October 19, 2023 • 11 mins
Joe had dubbed the contest to find a house speaker a "clown show." David Drucker said that's an insult to clowns. Lots to cover: Israel, the media's coverage of the bombing of the hospital in Gaza and more.
David Drucker of The Dispatch joined Armstrong & Getty to talk about it all...
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's talk about some of these spicy stories going on
right now with David Drucker, senior writer at The Dispatch.
Prior to that, of course, he was senior correspondent for
The Washington Examiner, and David's also the author of the
book In Trump's Shadow, The Battle for twenty twenty four
in the Future of the GOP.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
David, welcome, How are you hey?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Good to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
How are you liking working at the Dispatch so far?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I really like it, no sarcasm. It's a great gig.
I think we do a lot of really good work
and they free me up to just pursue and report
really good stories.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
Yeah, and you're awesome on there, and one of the
reasons I want to have you on today, in addition
to the fact that you're probably the best at reporting
on stuff like the Republican House Speaker fight. You seem
pretty fired up as I was about the failure of
the prestige US media on Tuesday, going ahead and announcing
that Israeli Israel had bombed a hospital before they knew
(00:55):
what was going on, which really pisses me off.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, because this is pretty typical. I'm not even the
biggest look, I'm in the media, so rather than criticize
the media, I just try to do my job. But
I will say, as an observer of American and Middle
East politics for decades, I'm just old enough that now
I've been able to observe this for decades. This is
par for the course. This might be new to some people,
but this always happens. People jump to conclusions what it
(01:21):
has to do with Israel, conclusions. They don't jump to
what it has to do with other countries and other
nonstate actors. And you know, in this case, it's just
in the middle of a very volatile situation that has
the potential to have a real damaging impact in the
region and domestically. But I wasn't surprised because this is again,
(01:45):
it's just what.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Happens well there. As a number of people have pointed out,
one of the problems with that is the media, which
usually leans left and supports democratic policies, hurt the president's
owned policies as he had to cancel some meetings, hurt
the prospect for peace which would help Palestinians. I mean, who,
I don't even understand their motivation other than hating on
(02:07):
israel I guess.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I think, well, I think, look, I think you're some
people might be over thinking this. You know, even though
the media can and has demonstrated over the years to
have a left leaning bias, they're not. There's not some
place where they all go meet and decide with the
with the party's messages for the day. And so I
think this has to do with a worldview, not a
(02:29):
political bias necessarily, but just a worldview about how they
viewed the Israeli government. And the point I was trying
to make, not that anybody cares, was that it's our
job as journalists to be skeptical of everything and everyone.
But but skepticism doesn't deserve to be dished out equally.
(02:50):
In the case of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization
that purposely targets civilians. Just stepping back from whatever you
opinions of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and dispute, his are.
This group is not a normal army that operates according
(03:11):
to the law, the international laws of war. They never
have and they've even shown a willingness to put their
own people in danger just to get Israel to get
blamed for one of the misfortunate that then befalls their
own people or the death, and that's how they operate.
So my response to this isn't you should believe the
(03:33):
Israeli government. No, you shouldn't believe the Israeli government, but
you should show Hamas more skepticism than you do the
Israeli government and just say you don't know and wait
until you know and have enough information.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, my final thought on the topic is if you're
going to be completely credulous and print somebody's claims about something,
the fact that that somebody was Hamas and they printed
those claims as just.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Astounding to me.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
But moving along with David Drucker of The Dispatch, David,
I've been referring to the contest to elect a House
speaker as a clown show.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Is that unnecessarily harsh in your opinion?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
No, I think you're being disrespectful to clowns. That's an
honorable question because you actually make people laugh and do
a service.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Right, beautiful, somebody will get a balloon animal at the end.
I mean, there's benefits to it. So where are we currently.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Nowhere? Republicans can't agree amongst themselves on anybody when it
comes to delivering two hundred and eighteen votes for the gabble,
and so there's a lot of discussion now about elevating
or I should say empowering Speaker pro Tem path Patrick McHenry,
a North Carolina Republican with a lot of the authority
(04:54):
that goes along with being the actual Speaker of the House.
Isn't allow the Chamber to get back to work move legislation.
We're about a month away from the government running out
of money again, or the President this evening is going
to pitch a big aid package or Israel, Ukraine and
we think Taiwan and possibly some domestic border security money,
(05:14):
although it's unclear, but we know that Israel, ad for Israel,
and Ukraine are going to be packaged together. At least
that's what the President is going to propose, and that's
what I think the Senate is going to move on.
And so in order to pass this legislation is going
to need to be operable, and so Republicans are going
to have to figure out what they want to do.
(05:35):
I don't know that we're near this McHenry solution, but
it's what's being discussed because nobody wants to look I do.
I'm talking long here, but The reason Republicans are in
this mess is because there are not enough of them.
They want to follow their own rules. Their rules say
that in an internal conference election, whoever gets the most
(05:55):
votes above a certain number is the speaker designate when
they're in the and they're all supposed to vote for
that person on the floor. It's not that it's binding constitutionally,
that that's the rules they have for themselves. They wouldn't
honor it with Kevin McCarthy, they wouldn't honor it with
Steve's falife, and so now members that always go along
because they want to govern and be pragmatic finally said
(06:18):
I've had enough. If you don't have to follow the.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Rules and needed a lot, well you're a fine psychic,
is I was just going to say. The crazy part
to me is that you know they can't arrive at
a result is too bad, But they can't even arrive
at a process. Apparently all of the rules and customers
are out the window. So let's move on to what's
it look like behind the scenes. I understand there's some
serious arm twisting to vote for Jordan, backlash, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Look, Jordan has been trying to bring his opponents along,
but I don't think he can. There's a lot of
ill will in the conference right now. We talked about
it as being a dysfunctional conference, but it's now also factionalized.
There's a lot of ill will. There are a lot
of hurt feelings. There's a lot of frustration, and whether
(07:07):
or not Jordan is responsible for this or look the
other way, or even whether or not he told his
allies off of Capitol Hill please stop and they just
didn't listen. One of the problems that the Republicans who
oppose him have is that they feel like Jordan and
his allies were bringing outside pressure to bear and threatening them,
(07:28):
threatening them with primary challengers, that they're that these these
pro Jordan activists were even sending in death threats and wow,
and and it gets to the fact that that's what
some members have alleged and and they've really statements for
that effect.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Well, if I got a death threat, and I thought
if I got a death threat, and I thought it
came from Jordan's people, especially with his knowledge, yeah I
wouldn't be real likely.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
To vote for him.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah. Well. I think the other thing though, too, is
so when conservative activists and somehow Republicans who support Jordan
make the case that this is what the voters want.
What a lot of House Republicans pier is, Oh, so
I'm supposed to do whatever Jordan wants because your voters,
my voters like him better than me, and he's going
to use that against me. And and members of Congress
(08:16):
want to be the stars in their own district. They
understand that when there's a president that their voters like,
they're under pressure to work with that president or even
just support that president without you know, too much, you know,
without without too much trouble. But when another when a
congressional leader says, do what I say, or your voters
(08:36):
are going to be angry. It's as opposed to I'm
going to help you succeed in your district. It's just
it's not the way you win a congressional leadership race,
which was is different than running for office where voters
of the constituency versus members of Congress.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So how certain are you that the Patrick McHenry move
is the next step?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Is there just no other road to take at this point?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
It appears that there's no other road to take at
this point, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily the
next step versus no step, And it sort of depends
on how many House Republicans are willing to go along
and do this, because you're going to have a you know,
some significant member of the conference, even though it maybe
a minority, that's going to oppose doing this, And so
the thinking would be that Democrats would join in with this,
(09:20):
and you know, mckenry sort of has to be willing,
Like I guess he could say forget it, I'm not
going to serve. But I think we just kind of
need to see whether Jordan calls another vote today. My
sources tell me that he's likely likely to lose more votes,
that there are more members than we saw in the
first two votes that are opposing him, but they want
(09:41):
to stagger their vote so that it's clear if that
it's like it's going backwards wow, versus even staying the same.
But you know, this has been such a volatile, uncertain process.
I'm hesitant to make predictions versus just kind of tell
you what I'm hearing.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So clown show an appropriate poop show, I suppose more appropriate.
I'll be going with that in the future. Final question, David,
we're chatting about this earlier. Have you heard whether the
president's address eight o'clock eastern tonight is going to be
live or not.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
He's an old man, you see.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
No, it's going to be live. Yeah, No, you don't
do it. Office of Dress. It's not live. Yeah. And
it's eight eastern five o'clock Pacific, which means, you know,
people are you know, theoretically off work or on their
way home. It's not home yet. That's why you wait
until late o'clock.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well that's pretty late in the day after.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
That's pretty late in the day after a long trip
and a lot of time zones and all that sort
of stuff. For him.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, well look, I mean, you know, I understand how
people feel about his age, but he'd been able to
do this before and and so, you know, be interesting
to see what's in the speech. The speech just about
Israel and Ukraine. He had been planning an address about
Ukraine before Hamas attack Israel in October seventh. So now
(10:53):
we've got the sort of combined address. I wonder if
it's his first Oval address. I have to check. But obviously,
you know, presidents use the Old Office for these addresses
very sparingly, not to dilute the significance of it and
the power of it, and we'll see you know what
he says and how Americans react with.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
David Drucker, Senior writer at The Dispatch. His latest book
is In Trump's Shadow, The Battle for twenty twenty four
in the Future of the GOP. Good to talk to you, David,
Thanks a bunch anytime.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Guys, Thank you, Armstrong and Getty.
Let's talk about some of these spicy stories going on
right now with David Drucker, senior writer at The Dispatch.
Prior to that, of course, he was senior correspondent for
The Washington Examiner, and David's also the author of the
book In Trump's Shadow, The Battle for twenty twenty four
in the Future of the GOP.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
David, welcome, How are you hey?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Good to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
How are you liking working at the Dispatch so far?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I really like it, no sarcasm. It's a great gig.
I think we do a lot of really good work
and they free me up to just pursue and report
really good stories.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
Yeah, and you're awesome on there, and one of the
reasons I want to have you on today, in addition
to the fact that you're probably the best at reporting
on stuff like the Republican House Speaker fight. You seem
pretty fired up as I was about the failure of
the prestige US media on Tuesday, going ahead and announcing
that Israeli Israel had bombed a hospital before they knew
(00:55):
what was going on, which really pisses me off.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, because this is pretty typical. I'm not even the
biggest look, I'm in the media, so rather than criticize
the media, I just try to do my job. But
I will say, as an observer of American and Middle
East politics for decades, I'm just old enough that now
I've been able to observe this for decades. This is
par for the course. This might be new to some people,
but this always happens. People jump to conclusions what it
(01:21):
has to do with Israel, conclusions. They don't jump to
what it has to do with other countries and other
nonstate actors. And you know, in this case, it's just
in the middle of a very volatile situation that has
the potential to have a real damaging impact in the
region and domestically. But I wasn't surprised because this is again,
(01:45):
it's just what.
Speaker 4 (01:46):
Happens well there. As a number of people have pointed out,
one of the problems with that is the media, which
usually leans left and supports democratic policies, hurt the president's
owned policies as he had to cancel some meetings, hurt
the prospect for peace which would help Palestinians. I mean, who,
I don't even understand their motivation other than hating on
(02:07):
israel I guess.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I think, well, I think, look, I think you're some
people might be over thinking this. You know, even though
the media can and has demonstrated over the years to
have a left leaning bias, they're not. There's not some
place where they all go meet and decide with the
with the party's messages for the day. And so I
think this has to do with a worldview, not a
(02:29):
political bias necessarily, but just a worldview about how they
viewed the Israeli government. And the point I was trying
to make, not that anybody cares, was that it's our
job as journalists to be skeptical of everything and everyone.
But but skepticism doesn't deserve to be dished out equally.
(02:50):
In the case of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization
that purposely targets civilians. Just stepping back from whatever you
opinions of the Israeli Palestinian conflict and dispute, his are.
This group is not a normal army that operates according
(03:11):
to the law, the international laws of war. They never
have and they've even shown a willingness to put their
own people in danger just to get Israel to get
blamed for one of the misfortunate that then befalls their
own people or the death, and that's how they operate.
So my response to this isn't you should believe the
(03:33):
Israeli government. No, you shouldn't believe the Israeli government, but
you should show Hamas more skepticism than you do the
Israeli government and just say you don't know and wait
until you know and have enough information.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Well, my final thought on the topic is if you're
going to be completely credulous and print somebody's claims about something,
the fact that that somebody was Hamas and they printed
those claims as just.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Astounding to me.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
But moving along with David Drucker of The Dispatch, David,
I've been referring to the contest to elect a House
speaker as a clown show.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Is that unnecessarily harsh in your opinion?
Speaker 3 (04:12):
No, I think you're being disrespectful to clowns. That's an
honorable question because you actually make people laugh and do
a service.
Speaker 4 (04:20):
Right, beautiful, somebody will get a balloon animal at the end.
I mean, there's benefits to it. So where are we currently.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Nowhere? Republicans can't agree amongst themselves on anybody when it
comes to delivering two hundred and eighteen votes for the gabble,
and so there's a lot of discussion now about elevating
or I should say empowering Speaker pro Tem path Patrick McHenry,
a North Carolina Republican with a lot of the authority
(04:54):
that goes along with being the actual Speaker of the House.
Isn't allow the Chamber to get back to work move legislation.
We're about a month away from the government running out
of money again, or the President this evening is going
to pitch a big aid package or Israel, Ukraine and
we think Taiwan and possibly some domestic border security money,
(05:14):
although it's unclear, but we know that Israel, ad for Israel,
and Ukraine are going to be packaged together. At least
that's what the President is going to propose, and that's
what I think the Senate is going to move on.
And so in order to pass this legislation is going
to need to be operable, and so Republicans are going
to have to figure out what they want to do.
(05:35):
I don't know that we're near this McHenry solution, but
it's what's being discussed because nobody wants to look I do.
I'm talking long here, but The reason Republicans are in
this mess is because there are not enough of them.
They want to follow their own rules. Their rules say
that in an internal conference election, whoever gets the most
(05:55):
votes above a certain number is the speaker designate when
they're in the and they're all supposed to vote for
that person on the floor. It's not that it's binding constitutionally,
that that's the rules they have for themselves. They wouldn't
honor it with Kevin McCarthy, they wouldn't honor it with
Steve's falife, and so now members that always go along
because they want to govern and be pragmatic finally said
(06:18):
I've had enough. If you don't have to follow the.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Rules and needed a lot, well you're a fine psychic,
is I was just going to say. The crazy part
to me is that you know they can't arrive at
a result is too bad, But they can't even arrive
at a process. Apparently all of the rules and customers
are out the window. So let's move on to what's
it look like behind the scenes. I understand there's some
serious arm twisting to vote for Jordan, backlash, et cetera.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
Look, Jordan has been trying to bring his opponents along,
but I don't think he can. There's a lot of
ill will in the conference right now. We talked about
it as being a dysfunctional conference, but it's now also factionalized.
There's a lot of ill will. There are a lot
of hurt feelings. There's a lot of frustration, and whether
(07:07):
or not Jordan is responsible for this or look the
other way, or even whether or not he told his
allies off of Capitol Hill please stop and they just
didn't listen. One of the problems that the Republicans who
oppose him have is that they feel like Jordan and
his allies were bringing outside pressure to bear and threatening them,
(07:28):
threatening them with primary challengers, that they're that these these
pro Jordan activists were even sending in death threats and wow,
and and it gets to the fact that that's what
some members have alleged and and they've really statements for
that effect.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Well, if I got a death threat, and I thought
if I got a death threat, and I thought it
came from Jordan's people, especially with his knowledge, yeah I
wouldn't be real likely.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
To vote for him.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Yeah. Well. I think the other thing though, too, is
so when conservative activists and somehow Republicans who support Jordan
make the case that this is what the voters want.
What a lot of House Republicans pier is, Oh, so
I'm supposed to do whatever Jordan wants because your voters,
my voters like him better than me, and he's going
to use that against me. And and members of Congress
(08:16):
want to be the stars in their own district. They
understand that when there's a president that their voters like,
they're under pressure to work with that president or even
just support that president without you know, too much, you know,
without without too much trouble. But when another when a
congressional leader says, do what I say, or your voters
(08:36):
are going to be angry. It's as opposed to I'm
going to help you succeed in your district. It's just
it's not the way you win a congressional leadership race,
which was is different than running for office where voters
of the constituency versus members of Congress.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
So how certain are you that the Patrick McHenry move
is the next step?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Is there just no other road to take at this point?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
It appears that there's no other road to take at
this point, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily the
next step versus no step, And it sort of depends
on how many House Republicans are willing to go along
and do this, because you're going to have a you know,
some significant member of the conference, even though it maybe
a minority, that's going to oppose doing this, And so
the thinking would be that Democrats would join in with this,
(09:20):
and you know, mckenry sort of has to be willing,
Like I guess he could say forget it, I'm not
going to serve. But I think we just kind of
need to see whether Jordan calls another vote today. My
sources tell me that he's likely likely to lose more votes,
that there are more members than we saw in the
first two votes that are opposing him, but they want
(09:41):
to stagger their vote so that it's clear if that
it's like it's going backwards wow, versus even staying the same.
But you know, this has been such a volatile, uncertain process.
I'm hesitant to make predictions versus just kind of tell
you what I'm hearing.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So clown show an appropriate poop show, I suppose more appropriate.
I'll be going with that in the future. Final question, David,
we're chatting about this earlier. Have you heard whether the
president's address eight o'clock eastern tonight is going to be
live or not.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
He's an old man, you see.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
No, it's going to be live. Yeah, No, you don't
do it. Office of Dress. It's not live. Yeah. And
it's eight eastern five o'clock Pacific, which means, you know,
people are you know, theoretically off work or on their
way home. It's not home yet. That's why you wait
until late o'clock.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well that's pretty late in the day after.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
That's pretty late in the day after a long trip
and a lot of time zones and all that sort
of stuff. For him.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, well look, I mean, you know, I understand how
people feel about his age, but he'd been able to
do this before and and so, you know, be interesting
to see what's in the speech. The speech just about
Israel and Ukraine. He had been planning an address about
Ukraine before Hamas attack Israel in October seventh. So now
(10:53):
we've got the sort of combined address. I wonder if
it's his first Oval address. I have to check. But obviously,
you know, presidents use the Old Office for these addresses
very sparingly, not to dilute the significance of it and
the power of it, and we'll see you know what
he says and how Americans react with.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
David Drucker, Senior writer at The Dispatch. His latest book
is In Trump's Shadow, The Battle for twenty twenty four
in the Future of the GOP. Good to talk to you, David,
Thanks a bunch anytime.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Guys, Thank you, Armstrong and Getty.
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Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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