote for someone who attended [00:00:51] a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke. >> Speaker 1: So we're going to get to her allegations in just a moment. And before you give her too much credit, don't, because we've got some details on her, questionable, wheeling and dealing in just a moment. [00:01:06] But before we get to that, yesterday, when Scalise had been nominated, there was about seven or eight Republicans who planned to vote no on his role as speaker. However, apparently now there are at least 20 Republicans who have publicly opposed him. [00:01:24] And keep in mind that Scalise, of course, needs the majority of the House to be elected speaker, meaning that he can only afford to lose four votes. Democrats aren't gonna vote in favor of him. So it does appear that he has dropped out because he doesn't have the votes. And so the chaos within the Republican caucus continues within Congress [00:01:43] continues because without a speaker, the House can't really do anything. They can't pass legislation. It's not like they were really planning to anyway. So, Cenk, what are your thoughts? >> Speaker 4: Yeah, so Nancy Mace is such an interesting conundrum. [00:01:58] And if you follow politics really closely enough to know how much she waffles and how schizophrenic she is, first of all, you watch too much politics, okay? No, I love you for that, that's great. That's what I do. [00:02:13] But you might be wondering I don't get, right? So, going all the way back to she criticizes Trump, and then she goes and does a fawning video in front of Trump Tower to kind of kiss his ass, and then she goes back to criticizing Trump. [00:02:29] She votes with the extremist eight that took down Kevin McCarthy, but then she's worried that Steve Scalise is too extreme and a white supremacist, but then she's backing Jim Jordan, who's more extreme than Steve Scalise. So what in the world's going on with Nancy Mace? [00:02:44] Well, the answer is she's in a district that is very difficult. She has to win the primary, and in order to win the primary, you got to kiss Trump's ass. You got to go with the extreme eight. You got to do all that stuff. But in order to win the general, she has to appear moderate. [00:03:00] So she's giving the voters what they wanna see, and she's given it to them super aggressively for both camps. I'm super moderate. I'm super radical, radical moderate, radical moderate, radical moderate. How do I win the primary and then win the general in this district? [00:03:18] And how about I have a revolutionary idea? You have your own opinions and you're honest with people and then see if they like you, and if they don't, it's okay, there's a lot of great jobs in the world, right? But no power, precious, precious. That's why she's all over the board like this. [00:03:34] In terms of Scalise, the more important story, right? Everybody thought Scalise was going to be the speaker of the House. That seemed like a done deal about a day and a half ago. But in Republican years, a day and a half is like a decade, right? And a million things happen in that day and a half and [00:03:51] apparently Trump wants Jordan, but not Scalise. So that had an effect. Even though Scalise, the poor guy, he almost literally took a bullet for the team, right? And he's plenty extreme. He's compared himself to David Duke and apparently not extreme enough. [00:04:09] There's such a crazy merry go round that they have over there. >> Speaker 1: I had actually forgotten about some of what I'm about to share with you in regard to Scalise and why Nancy Mace claims that she would not vote for him for speaker. So Stephanie Grace, who's a Louisiana political reporter and columnist, [00:04:28] described what Scalise said to her the very first time they met. Scalise told me he was like David Duke without the baggage. I think he meant he supported the same policy ideas as David Duke, but he wasn't David Duke, that he didn't have the same feelings about certain people as David Duke did. [00:04:46] Scalise also attended a white supremacist conference that Duke organized in 2002. Scalise later described attending the conference as a mistake. But Duke said Scalise was invited because he would communicate a lot and was friendly with Kenny Knight, Duke's political advisor. [00:05:04] Yeah, no interest in a guy who's friendly with David Duke's political advisor. >> Yeah. >> Speaker 1: And by the way, I want to be clear, while Nancy Mace has pointed to his past with David Duke and white supremacy as her reason for refusing to vote for him, there are varying [00:05:21] reasons for why the other Republicans refuse to vote for him as House Speaker. I've heard allegations indicating that they're concerned about his health because he has a form of blood cancer that he claims is treatable and isn't a problem. Whatever the reason is, again, the chaos within the House of Representatives, and [00:05:40] specifically within the Republican Party in the House continues. >> Speaker 4: Okay, so there's two more things here. Number one, they don't really mind the chaos because what were they gonna do anyway? Nothing but nonsense hearings with no evidence at all. [00:05:55] Did the Republicans ever tell you what their agenda is? Isn't that funny? Nobody even bothers asking, hey, what bills do you guys wanna pass? How are you going to help the average American? They'll have a lot of, like, I hate the immigration and stuff. Okay, then what's your bill? Crimes out of control. [00:06:11] Okay, that's fair. >> Speaker 1: They just want what's your bill on social media, right? >> Speaker 1: Yeah. >> They think that that is legislating now, right? By the way, both parties do it. Members from both parties do it as if they have no power. You were elected to do something about these issues, so why don't you legislate? [00:06:26] And, yes, that includes negotiating. That includes deal making. What politicians used to do, now they don't do any of it. They just go on X and they complain about the problems in the country as if they're not given the responsibility to do something about it. [00:06:43] >> Speaker 4: No, you are the problem in the country. So look, for us we ask Democrats all the time, what are you doing for us? What are you doing? Are you trying to pass paid family? Are you trying to pass this? Are you trying to pass that? What are you doing, right? And we ask that not only of the corporate Democrats, but we put pressure on [00:07:01] the progressives to actually have a plan to try to find a way to pass something. The long conversation with Congressman Ro Khanna about how do you actually execute this when you're in the minority in the House, etc, right? We make those demands. Republicans, do you make any demands of your legislators other [00:07:19] than to hate the other side? You don't have to like the bills we like. I'm giving you a layup here like crime, right? You guys hate crime, okay, that's fair, why don't you ask them to pass something? They're not even trying to pass a single bill. [00:07:34] They don't care. It's all about their ego. It's all about who's gonna get more famous on social media. Who's gonna have the top podcast? Come on. This is embarrassing, man. Okay, now, the second point is, the Republicans in trying to choose a leader, [00:07:52] are in a similar bind as Nancy Mace. It's different in that her district is generally moderate, so she has to be a radical to win the primary, but a little bit more moderate to win the general election. That's not the conundrum for the Republicans in the House. The conundrum is they have to be radical to appease their base, but they also [00:08:12] have to pay off their donors, and their donors don't want them to do anything. Their donors are thrilled with the status quo. They're, don't touch a thing, we're at the very top. We're just milking the whole system for everything they got. So how do they solve that riddle? [00:08:29] Well, they solve it by doing fake hearings, doing all the soap opera and just keeping it looks like everybody's busy. My God, there's all these votes in the House. There was 15 votes on the Kevin McCarthy speakership, but they're not actually voting on anything real, and the donors are, [00:08:46] yes, meanwhile, the base is, you guys lit into Hunter Biden on X. Yeah, right? So nothing gets done because that's their only way of appeasing both sides. But when they're going to pick a speaker, which side is gonna win, the corporate side or the extremist side? [00:09:02] And it looks like they just can't make up their mind. So this very go arounds is gonna go around for a lot longer. >> Speaker 1: Finally, I wanted to mention that Nancy Mace is not some innocent person who is basically finding members of her party problematic because [00:09:19] of ties they've had with various individuals, including David Duke. Remember, there are numerous people who were wrestlers at a time I think it was Ohio State University when Jim Jordan was an assistant coach, the head [00:09:35] coach of the wrestling team was accused of sexual misconduct by multiple wrestlers. It was apparently an open secret. There are allegations that Jim Jordan knew about it, that numerous wrestlers had talked to him about it specifically, and he didn't want to do anything about it. [00:09:50] When Nancy Mace was asked about that situation, here's how she responded. >> Speaker 5: I know you've been outspoken about defending victims of sexual assault through the past allegations against Jim Jordan, that he turned a blind eye to sexual abuse. [00:10:06] Give you any reservations? >> Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not familiar or aware with that. He's not indicted on anything that I'm aware of, and so I don't know anything and can't speak to that. >> Speaker 3: It's of Ohio State University allegations. [00:10:23] >> I don't know anything, and I don't know anything about that. What I do know is that I've been a very strong voice for women. I've talked to Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise about that. I've been a very strong advocate for rape victims as you mentioned earlier. >> She knows nothing about that. She knows about Scalise attending a David Duke related event back in 2002, [00:10:42] but doesn't know about the allegations against Jim Jordan. Okay, I guess you guys could choose to believe that if you'd like. I don't believe that, but that's just my opinion. >> Speaker 4: Of course she does. >> Speaker 3: Yeah. >> Speaker 4: Plus, you never heard that giant scandal in the House. [00:10:59] You never bothered to look it up. Okay, if you say so.