The House of Horrors

Week 1

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I had a great time with Kurt Bardella and Charlotte Clymer on the debut episode of The Mary Trump Show House of Horrors, a weekly review of all of the terrifying goings-on in the Republican-led House of Representatives.

I’ve provided the transcript [edited for clarity and flow] below the video if you prefer reading. Let me know what you think.

Mary

It is day 11 of the Republican-led House of Horrors with intrepid megalomaniac, as well as this month's winner of the Dunning-Kruger Effect* Award, Kevin McCarthy, as the newly-elected Speaker. Actually, Charlotte, as evidenced by the musical intro, these are terrifying times—chills down my spine.

Before we get to our top three, because this is a new show and for everybody watching, I just want to let you know that every week two other Nerd Avengers and I are going to be going through our top three hits of the week, like the top three worst things we think that this Republican-led Congress has done. What it means, is there any hope?

But we didn't really have a chance to talk about the vote for Speaker at any length, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. It's a done deal. But Charlotte, what's really interesting to me about it is that people across the political spectrum, like from you to David Jolly and many, many other people were absolutely convinced that McCarthy would never be Speaker. I was agnostic on the issue quite honestly, because I was just hoping that enough Republicans would be stupid enough to stay home, forgetting that the Speaker only needs a simple majority to win, and that the right number of them would fail to show up and Hakeem Jeffries would slide in with 212 votes. That obviously didn't happen.

And just so we're clear that the hatred of McCarthy isn't just from the one side. Adam Kinzinger recently said, “Kevin's a piece of shit, and let's just be honest about this because he will say whatever he needs to say to stay in power. I'm not even saying that gratuitously to be mean. It's just a fact. So, Charlotte, why is he Speaker?

[*As used here the Dunning-Kruger Effect refers to people who fail to recognize the limits of their skills or intelligence and then overestimate them. In colloquial terms, it describes a situation in which stupid people think they’re smart.]

Charlotte

I don't think he is Speaker.

Mary

Ah, well, there you go. That's right. Speaker in name only.

Charlotte

The way that we think of a Speaker of the House is someone who guides the majority caucus with confidence, with competence. That's what we've had always. Republican or Democrat, that is always what we've had as a Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy is a wet suit in a job that is a shadow of its former self. That's what he is. The fact that he gave away a concession that would permit any single individual member of his caucus to call for a no confidence vote on his Speakership, that's game over. That's it. He can’t hold this thing over the next two years. There's no way in hell.

Mary

No way. And the truth of the matter, Kurt, is that even if, because I think, ultimately, the surprising thing was that the 200 whatever stuck with him throughout, that, even though he was willing to give away the store to the worst of the worst. But the truth of the matter is, 1) who's better than Kevin McCarthy anyway, and 2), after all the concessions he made in the process leading up to the vote, there was no way, if it had been somebody else, that person would've been in any better position than McCarthy finds himself in now.

Kurt

And I think that's why the Republicans stuck with Kevin through 15 ballots. That wasn't really an endorsement of Kevin as much as it was: nobody wants this job. This is a terrible job to have under these dynamics, under those type of restrictions and concessions. The people that could have viably taken Kevin out—the Jim Jordans, the Steve Scalises—they didn't want any part of the Speakership. They could not have been more clear during all of that, that they did not want to touch that gavel with a 10-foot pole. So, Kevin has really kind set himself up to be the fall guy.

Everybody knows this is going to be a total shit show. Everybody knows Republicans are going to just make themselves political pariahs by pursuing a radically extreme agenda that nobody in this country wants. And nobody wants to be in a position to take the fall for that when the bill is due. Except for Kevin McCarthy. It was a great quote from the fictitious character Frank Underwood in House of Cards that, to some people, it's just the size of the chair that matters, not what you can actually do with it. And Kevin has shown that. I think that night he posted the photo of them putting the Speaker Kevin McCarthy up above the door. That's all that he wanted, that and his picture in Statuary Hall one day with all the other Speakers. That's it.

Mary

Yeah. And that's why we're here because not because McCarthy's Speaker--it would've been a terrible situation no matter what—but because of what he traded away in order to become Speaker, this 118th Congress will be and already is a house of horrors.

So here we are to give all of you our top three worst horrors of the week. Kurt, I'm going to start with you. We're just going to list them and then there might be some overlap. And then we're going to talk about each one individually and see where that leads us at the end of our first week and a half of the 118th Congress.

Kurt

Well, my three

1. Kevin McCarthy kicking off Democrats like Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, and Ilhan Omar from Congressional Committees for no actual reason that any rational person would say makes sense.

2. The ongoing saga that is Congressman George Santos.

3. The completely idiotic, moronic new ambulance-chasing Republican talking point of: “They're coming for your gas stoves.”

Mary

God, we're going to pry them from their cold dead hands, which was apparently one of the talking points. And as for your second point, just really quickly, I'm still not convinced George Santos is really his name.

Charlotte, what are your top three?

Charlotte

Santos, Santos, Santos is my three.

Mary

Oh wow. Okay. So, we'll have a thing or two to say about that.

Charlotte

There is no parallel. There is no comparison to this incident in all of American politics. There is no politician who's ever been elected to Congress who has lied this much and this is really about their biography. He lied about having a college degree, attending Baruch College, where he also lied about being a star player on his championship volleyball team.

Kurt

Volleyball.

Charlotte

He lied about getting an NBA from NYU. He lied about working at Goldman Sachs. He lied about working at Citigroup. He lied about his grandparents being Holocaust survivors and refugees. He lied about his mother's death twice.

Mary

Twice.

Kurt

Twice.

Mary

Jinx! I think that there's a broader conversation and some interesting things are happening in the New York GOP. Let's get to that. But first, I just want to give my top three.

Two of them don't really need further exploration.

1. Eleven of the 17 committee chairs voted against certifying the 2020 election results and committee chairs are very powerful. 12 of the 17 signed on to a legal brief that asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn the results of the free and fair election in 2020. I think that's bad but self-explanatory.

2. The vote to defund the Internal Revenue Service, which won't go anywhere because I don't think the Senate is going to allow that to happen.

3. The installation of the Weaponization of the Federal Government Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee led by the egregious Jim Jordan, which will have unprecedented powers to access classified information and renew, quote, "ongoing criminal investigations."

But let's get back to Santos, because, Charlotte, I agree with you. It is unprecedented. And it also, right out of the gate, shows us the Republicans' hand as if we needed any more information. All they care about is raw power no matter how illicitly obtained, right?

Charlotte

Yeah, yeah. What's tragic is that I think McCarthy said something to the effect of, "The people have voted this man into office. Constitutionally, we are bound," etc., etc. But they didn't vote for him. They voted for a completely different person. The Long Island Republican Party, the NY state GOP, basically every prominent New York Republican has said that this man needs to resign, that he should not be in Congress. And what's tragic is that he is clearly heading for a very severe crash and burn. Republicans are definitely going to lose that seat in '24, no doubt about it. That's coming. It feels like we are in fucking la la land. We are in a completely different—I don't even know how to describe it. We've gone from Trump lying about certain things here and there to people who follow Trump lying about their entire histories.

Mary

Yeah, he's a fictional character.

Charlotte

He's a fictional character. George Santos is the fictional character. The only Congressman Santos I recognize is the one who was elected president during the West Wing in season six and seven.

Kurt

Matthew Santos, the best Santos.

Mary

Jimmy Smits, absolutely. And that Santos was more real, more grounded in reality than George Santos.

Kurt

I'd vote for that Santos.

Mary

I would too. But, Kurt, as Charlotte points out, the New York Republican Party is not happy. But let's be real—it's not because they have any kind of standards. It's because a lot of them, like Santos, are in swing districts. Santos' district used to have a Democratic representative. It's because they know, as Charlotte alluded to, he's going to hurt their chances in 2024.

Kurt

Yeah. This is why it's so bizarre to me, actually that . . . I mean, it's not that bizarre, I guess, knowing the Republican Party as we do now. But this is going to blow up and get worse and worse and worse. So why wouldn't you do the smart thing and just cut the limb off right now and at least give yourself a chance to either hold onto the seat via a special election or competitively target the Democrat that wins now for 2024? If you keep Santos in there, you're just guaranteeing an outright Democratic win in '24. Kiss that seat goodbye under any scenario. And, so, it just makes no sense.

And the longer this goes, the more we find out, the worse it gets. There are multiple—and multiple geographic—investigations that are going on right now from here to Brazil into this guy. And just zooming out a bit, it's not lost on me that the entirety of the Republican Party had no qualms about demanding President Barack Obama show his fricking birth certificate based on groundless conspiracy theories. And yet, when all of these things that have surfaced about Santos, they're hiding. They're saying, "Well, it's just between Santos and his constituents." Never mind the fact that he defrauded all those constituents, and they never got the chance to make an informed decision when they voted in November.

But it also goes to show what happens when you have an entire party that's rooted in conspiracy theories, in lies. Whether you're lying about an inauguration crowd size, whether you're lying about the impacts of a deadly virus that's killing millions of people, about vaccines, whether you're lying about the outcome of a free and fair election, this is what happens when you have that kind of culture and you make that okay and acceptable.

Mary

And speaking of lying, which I personally have had enough of, but it's going to get so much worse, we're going to get to one of your top three, Kurt, which is that McCarthy has removed certain Democrats from their committee assignments. One of them is Eric Swalwell. Another, as you mentioned, is Ilhan Omar. And when speaking to reporters, which he's terrible at, McCarthy, said that they're going to be more transparent, they're going to give more flexibility, and people will be able to make their own committee assignments. When a reporters pointed out that he'd actually removed two people, McCarthy went on to defame Eric Swalwell by implying, very bluntly, that Swalwell was like a national security risk. In terms of this assignment issue, Kurt, where do you see that going? Because I think we're already starting at an almost impossible task in terms of having the two parties working together.

Kurt

Yeah, I think it sets a very, very dangerous precedent when you remove people from Congressional committees for no reason at all. Eric Swalwell's done nothing wrong, nothing illegal, nothing but cooperate with an FBI investigation. Adam Schiff did nothing but pursue the truth into Donald Trump's myriad national security conflicts of interest. Ilhan Omar got booted off the Foreign Affairs Committee, let's be honest, because her name is Ilhan Omar. That's why they kicked her off. Okay?

So, when that's the criteria that is being used to justify these types of radical actions, it does, I think, irreparable harm to the institution because it's almost like a nuclear arms race. What's to stop Democrats the next time they're in power from doing the same thing? They won't do that because that's not how Democrats are. Marjorie Taylor Greene was removed from her committees because of her overt racism, antisemitism, [being] anti-American. In my opinion, every single one of the 147 Republicans who voted against a free and fair election on January 6th aren't fit to serve on a committee, no less the United States Congress. So, I just think that it sets Kevin up, once again, in a very bad position. When you are about to put George Santos on Congressional committees, how do you turn around and say, "Schiff, Swalwell and Omar shouldn't be on any?

Mary

Yeah. And Charlotte, it puts us in a situation again where there's false equivalence. As Kurt just said, Marjorie Taylor Greene was taken off her committees for valid reasons. Yes, the anti-Semitism and the racism, but also because of fomenting violence against her colleagues. I think that was one of the reasons as well. So, here we are, Democrats once again with our hands tied behind our backs because we don't play those games. What is a potential way to fight back here?

Charlotte

I think just refusing to accept this false equivalence framework. It's bullshit. It's like the comparison between President Biden's offices containing certain classified material versus Trump hoarding classified materials at his offsite personal residence. These are not the same thing at all. But I think what's tragic is that members of the media will have you believe that these are the same mistakes, with the same intentions and they're not. They're not. When we accept this framing, we permit moderates to look at Democrats and say, oh, they're not even going to fight for themselves, so they're not going to fight for us.

If we don't punch back, moderates get shaky about us, and they're right to get shaky about us. We should be calling this out for the bullshit it is. Not just the classified documents, of course, but the members of Congress. Marjorie Taylor Greene, literally claimed that there is a space laser created by Jewish people that could destroy us. I mean, that is the most anti-Semitic, just complete Protocols of the Elders of Zion that has come from a sitting member of Congress in recent history. And the fact that she is not only in Congress, but not completely just blacklisted from public events everywhere is insane to me. It's completely fucking bonkers.

Mary

Well, not only that, she's actually Speaker of the House. Let's be real.

Charlotte

Yes.

Kurt

Yeah.

Mary

In two years, she has made herself—this makes me sick—the most powerful person, Republican, in the House of Representatives. But let's shift gears. I don't want to spend too much time on this, but it's worth discussing because, Kurt, I'm a little offended that you don't think it's okay that Americans are given the choice to poison their children. What's wrong with you?

Kurt

Yeah, I know. You think we would've learned after they came for our hamburgers, right? The often-cited caravan that's invading America, and now they're coming for our gas stoves.

Mary

Kurt, I'm so sick of this nonsense. It's such immature nonsense. Is it still working? Is this why they keep finding so-called social issues to use as wedges? Who believes the shit?

Kurt

Well, I would say that unfortunately there are those, and they generally tend to be suburban white women, who fall for some of this. We saw how that played out with Critical Race Theory in the Virginia gubernatorial election a year and a half ago. I have always said that it's a distraction. It's what Republicans do because they know they just had a shit show of a week trying to elect a freaking Speaker. They want to talk about anything but George Santos. They want to hide from any substantive conversation of any kind, because they know they can't win on any of those. So, they often turn to these sensational and invented grievances.

Now it's the “coming for your gas stoves” routine. Which to be clear is not true. No one's banning gas stoves. No one's even said they're going to ban gas stoves. No one's talking about taking away gas stoves. And the only thing that was said was a statement by a bureaucrat about new construction and there might be a better way to go about doing that. And listen, if you at home want to have a gas stove and potentially poison your children, okay, that's your right. God bless.

If you want to smoke 50 cigarettes a day in your house, I don't really give a shit. God bless. But Republicans would have you believe, just like the war on Christmas, just like the war on cheeseburgers, now it's the war on gas stoves. It's wash, rinse, repeat. Same thing over and over again.

Mary

And, also, what gets completely elided from the conversation is the fact that there might be a lot of people who want that information because they want to be informed and they don't want to increase their child's risk of getting asthma. But what are you going to do?

Kurt

Remember too, these were the same people who were all against Priuses and electric vehicles because they're going to take your pickup truck, they're going to take your right to have a Hummer. And look what a commercial success, by the way, electric vehicles have become.

Mary

That's right. And it's always about, “How dare you impinge upon my right to make everything worse and hurt other people.” But that's the Republican Party.

Charlotte

To do want to be clear about something. I don’t think that most Republicans or most conservatives or even most Trump people actually believe the shit about gas stoves. I don't think any politician believes it. I think this is quite literally a mass trolling effort. I think that's what it is. I don't think that suburban moms in Virginia really think the Democrats are about to ban gas stoves. There's no way. I think it's more about the fury at Democrats over perceived cultural oppressions and they're taking this and seizing this opportunity to run it up the flagpole and just put a thumb in the eye of Democrats in any way they can. That's what this is.

Kurt

Right. It's played off of that cancel culture label that they try to assign to Democrats. When, by the way, they're the ones, Republicans, that are banning books, etc.

Mary

Right: “They're coming for your guns, stoves, pickup trucks.” But the other purpose it serves, and this brings us to our last of the horrors of this week before we conclude, is to distract from the fact that there is the subcommittee called the Weaponization of the Federal Government, in which Jim Jordan, who's among the worst human beings on the planet, is going to have enormous power to start investigating the investigators. And I don't know, Charlotte, that sounds like a much more serious issue than the fantastical notion that the Democrats want to ban gas stoves.

Charlotte

Yeah. It's an undermining of law and order. It is a lack of confidence in law enforcement, period. That the people who respect law enforcement the least are the Republican Party, hands down. I don't think anyone could argue with that at this point. It's not about the duty and service that's inherent in protecting the community and protecting your neighbors. It's almost become this intentional way of avoiding any accountability by attacking the very authorities that are tasked with holding accountable corruption, treason, all of these awful things that we've seen come out of the Republican Party over the last few years.

It's going to be a shit show. It's going to be really bad. And I think that we need to do everything we can not only to push back, but also to put it to the American people, honestly, what is going on here. Instead of buying the premise that this committee is in any way, shape or form being carried out in good faith. It's not. So, we should be saying that. What I'm already anticipating is the idea of a Democrat giving some kind of credence or respect to what is going on here. No one should give this any respect. Call it out for the bullshit it is.

Mary

And, Kurt, some Democrats have. I don't remember who it was. Maybe it was Schiff calling it the Committee to Promote Insurrectionists, or something like that. What do you make of the Democrats decision to occupy seats on this subcommittee?

Kurt

I think they have to. Listen, we saw how Kevin McCarthy made a huge strategic error by not appointing Republicans to the January 6th Select Committee. You cannot give the other side an open field to just do whatever they want, have all the hearings, have all the information. Listen, if you have Democrats on that committee, that means Democrats will also have at least access to the same information that Republicans get. They will have access to the same depositions. They will be in the room for a lot of the depositions. You have to look at it as almost a counter-intelligence-gathering effort. That's what the Democrats' job is going to be on this committee: to find out what the other side is up to and then try to neutralize it. You can't do that from the outside in. You have to have people in there, which is why I think it's very vital.

And this is one of the most important decisions that the new Democratic Leader, Hakeem Jeffries, will make--who you put on that dais. Who do you appoint to make sure that there are people who are holding the feet to the fire of Jim Jordan or whoever else he puts on that committee? You’ve got to have people who can communicate, who understand messaging, who are knife-fighters, because that's what this is. What you don't want to do is surrender the dais so that every week the Republicans are going to have a hearing for one, two hours to just say whatever they want. At least if you have Democrats on that committee, they get to push back right there on that dais in real time and set context and call out Republican bullshit.

If you walk away from that, you lose the ability to do that and you have no chance of controlling the narrative. And also pointing out, by the way, when Republican on this committee, when they do stuff that's going to be borderline obstruction of justice, when they do stuff that's going to cross ethical and possibly legal boundaries, we need to have people there watching.

Mary

I really like the idea of looking at it as counterintelligence.

Okay, we are almost at the end of our very first episode of the House of Horrors. There are so many horrors and it's literally not even been five days and look at the horrors that we're buried beneath already.

Kurt

It's appropriate that it's Friday the 13th today.

Mary

It is so appropriate. It should be Friday the 13th every Friday going forward until we are in a 119th Democratic-controlled Congress. But we've had so many low lights. So, Charlotte, I don't know if we can find a highlight necessarily, but is there any silver lining about either the unexpected negative impact there will be some of these things, or did anything legitimately good happen in Congress this week?

Charlotte

I thought Leader Hakeem Jeffries' speech was extraordinary. His speech to open up the Congress. He laid out a fantastic vision. He got people pumped up. I covered every single ballot, all 15 ballots, I was watching the entire time all week, and one thing that was resolute is the enthusiasm and energy Democrats had for Hakeem Jeffries. This is a man who has united the caucus and he should get prepared to take back the House in 2024 because I think we will, and I think he'll be leading it.

Mary

I do too. I second all of that. Kurt, anything good?

Kurt

Yeah. There was this great moment when Sean Hannity was addressing the Republican conference and he talked about the need for more diversity in the Republican Party, and every single person that was behind him was white. And I just thought that was the most hilarious thing and it perfectly captures the real problem that the Republican Party has had now for a very long time. They're coalescing around Jim Jordan and Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Matt Gaetz. And we're seeing the birth of people like Maxwell Frost. We're seeing Pete Aguilar and Hakeem Jeffries come into this new generation of leadership.

I have never been more excited about the future of the Democratic Party than I am right now. And even when you step outside of Washington, you look at people like Wes Moore, who's about to be inaugurated as Governor of Maryland, only the third Black Governor in our nation's history, we have such a deep bench now of talent and young talent that I think when I look at where this country's going to go over the next two, four, six, eight years, I'm very, very bullish on the Democratic Party's future as Republicans still continue to clinging to the old white men that're just dying off every year.

Mary

That's absolutely on target and I think it's fascinating that Republicans saw fit to nominate Byron Donalds, a Black man from Florida as Speaker of the House, but didn't see fit to give him the Chair of any committee. So that tells you something, too.

My highlight is related to yours. It's that we have seen how the legacy of the greatest Speaker of the House in modern history, Nancy Pelosi, is playing out. We see the new leadership she's put in place and I think this is entirely down to her. And, of course, Hakeem Jeffries is totally awesome, as are his two lieutenants. But the unity that was shown during the vote for Speaker by the Democratic Party was one of the most moving things I've seen in a very long time. So, thank you, Speaker Pelosi, for that.

And that brings us to the end of our very first House of Horrors. Thank you, Charlotte Clymer. Thank you, Kurt Bardella. I actually feel a lot better than I did that at the beginning because we can always find some hope in the darkness. And that's largely down to my Nerds--thank you, my Nerd Avengers. I will see you soon. And everybody, in the meantime, stay safe and be kind.