Mike Johnson gets the news he FEARED from his OWN PARTY

Joined now by the co-host of Pod Save America, Tommy Vitor. Hey, buddy. Thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

All right.

So let's get into this, because Mike Johnson's having a rough go in the House right now. He it looks like there's something of a mutiny happening at the hands of not just Marjorie Taylor Greene, who decided to resign instead of wait for her retirement, but also now Nancy Mace, there's talk of her potentially following Marjorie Taylor Greene's footsteps according to the New York Times. There's talk of Elise Stefanik calling Mike Johnson a habitual liar.

Anna Paulina Luna is mad that Mike Johnson is declining to schedule a bill banning members of Congress from trading stocks. Kevin Kiley has been speaking out against Mike Johnson. So how much danger do you think Mike Johnson is in right now in terms of retaining his speakership, which has been a recurring theme for the modern GOP?

Yeah, that is one sad little Johnson, huh?

One shriveled, flaccid Johnson.

I think he's in big trouble. I mean, I think the question is, does he lose his job now or does he lose his job after the midterms? But like, none of these Republicans seem to like him. None of them think he's a good leader. I mean, at least Stefanik was like, Kevin McCarthy was better than this guy. Kevin McCarthy looks like a political genius

compared to this guy. So I think he could like, we could see him go down in the next few weeks even.

I mean, who wants this job? After Kevin McCarthy got so utterly humiliated by that motion of vacate by Matt Gaetz, he was out, this is something he wanted more than anything in the world. Left Congress because he was so humiliated.

Now Mike Johnson gets it. Who's gonna want a job where you basically have to, you have to herd cats in a Republican conference where you're torn between showing blind deference to Donald Trump on the worst issues, on the Epstein files, on tariffing Americans,

on stripping Medicaid away from people, on cutting food assistance from the most vulnerable, or actually adhering to what your members want, but then being at the wrath of Donald Trump and his mean tweets.

Yeah, I mean, you're like sort of strapped to the deck of this political Titanic that is the Trump administration. And you're right, like Trump doesn't think there are three branches of government. He thinks it's like, he's in charge of everything.

And by the way, like, of course he thinks that way because that's what Mike Johnson has shown him. He's shown nothing but slavish devotion, like blind loyalty to Trump all this time. And what's it gotten him? I mean, again, to listen to that list of things, it's like you've gotten a really pissed off electorate

because now you are just completely complicit in an effort to cover up the Epstein files, an effort to rip food assistance away from people, cut healthcare away from people, tariff the absolute hell out of people, and raise their costs,

all of that heading into an election year.

Yeah, and it's not looking like it's going to be a great election for Republicans. Like, look, we don't want to predict anything. Like, a lot of can happen between now and November of 2026. But, you know, I think a lot of these Republicans are looking at this special election that just happened in Tennessee and how close the margin was in a Trump plus 22 district. And they're thinking, oh, that means a lot of us could be in serious, serious trouble. And they maybe they have time to course correct. But like you said, Trump is Trump's orders to them are cover up for Jeffrey Epstein for

me, cut Medicaid, eat these tariffs, allow health care prices to skyrocket. And also, you know, when I'm asked about this, when I'm asked about the thing everyone cares about, which is economic affordability, I'm gonna say it's a hoax. I'm gonna say it's a hoax created by Democrats. Meanwhile, there's a poll in Politico today where I think 46% of voters said the affordability crisis is the worst it has ever been in their lives.

Yeah, which is ironic because that's what this administration and this Republican Party exploited to get themselves into power. So it's not like they don't know. If anybody recognizes the potency of this issue, it is the party that right now has full control

of government power because of this very issue.

Yeah, this is the poll. 46% said the cost of living in the US is the worst they can ever remember it being.

A view held by 37% of 2024 Trump voters. Yeah, well that explains why we're seeing so much defection. I mean, you know in this in this past election cycle on November 4th this year There was something like 7 to 12 percent of Trump voters who crossed over and voted either for Democratic candidates or for the California Prop 50 redistricting ballot measure and and that's the result of the fact that you know Again, this guy ran on something very specific

He was attacking Biden and Kamala Harris for the cost of living, for affordability, over and over and over. So he had a very clear idea of what he wanted to accomplish while he was in office. And not only did he not accomplish that, not only did he not fix that, but he exacerbated those problems. And so he's creating this new class of people,

this new class of swing voters that didn't even exist before because the electorate had been so calcified in their polarization that we were going after like just a few tens of thousands of people in like five states. And now there's so many more voters up for grabs because they are so disillusioned by the con that they've been sold by this Republican Party.

Yeah.

It's also speaks to the double edged sword of redistricting. Right. sold by this Republican Party. Yeah, it also speaks to the double-edged sword of redistricting. So Trump demanded that Texas do this mid-century or mid-decade redistricting, so California followed suit. And now it's set off this domino effect. And ultimately, what that means for Republicans in states

where they're trying to create more Republican districts is you're taking, they hope, the same amount of voters and spreading them out a little more thin. And in a wave election, that means Democrats will have an easier time winning back seats that otherwise would have been challenging for us.

So a lot of these Republicans quoted in some of these stories are people that Trump has personally screwed by demanding that the maps be redrawn.

And I think that, so that's called a dummy-mander, and so it's when they're drawing these maps so thin and moving over enough voters that they can try to squeeze out more districts and they end up losing a whole swath of districts because now there aren't enough.

And if we're seeing swings that are commensurate to what we saw in Tennessee's 7th, that are commensurate to what we saw in New Jersey and Virginia, at like a 15 point swing to the left and a lot of seats can be on the table. I mean, we're looking not at, you know, 10 seats that could be could be swinging. We could be looking at at 20, 30, 40 that could be swinging if that if that that swing holds true for the rest of the country, but especially potent in Texas, because a lot of those those districts were redrawn

thinking that the Latino voters who had voted for Republicans in 2024 were a permanent part of their coalition now. But we're seeing massive swings from Latino voters across the country. We're not seeing like, you know, six or seven points to the left.

We're seeing certainly double digit swings to the left. In some places, you know, some counties in New Jersey that they were, that exit polling was showing was like 40, 50 points to the left for these Latino voters. And if you have new districts that you've drawn in Texas, wholly predicated on this idea that Latino voters

are a permanent part of your coalition, only to see swings like that, then you're in for a world of hurt when midterm elections roll around.

Your lips to God's ears, my friend. Let's hope it happens.

All right, well, that isn't the only, you know, sense of disarray that we're seeing in the Republican Party right now. There's also a lot of issues right now with Pete Hegseth. So two in particular. So can you walk us through both what we're seeing in terms of the ongoing scandal with this extrajudicial killing, this war crime, this murder, whatever you want to call it, depending on the rules, that happened in, you know, just off the coast of Trinidad, but also the new news as it relates to the Signal Gate scandal that was just,

that was just exposed in the IG report.

Yeah, so the first piece of this is, are these strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific against alleged, quote unquote, narco-terrorists. There've been 21 of them so far. They've killed 83 people. At issue is the first one of these strikes, which we recently learned involved two missiles.

The first strike killed all but two people. And then the second strike, an hour later, killed two survivors who were, like, apparently clinging to the wreckage. And there was reporting in the Washington Post that Pete Hexeth had personally ordered,

basically, kind of a kill them all, made basically like a kill them all order to take out everyone on this craft. So there was a briefing today on Capitol Hill. This guy, Admiral Bradley, who was in charge of these operations in the Pacific, briefed members of Congress. Jim Himes, who is the ranking member on the House Intelligence Community, came out afterwards

and said, what I saw in that room was one of the most troubling things I've seen in my time in public service. So it sounds like it was pretty frightening.

In terms of the Mitch Bradley of it all, that's the part I'm especially interested in because we've seen a pretty damn transparent effort by Pete Hegseth to diffuse responsibility onto him. To what extent do you think is that gonna stick? Like I've seen the tweets by Hegseth,

I've seen the appeal during the cabinet meeting, both of which he said basically the same thing, which is like, I 100% stand by Admiral Mitch Bradley and his effort to effectuate, carry out this plan. So he knows, you know, and he'll try to wrap it in a compliment.

He's like, I want, I want to 100% stand by him. I think it was a great idea. He's a Patriot to this country, blah, blah, blah. What he's doing is basically throwing him under the bus, basically putting full responsibility for the effort onto him because it was a war crime. So to what extent do you think that matters

or that this is going to stick a lot to Mitch Bradley. I mean, if I were him, I would lawyer up if I were Admiral Bradley. Pete Hexeth is clearly trying to pass the buck and to blame him and to signal to members of Congress and to Donald Trump and any future judge and jury that this is the guy who made these decisions. Now, we should say, Pete Hexeth might be blaming Admiral Bradley now, but between this airstrike and today, they actually had promoted him

He was at the time of the strike. He was the head of the Joint Special Operations Command or JSOC They've they've since promoted him to the US Special Operations Command which oversees all the special forces So these guys were thrilled with the way he was running things until the details of this double tap airstrike Were reported out. So, you know, a lot of ass covering happening here. Now, we'll see if it works,

but I think what is gonna happen is, this is going to just completely erode any support for Pete Hexeth at the Pentagon and within the uniform ranks of the military, because they're not stupid. Yeah. They see what's happening.

He's screwing their guy over. Well, that's the part I'm so interested in. Like, what do you think Mitch Bradley thinks the moment he hears that? I mean, it's so, it's such a slap in the face. It's so obvious. I don't know who he's performing for

that doesn't see exactly what he's doing. Like, anybody, any grown-ass adult to this can see what the point of it is. And so isn't that even worse that it's like.

It's terrible.

It's not even remotely subtle what he's doing here. And it's like, you know, if you look at the guy's Twitter feed, like one tweet is blaming, you know, Admiral Bradley, you know, like a four star. And then the next one is like a gif of a fucking turtle

shooting people with a machine gun. Like he's just an unserious person and everyone at the Pentagon knows it. That's why Pistol Pete is so insecure on the job. But incidents like this, like he's gonna lose the building, I think for good.

Now, what about the IG report that, I mean, this is just adding insult to injury at this point. The IG report reveals that, you know, his culpability in all of this.

Yeah, so folks probably remember Signal Gate. That was when then National Security Advisor Mike Waltz created this group chat on Signal where they were discussing a very sensitive operation to bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen. However, Waltz accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, which is...

Casual mistakes.

Who among us? I still can't believe that happened. But the Department of Defense's inspector general was doing a review of what happened because clearly Pete Hegseth took information from the classified servers over the Pentagon and was copy and pasting it into this group chat on an unclassified app on his personal cell phone, which is absolutely

not allowed. It is illegal. It's against rules. And he could be prosecuted for it. So they released this report today that said he put at risk service members in the field by putting this information into an unclassified setting.

But basically, Hegseth is trying to create a get out of jail free card for himself by saying, look, I have declassification authority, so I get to decide if it's classified anymore. And I decided it wasn't.

You know, the most egregious part of this is the inspector general report says that Hegseth quote created risks to operational security and his actions quote could have resulted in failed U.S. mission objectives and potential harm to U.S. pilots. That came out today. Yesterday, Pete Hexheth had taken a Twitter writing, no classified information, total exoneration, case closed, Houthis bombed into submission. Thank you for your attention to this IG report. So a complete bait and switch.

Like it is, it is just straight gaslighting, straight lie. And you know, it reeks not just of the gaslighting that we see so often, but I mean, it feels like it was written exactly by Donald Trump. These guys just morph into him. They do the exact same thing as him. Bill Barr had done the same thing in the lead up to the Mueller report being released, came out a day in advance to try and front run this thing and own that news cycle by saying

that the Mueller report totally exonerated Donald Trump when it showed the exact opposite. And so this is what these guys do.

It, I mean, it's just, do you think, does Trump like this? Does he want everyone around him imitating him? Like imitating his Twitter style? I mean, I guess yes, because he shows these clout.

Yeah, of course. You remember when he was outside of the, he was outside of a courtroom during one of his summer prosecutions and there was like Vivek Ramaswamy, Doug Burgum, all these guys were dressed identical to him.

I remember that too, yeah.

And it was just like this picture of these pathetic, fucking obsequious hangers on that all dress like him and they talk like him and they tweet like him and they just are so desperate to be him and he's just parading around this band of fucking loser imitators.

So yeah, of course they do.

Of course they do.

I think like maybe this stuff works with Trump, maybe it works like within MAGA, but the military is a place where accountability really matters and people expect their leaders to like take responsibility for things and Pete Hexeth refused to even talk

with the inspector general for this report. And so again, that's another thing that's not gonna go over well in the building, because every other single person who works at the Pentagon or down the ranks knows that if they had taken classified information about airstrikes

that had not happened yet, and they put them on their personal phone and sent them to a group chat that included their wife and some reporter, they would be court-martialed.

Yeah, rules for thee, not for me. Exactly. All right, with that said, for everybody who's watching right now, if you're not yet subscribed to Pod Save America's YouTube channel,

I'm gonna put that link right here on the screen Go to the show notes. Subs for we. Subs for we? What the fuck does that mean?

What the fuck does that mean?

Rules for thee, not for me. Rules for thee, not for me.

Oh my god.