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Hi, this is Carl from Boston along with

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podcast was recorded at 5 29 p.m. on Friday the

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13th of October. Things

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may have changed by the time you hear this, but

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Here's the show.

0:58

Man, it's been a long week and I feel very emotionally

1:01

touched by that time stamp right now. I

1:04

have a friend who had to retire his seeing eye

1:06

dog and it was like a really, really

1:08

very emotional. Yeah. Hey

1:11

there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

1:13

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm

1:15

Susan Davis. I cover politics.

1:17

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political

1:19

editor and correspondent. And we are

1:21

here with you late today because we were

1:23

waiting to see if House Republicans could settle

1:25

on a new speaker. And, well,

1:28

there's been plenty of action, plenty

1:30

of drama, but there is still no

1:33

elected speaker of the House. Last

1:35

night, Louisiana Republican Steve Scalise,

1:38

who had been chosen by his conference, dropped

1:41

out.

1:42

A new man rose up. That man is

1:44

Jim Jordan. Sue, where

1:47

are we? It's been a bit of a roller coaster

1:49

the past 24 hours, and Republicans are now

1:51

heading into the weekend still with no speaker

1:53

and still no clear plan out of this. As you

1:56

noted, Steve Scalise dropped out of the race last night.

1:58

This morning, Republicans met.

1:59

behind closed doors and decided that they would move

2:02

forward again with a second round

2:04

of nominating and votes to find a speaker nominee.

2:07

Jim Jordan, the judiciary chairman who challenged

2:09

Steve Scalise in that first election and

2:11

lost, immediately declared today

2:14

that he would run again. He was

2:16

for a bit, you know, maybe about

2:18

an hour, the only candidate in the race. And

2:21

before Republicans went in to vote, another

2:22

lawmaker, a guy by the name of Austin

2:25

Scott, a Republican from Georgia,

2:26

announced that he would challenge

2:28

Jordan. And they went in and they had nominating

2:31

meetings and then they had a secret ballot. And Jim

2:33

Jordan, surprisingly, didn't

2:35

do all that well on a secret ballot against

2:38

Scott, who literally was in the race for like

2:40

six minutes. Jordan got 124 votes, Scott

2:42

got 81. In

2:45

his race against Scalise, Jordan had 99 votes. So

2:48

even after all that drama, not a

2:51

significant gain, Republicans

2:53

then went and had a second ballot where the

2:55

question was merely, would you support

2:57

Jim Jordan on the floor? That was also

2:59

a secret ballot. And he upped

3:01

his numbers. He got 152 votes to support. But 55

3:05

Republicans are still at least on

3:07

a secret ballot saying they will not vote

3:10

for him for speaker. The remarkable thing

3:12

with Austin Scott is many

3:14

of us did not really know who he was before

3:17

he decided to run for speaker. And he didn't

3:19

seem to necessarily even really want to

3:21

be speaker as much as he was

3:23

just like there as a vessel as an alternative

3:26

to Jim Jordan. Yeah, he was really just a proxy

3:28

vote for people that didn't want to vote for Jordan.

3:30

And he had voiced a lot of frustration, not

3:32

specifically necessarily about Jim Jordan,

3:35

but about this entire process, about how Kevin McCarthy

3:37

was removed, about the fact that Republicans didn't

3:39

rally around Scalise, and even that Jordan

3:41

was going to try to do it, you know, unchallenged today.

3:44

So it was really more of a protest run. He

3:46

was pretty clear he doesn't actually want to be speaker. He

3:48

just didn't want Jim Jordan to go unchallenged. But

3:50

look, like at the end of this meeting, they told

3:53

members to go home and that the next

3:55

step is Republicans will meet again in the Capitol

3:57

on Monday, and they're still trying I

4:00

had a lot of conversations with Republicans

4:03

coming out of that meeting, you know, talk to

4:05

some Jim Jordan allies like Clay Higgins

4:07

who say they think he can get there and, you know,

4:10

talk to other members like Vern Buchanan who

4:12

are like, look, he's just not going to be able to get the 217. And

4:15

if Jim Jordan can't do it, I

4:17

can't tell you who it's going

4:18

to be. Yeah, and it's really interesting how

4:20

the

4:22

dynamics on Capitol Hill have

4:24

shifted, you know, just thinking back to the

4:26

Tea Party and thinking to when, you

4:29

know, John Boehner was the Speaker

4:31

of the House and Jim Jordan is

4:33

somebody who John Boehner called a political terrorist.

4:36

You know, this was somebody who was the hard

4:38

right before Matt Gaetz defined

4:41

the hard right of this era. He's the

4:43

founder of the Freedom Caucus. Yeah, I mean, he

4:45

was Matt Gaetz before Matt Gaetz became so Matt

4:48

Gaetz, right? The

4:50

congressman who essentially torpedoed Kevin

4:52

McCarthy out of being

4:54

Speaker of the House. And this is

4:56

where the Power Center now is in the Republican

4:59

Party. Well, I do think that Jordan

5:01

has gone from playing

5:04

the outside game to playing

5:06

a little bit more of an inside game. Sure.

5:09

He's got a seat at the table now. Absolutely. You

5:11

know, not only does he have the friendship and

5:13

he was an ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy

5:16

who was removed, but he's a close ally

5:18

of Donald Trump. He's the committee chairman of

5:20

the Judiciary Committee. He's leading the

5:22

impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. I

5:24

mean, he is he has gone from outsider

5:27

to mainstream party elder.

5:30

There are multiple problems for Jim Jordan.

5:31

One,

5:32

his record is mostly as a

5:34

hard right based conservative. And if you are a moderate

5:37

lawmaker or a Republican in a swing seat,

5:39

you might be looking at him with a bit of a side eye like

5:42

this guy is not going to help me or understand

5:44

my politics or my districts. He

5:46

also doesn't have much of a record of actually

5:48

enacting legislation. You know, I

5:50

can't even really point to you any legislative

5:53

victories. Jim Jordan has had in

5:55

his career here. I can point to a lot of things he helped

5:57

derail, you know, a lot of spending

5:59

bills. a lot of government shutdowns that he played a

6:01

role in trying to be like the combative

6:03

right, but he's not really someone

6:05

who can build consensus across

6:08

the aisle. And maybe a lot of Republicans wouldn't say

6:10

that on the record, but a lot of them are looking forward and it's like,

6:12

look, they still have to do spending bills. Like there's still a

6:14

lot of things you have to do that require

6:16

you to work with Democrats. And Jim Jordan

6:18

doesn't really have a track record of all, not

6:20

to say he can't, but there's not a lot of track record

6:23

he can point to. I also think that Jordan

6:25

has a choice to make now I talked to Jody Arrington,

6:27

he's the chairman of the budget committee. And, you know, I said,

6:29

it seems pretty clear that no one's going to be able

6:32

to get to two 17, which is the magic

6:34

number

6:34

on the house floor. If all members are voting

6:36

on the first ballot, like it still seems

6:38

like some Republicans going to have to fight it out on the floor.

6:41

And Jordan is going to have to make a decision

6:43

over whether he wants to take this to the floor

6:45

and see if he can win it there. And the argument

6:47

that Jordan supporters will say is that it

6:49

would be very hard to publicly

6:52

cast a vote against him, Jordan, because

6:54

he is a uniquely popular figure among

6:56

the conservative base in a way that Steve Scalise

6:58

was not. And also that Donald

7:00

Trump has endorsed him for Speaker and

7:02

that Trump would be watching that vote and be able to bring

7:04

some pressure to bear on Republican

7:06

holdouts. That's a tough way

7:08

to get your get for your path into the speakership

7:11

to be seen as sort of trying to publicly strong

7:13

arm or bully people into it. You know, Speaker

7:16

is a consensus job, as I said, and it's

7:18

a decision he's going to have to make. But you know, if he's within

7:20

striking distance, sure, can you can you flip

7:23

a couple of votes on the House floor? But do Republicans

7:25

really want to go through another pretty brutal

7:27

battle? I don't know the answer to that. Republicans

7:30

didn't know the answer to that coming out of there. I think they're

7:32

very frustrated and nobody

7:35

has any idea how this will be resolved. All right, we're

7:37

going to take a quick break and we'll be back

7:39

in a second.

7:40

It's the start of a new term at the Supreme Court.

7:43

For our legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg,

7:46

it's kind of like opening day. So I

7:48

drown myself in legal briefs.

7:51

I read and read and

7:53

read go behind the scenes with Nina as she prepares

7:55

for a new term.

7:56

But in July, after the

7:59

battalion.

9:37

As

10:00

far as the US role here, President

10:02

Biden continues to express steadfast

10:05

support for Israel. Today, though,

10:07

he also advocated for humanitarian

10:10

support to get to Gaza.

10:11

We can't lose sight of the fact that

10:13

the overwhelming majority of Palestinians

10:15

had nothing to do with Hamas and

10:18

Hamas's appalling attacks, and

10:20

their suffering as a result as well.

10:23

Domenico, let's talk about the

10:25

politics of all this. We've gotten results

10:27

from a new NPR, PBS NewsHour,

10:29

Marist poll that was conducted

10:32

after the attacks on Israel

10:35

last weekend. And what did you find?

10:37

Well, overall, about two-thirds

10:40

of people say that they want the US

10:42

government to show strong support publicly

10:45

for Israel in their

10:47

war against Hamas. There were

10:49

some pretty big divides, though,

10:51

when you look by age and by race. For

10:54

people who are over 45 years

10:57

old, 78 percent said

10:59

that they wanted a strong

11:01

public show of support from the United States. But

11:03

for those under 45, it was only 48 percent,

11:06

a big 30-point drop in that

11:09

case. When it came to race,

11:11

whites, 72 percent said that they

11:13

want a strong show of support for Israel,

11:15

but only 51 percent of non-whites

11:18

said so. So this is something we've sort of seen

11:20

as a trend over time, where

11:23

the Democratic Party, for example, according

11:25

to Gallup this year, has for the

11:27

first time been more sympathetic

11:29

toward Palestinians in

11:31

this long tension with Israel

11:34

and Palestinians. But we

11:37

have to realize that this is also not just

11:39

about Palestinians. It's a totally different

11:41

situation because you have Hamas, a terrorist

11:44

organization that had perpetrated

11:46

these heinous attacks that Israel

11:48

is now going to war with and trying to

11:51

unravel Hamas operatives

11:54

and activists who are really entangled

11:57

with the Palestinian population in Gaza.

11:59

Biden, as we said, has been, he's

12:02

come out very strongly in support

12:04

of Israel. Is he

12:07

seeing any sort of an approval rating

12:09

bump from that?

12:11

Nope. Not yet.

12:13

Anyway, you know, the thing is, our partisanship

12:16

is just like this massive shield, and

12:18

it's not being pierced right now at all,

12:21

even in this situation, at least not yet.

12:23

You know, I mean, this news sort of has

12:25

to, it takes a while sometimes for it to trickle

12:28

down for people to really formulate their thoughts. But 52%

12:31

of people said that they disapprove

12:34

of Biden's handling of

12:36

this situation. That also

12:38

reflects exactly the disapproval

12:41

rating for Biden's job overall. So

12:43

when you think about that, even though two thirds of people

12:45

are saying that they want a strong show of support for

12:48

Israel, you know, the people who are

12:50

saying that who are Republicans or Republican-leaning

12:52

independents who don't like the job

12:54

Biden's doing overall just at this point

12:56

don't seem ready to be

12:59

able to say that they are. And that's also a proof

13:01

of how Biden's talking about the

13:03

situation with Israel and Hamas.

13:05

Sue, the White House was up on

13:08

Capitol Hill today briefing key congressional

13:10

leaders about what they say is the gravity of

13:12

the situation in Israel and also with

13:14

Ukraine's ongoing war to defend itself

13:16

against Russia. And they are

13:19

planning next week to send up a new

13:21

emergency funding request. Spokesman

13:24

John Kirby said that they're basically

13:26

running out of time to

13:29

get that military assistance to U.S.

13:31

allies. But how

13:34

well is that likely to be received on

13:36

the Hill where there is not a speaker?

13:38

Well, it's complicated. There is already

13:41

a division among lawmakers over the idea

13:43

of whether you should couple aid to

13:45

Ukraine with aid to Israel or keep it as

13:47

a standalone measure. Obviously,

13:49

it is immediately going to be met with

13:51

a problem of not having a speaker of the House. The House

13:53

cannot move anything until they resolve

13:56

the speaker impasse. And we don't know when it

13:58

will end. So the urgency gets. the

14:00

urgency intensifies, especially as the

14:02

Senate returns next week. The other

14:04

problem is that I think it's

14:06

fair to say that a support aid package

14:09

for Israel could probably pass very fast and

14:11

with a lot of bipartisan support, but

14:13

I imagine that the White House and party

14:15

leaders, because it's so popular,

14:17

may see an interest in trying to tack

14:20

on things like Ukraine aid or border

14:22

money, things that some House Republican

14:24

lawmakers have suggested to get it through. I can't

14:27

imagine they get it done next week. That just doesn't

14:29

seem politically possible, but

14:31

there's other legislation that Congress is looking at as

14:33

well about this that they're tied up about. House

14:35

Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul has

14:38

a resolution. It's bipartisan condemning

14:40

Hamas for the attack. That's also

14:42

something that Congress generally likes to go on the record

14:44

with and very quickly after events like

14:46

this, and they're also seem incapable

14:48

of moving. And he's been really candid that

14:51

the speaker impasse at

14:53

this moment looks

14:55

very bad on the world stage. You know,

14:57

democracies are being tested, US alliances

15:01

are being tested, and a US

15:03

government that cannot resolve itself

15:06

is a bad message to send to the world. But

15:08

I do think the McCauls are hoping that

15:11

the urgency of the situation will

15:14

sort of incentivize Republicans to figure it

15:17

out. But I have to say, I thought that all this

15:19

week and the weekends, and it has not

15:21

been resolved. The political dysfunction

15:23

that the House Republicans have created

15:26

has paralyzed Congress, while really bigger,

15:28

literally life or death problems are happening

15:31

overseas. And it just strikes me that it's emblematic

15:33

of the chaos that the US system

15:35

has really devolved into over the last

15:37

several years that we've heard about over and over

15:39

again abroad from allies,

15:42

thinking that this is a big problem in the United

15:44

States. They've pinpointed this, and it's really

15:47

been a shift away from when the United

15:49

States was really seen as the moral leader in

15:51

the world after World War II. It's really

15:53

striking.

15:54

So I think we're going to take a quick break,

15:57

and when we get back, it is time for Ken.

16:00

it let it go.

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And we are

17:34

back and it is time to end the show like we

17:36

do every week with Can't Let It Go

17:38

where we talk about the things that

17:40

we just cannot let go of politics

17:43

or otherwise and I think we

17:45

could use a little joy this week. So Sue, what can't

17:47

you let go of? I don't know if I can bring joy but I

17:49

can bring weird, okay? Because weird

17:52

has just been the theme of this week.

17:54

We're already sort of through the looking-glass

17:56

with speaker politics and how this might play out

17:59

and I would say The person who acts like everything

18:01

is normal is George Santos,

18:04

the Republican lawmaker from New York. And

18:07

I admit that I have been somewhat

18:09

amused by his business

18:12

as usual attitude. He attends

18:14

all of these conference meetings. He

18:16

talks to reporters. He's weighing in on the speaker's

18:19

race. Meanwhile, his fellow Republican

18:21

lawmakers are saying that they might try

18:24

to expel him from the house.

18:27

People don't want to talk to him. He's the guy that doesn't

18:29

get that everybody wants him to leave the party and he just

18:31

keeps showing up. And it was just this sort

18:33

of cherry on top of a very, very weird

18:36

cake. He's facing what, like two dozen

18:38

felony counts on these

18:41

chart cards, card fraud

18:44

and law.

18:45

But he'll tell you this, he walks those halls

18:47

like not a care

18:48

in the world. Domenico, what can you let go of?

18:50

You know, let me just ask you guys this. I think

18:52

this is not a trick question. Mississippi,

18:55

red or blue state? Red. Red.

18:59

So if you want to be elected governor of Mississippi, you're

19:01

probably going to have to have some Republicans vote for you,

19:03

right? Seems reasonable, if you're a Democrat. Well,

19:06

the Democrat who's running for governor is a man

19:08

named Brandon Presley. He released

19:10

an ad this week that really stood out to me. Now,

19:12

you know, at first it stood out because of how he had

19:14

all these Republicans in the ad. I'm

19:17

a Republican. I'm a former Republican congressman from

19:19

the state of Mississippi and I'm supporting Brandon

19:22

Presley. He comes back to him and he says, and

19:24

I have three words for you. Let's go Brandon.

19:27

Rebranding, trying to rebrand. I get

19:29

what he's doing there. I got to say when I'm in the motorcade

19:31

following the president, a lot of let's go Brandon

19:34

banners out there.

19:34

And it's all

19:36

for Brandon Presley, obviously. Yeah,

19:39

clearly. Clearly. Tim, what about you?

19:41

What can you let go of? So as

19:43

you might remember, leading into the possible

19:46

government shutdown that didn't actually happen

19:48

because they passed a short term spending

19:50

bill that, oh gosh, is going to run out again in

19:53

just about a month. There was

19:55

great concern that if the government

19:57

had shut down, it would cancel.

20:00

Bear Week. Oh no. Right?

20:02

Well, Fat Bear Week did not

20:05

get canceled. Fat Bear Week went

20:07

on and there is now a

20:10

crowned champion Fat

20:12

Bear and her name is Grazer.

20:16

Bear number 128. She is a fierce mother

20:18

and expert angler. I'm looking

20:21

at a picture.

20:25

She's beautiful. In

20:28

the Instagram announcing this,

20:31

heavy is the rump that wears the

20:33

crown. Has anyone considered

20:35

nominating this bear for Speaker of the House? Because

20:38

maybe she could win it. We could have a female,

20:40

another female Speaker of the House.

20:42

He did get a hundred and eight thousand votes.

20:44

I think that's more than you need for Speaker. Let's

20:47

leave it there

20:47

for today. Our executive producer

20:49

is Muthani Maturi. Our editor is Eric

20:51

McDaniel. Our producers are Elena Moore and

20:54

Casey Morrell. Thanks to Krishna Depp Talamur

20:56

and Lexi Schapittle. I'm Tamara Keith.

20:58

I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover

21:00

politics.

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