Well, Ugur, it appears that the United States might be coping with a wounded Johnson. Why are you not committed to Speaker Johnson as the next speaker of the House? The margin is so small for Johnson with those votes, and the hardliners [00:00:15] have already said, you know, with the debt ceiling, anything like that, that they're not willing to move on that. So I don't think that it's going to be a productive time for them. I think that the narrative is going to be driven by president elect Musk. I'm sorry, I mean, Trump, and that will be a huge indicator of how things are going to go. I mean, he is a fine Christian man. He's not a religious man. [00:00:32] He's a Christian man, and he doesn't cheat on his wife. Well, congratulations on that. There are differing opinions among Republican lawmakers in regard to whether or not House speaker Mike Johnson should be reelected for that leadership role. [00:00:49] And president elect Donald Trump has now finally weighed in on this issue and has chosen to endorse Mike Johnson. And he's getting a little bit of backlash for doing so. Now, before we get to the backlash, here's what Trump had to say. In a lengthy post, he made it clear that he believes speaker Mike Johnson [00:01:06] is a good, hard working religious man. That seems to be repeated by a lot of people that he's a religious man. But nonetheless, he also continues to say that Mike Johnson will do the right thing and we will continue to win. Mike has my complete and total endorsement. [00:01:23] Now, Johnson responded to Trump on social media saying, thank you, President Trump. I'm honored and humbled by your support. As always, together, we will quickly deliver on your America First agenda and usher in a new golden age of America. And Elon Musk responded to that, saying that Speaker Johnson [00:01:43] has his full support as well. But remember, just a few weeks ago, Musk himself had expressed some doubts about Speaker Johnson, and now he has gone along with what Trump wants, which is an endorsement of Mike Johnson here. And so this has led to a lot of disagreement among Republicans. [00:02:02] So it really does show you that there is a difference in this upcoming Trump term versus what we experienced in 2016, where it seemed like everyone would just fall in line with what Donald Trump wanted. So House Republicans have said for weeks that Trump would have the final word [00:02:19] on whether Johnson keeps the gavel or is replaced. But not all Republicans are buying what Mike Johnson is selling, namely Representative Thomas Massie, who posted on Twitter and said, I respect and support President Trump, but his endorsement of Mike Johnson [00:02:35] is going to work out about, as well as his endorsement of Speaker Paul Ryan. We've seen Johnson partner with the Democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans and blow the budget. And that's really the heart of the disagreement [00:02:50] in regard to speaker Mike Johnson. You have one wing of the Republican Party arguing, hey, homeboy is spending way too much money, and we want to scale down the government. He's doing the opposite. Elon Musk responded to Thomas Massie saying that, you know, look, [00:03:06] let's just let's give him a shot. Let's see how it goes. And just like with the H-1b visa fiasco, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk are absolutely at odds on this issue as well. In fact, here's a clip from Bannon speaking at Turning Point USA. [00:03:21] Let's watch. Clearly Johnson's not up to the task. And he's got to go. Right. He's got to go. So Johnson will be speaker of the House. President Trump these are your people. [00:03:40] It's not it's not it's not just Johnson clearly has to go. He doesn't have that. He doesn't have what we call the right stuff. Right? That that that combination of guts and moxie and savvy and toughness. What is the strength of our movement? Its resilience. [00:03:56] What does Trump admire most is resilience. You can punch MAGA in the face, and they're going to get up off the canvas, and they're going to punch you back three times harder. - This is what we've done. - Now, what does this all mean? I mean, sure, there could be some Republicans who are not in favor of Mike [00:04:14] Johnson, but maybe he would still have enough votes from the Republican caucus to secure his reelection. He needs 218 lawmakers to vote in his favor. And currently, there are only 219 GOP lawmakers. Thomas Massie has already made clear that he is not going to vote [00:04:33] for his reelection, meaning he can't lose a single GOP lawmaker after that. And we're hearing from some Republican congressmen, including Chip Roy. Yeah, it doesn't look like he's got the votes. Take a look. At this point, Congressman, does he have that support or not? [00:04:53] Yeah. Right now I don't believe that he has the votes on Friday. And I think we need to have the conference get together so that we can get united. And people say, well, Chip, who would you choose? Otherwise, there are a lot of great members of Congress. Mike's a friend, and maybe he can answer the call and he can deliver an agenda and a plan. Byron Donalds is a good man and a good friend. [00:05:09] I supported him, I nominated him two years ago. Jim Jordan is a good man and a good friend. There are other members of leadership in the conference who could do the job, but what we need to do is unite around a plan to deliver for the president. Right now, I do not believe the conference has that. [00:05:25] And we did also hear from one other GOP lawmaker that's Representative Victoria Spartz, who spoke to Fox and Friends yesterday and said, quote, if we don't have a speaker with the courage, vision and the plan, and if Speaker Johnson wants to be speaker, then he needs [00:05:40] to lay out the plan and commit to that plan, not like what he did last year. So obviously, she's expressing her discontent with the job that Mike Johnson did last year and has not committed to voting in his favor on Friday. [00:05:56] But there are others who have said favorable things about Mike Johnson, which we'll get to in just a minute. But first, back to you, Jake. Yeah. So I know why Trump endorsed Johnson. They told him you've got a tiny Johnson problem. And he said, believe me, we got no problems there. [00:06:12] Totally in favor of Johnson. Okay. Kind of stealing from your joke anyways. So, look, the underlying problem is massive, and it cannot be resolved. I'm going to explain that in a second, but I have got to do a side note here [00:06:27] on what did Burchett mean by he's not a religious man. He's a Christian man. I don't even know what that means. What what's the major distinction? Is he saying, don't worry, he's not Jewish. I don't know what he means by that. And then everybody talking about. [00:06:44] Oh, no, it's okay. He should handle the budget because he's religious. How are those things related? And imagine a world where they're like, oh, no. Ilhan Omar should definitely be the speaker of the House because she's a good Muslim woman. Yeah. It's so weird. [00:06:59] Yeah, yeah. In fact, why don't we go to that video, Jake, since you skipped ahead and you're already talking about it before we watched it in context. Let's watch. Mike's been a good friend to me, and there's nobody more honest that I've ever dealt with in Washington. I mean, he is a fine Christian man. He's not a religious man. [00:07:16] He's a Christian man, and he doesn't cheat on his wife. And I find that very appealing in Washington, D.C.. Oh my God, man. Husbands be cheating in D.C.. That's that's the message I got from that clip. [00:07:31] Yeah, I still don't know what it means, but I. But there is one thing I do know. Apparently, everyone else cheats on their wife in D.C., so. Okay, I guess Mike Johnson's got that for him, because if he cheated on his wife, he'd have to tell his son. He'd get awkward. But what? It would. Yeah. [00:07:46] Okay, now back to the main event here, guys. There's no way to resolve this because Elon Musk and Donald Trump started talking about cutting $2 trillion from the budget. There ain't no trillion $2 trillion to cut. So that's a fairy tale. And so later in the show, we're going to talk about how Donald Trump is now realizing, he turns out some of the things they promised are very hard. [00:08:04] Yeah, I know, I know, but so but 2 trillion is absolutely impossible. And on top of that, if you really wanted a cut from the deficit or the debt. You would do a lot of things that made logical sense. You would raise taxes on the very rich. You would raise taxes on corporations. You would cut from the Pentagon. [00:08:20] You would cut the oil subsidies and tons and tons of subsidies that corporations get. None of that is going to happen. Or if any of it happens, it's going to be really right around the edges. Right. But certainly not enough to make a dent in $2 trillion. And so then they're going to go try to cut what Medicaid, Medicare, [00:08:37] Social Security and all the programs that the American people love. And then they're going to run into a buzz saw. So they just cannot possibly resolve it. So yeah. Thomas Massie have given him credit a million times for being honest Guy. He's doctor no. He says no to everything. He doesn't want to spend a dime. [00:08:53] Yeah, but that's not really how the real world works. So that's the reason why Mike Johnson handed in that budget, is because the Republicans have a history of huffing and puffing and going, oh my God, we're going to take care of the deficit, blah, blah, blah. And they never, ever do. It's a giant lie. [00:09:08] Although the only thing they ever do is keep the the spending around where it is. Cut a couple of programs that help average Americans because they don't. Those are not their donors and they don't care about them at all. And then they'll do giant tax cuts for the rich. And that's all they ever do my entire life. [00:09:25] That's the entire purpose of the Republican Party. So now they talked a big game about cutting. They can't cut anywhere near this much. And they certainly can't cut without pissing off average Americans in a big, big way when they cut from them instead of their beloved corporate donors. [00:09:42] So they're stuck. They're stuck. They're going to fight like crazy for the whole time. Remember, they only have one person lead in in the House. He needs 218 votes to become speaker of the House. They only have 219 massie's out. That means they can't lose anyone else. [00:09:58] So they'll probably come back in line because Trump will make them. But it doesn't really resolve anything. And so they're on a collision course with reality. And I don't know how that one ends. Well, look, I do know that there are areas where there seems to be [00:10:15] widespread agreement among Republicans, and I think some Democrats as well. Maybe not Democrats. But look, for someone like Marcy, cutting funding to foreign wars is huge. So I think that if he gets that concession, he'll be willing to sign on. [00:10:31] The sticking point with Mike Johnson has been his willingness to sign on to more military funding for Ukraine under the Biden administration. And so I do think that, look, the random, arbitrary trillions of dollar [00:10:46] figure that the Doge Department had stated is, is just a ridiculous, out of nowhere figure, right? But if you want to cut funding, I mean, the only area that I can think of that would make sense would certainly be the money that we spend on defense, [00:11:04] the money that we send to foreign wars. I mean, we'll see if that happens. But you're right. I mean, there seems to be fundamental ideological differences between the old Traditional Republican wing of the party and the more America [00:11:21] first wing of the Republican Party. And so again, we'll see how it plays out. But I agree with you that they're not going to be able to cut as much as they claim they want to cut. And I don't I don't think that they're going to target Social Security and Medicare. I mean, look, it's a third rail of politics for a reason. [00:11:38] And Trump has made clear over and over again that he's not touching Social Security. So I don't think he will. Okay, so but the bottom line is so they'll cut from Ukraine for sure. They will not cut from Israel for sure. Maybe they do like a cosmetic cut on the Pentagon. [00:11:53] I mean, I would hope for a deep cut and that's what I'm pushing for. But we'd be lucky to cut 100 million. I mean, I've got the right wing shows are talking about cutting 400 million, I'm sorry, 400 billion from the Pentagon. If they do that, I'll give them all the credit in the world. Right. And so that's what we want. [00:12:10] And I think that'd be great, but I would that would be shocking beyond belief. Right. I'd be thrilled to get $100 billion cut out of this corrupt Washington. But even if they do that, even if they cut the Department of Education and they leave Medicare and Social Security alone, but they cut Medicaid. [00:12:26] Right. And that's going to upset a lot of people, including their own base. Right. And they cut and they cut on all these things that are not even peripheral, but they take out big chunks, like, like I said, a whole Department of Education. They're still not going to get anywhere near forget the 2 trillion number. [00:12:43] They're not going to get anywhere near balancing the budget. It's not going to be close because they will not touch the rich and they will not touch corporations. So I mean, you got the far right populist saying crazy things like we should stop all immigration. Steve Bannon said that, but they're also saying increase corporate taxes. [00:13:01] Is there any chance that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are going to listen to that, raising corporate taxes? Almost no chance at all. So there's I'll say it right now. There's no way in the world Donald Trump balances the budget, period. [00:13:19] It's a massive budget and no one's really been able to balance it. - So I think that's a good prediction. - Yeah. And it's because they don't want to. To be fair, Bill Clinton did balance the budget. And so and so that was that was a, you know a different time. [00:13:35] Yeah I got you. But but they they actually raised taxes. They and they cut some spending. And they did the things that you need to do to balance the budget. And the last Republican president to leave office with a balanced budget was Dwight Eisenhower. They never, ever do it because they'll never, ever increase taxes [00:13:53] on their beloved rich donors. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. You'll get to interact with us more. There's live chat emojis, badges. You've got emojis of me Anna John Jr. So those are super fun. [00:14:10] But you also get playback of our exclusive member only shows and specials right after they air. So all of that, all you got to do is click that join button right underneath the video. Thank you.