Transcripts. Bannon’s War Room. Russ Vought Makes the Case for Andy Biggs to Be Speaker Of the House. November 14, 2022
Topic. Russ Vought discusses new Speakership for the House. November 14, 2022.
Transcripts from Bannon’s War Room on Rumble: Russ Vought Makes The Case For Andy Biggs To Be Speaker Of The House
Published November 14, 2022.
Steve Bannon:
First Russ I got to ask you about, you're the first one that really came out and you don't really get that involved it seems like in elective politics a lot, but you had a belly full of this. You came out with really, I think a brilliant I forget it was like a 14-point Twitter stream last week, thread that laid out the case against the cartel, the case against the cabal on Capitol Hill.
What say you? It's heating up, they're supposed to do it tomorrow. They're talking about pushing it off, the knives are out, Andy Biggs has announced, Andy Biggs from the House Freedom Caucus, and a friend of the War Room, on the show a lot, very close to him personally, has announced he's running for Speaker. It seems like it's complete chaos on Capitol Hill. What say you sir?
Russ Vought:
Yeah, the Biggs candidacy is very important for two reasons. Number one it gives the House Freedom Caucus a holding pattern for them to be able to articulate that they're against McCarthy and to set the stage for an end game down the road. But it's also very critical because it prevents the number one excuse from being made by a non HFC member and that is, no one was in the race. That's what they use.
That's the that's the defining excuse that they go home, and I call it mansplaining to their voters and what they say is no one's in the race and so I voted for McCarthy. That is now not an option with the candidacy of Andy Biggs. So, right now we are ahead of schedule. The McCarthy forces were really freaking out all weekend. They know they don't have the votes.
Matt Gaetz will tell you they don't have the votes. Let me also address congressman Green's comments. And I love Marjorie. She's one of my favorite members of Congress and this is an issue we disagree on but look the issue of the Liz Cheney is not real. Liz Cheney, first of all, doesn't have a vote. You don't need his vote to be a speaker, but she doesn't have a vote and you need Republican votes to make with Democrats to be able to create a Speaker in that vein. That is akin to switching parties and we know there are a lot of moderate Republicans but voting for another speaker of a Democrat party is a death knell in a primary. It is an immediate and it is a likely win how do we know because we just saw it with regard to Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney herself.
So, this is not real that doesn't mean there are the votes for Jim Jordan or Andy Biggs or even Lee Zeldin, but what it means is that there is massive leverage and that this is not a real threat. And we know also from history, this was something that was, everyone kept talking about with regard to John Boehner. It never materialized. It can't materialize. And it can't materialize on the Democrat side because they have their own issue with regard to, if it's a natural Republican who switches they can't come over because they have their own primary issues. The only way it could potentially be an issue is with the Republican that has effectively like Bill Kristol or Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger become a Democrat functionally and is voting and like they are doing with the J6 to govern that way. Those members are no longer in office. There are no other members that have crossed that Rubicon. It is not a real threat.
Steve Bannon:
I asked that of MTG today because she's become one of the more serious and tough players in the Hill. Was she taking the bait for something that's put out there by the McCarthy guys that's not real, to get to cut, look the freedom caucus is what 45, 50 people. Is it to take out 30 of the freedom caucus guys and concerned about that led by MTG where you would have 20 or 30 people against this, now you may be down to 10, even if you got 10 it's enough to drive this in a different direction but do you think that that was a complete misdirection play by the McCarthy forces?
Russ Vought:
You know I think with regard to a lot of members, and I don't want to speak on behalf of Marjorie, but they had a game plan going into the election. They had kind of come to ground with a speaker McCarthy and the election changed all that. And when you have a new battlefield, you make different play calls and you go out a result of something, you have new opportunities and new potential and as a result you have to make different decisions.
And I think people throughout the conference made a decision that I think is going to be right wrong or indifferent from their perspective is going to be overridden by the House Freedom Caucus and the grassroots in the War Room Posse by saying that this is the leverage that we have on the House floor.
It's going to be realized and I think we're going to get real change, but I think a lot of members coming into this said okay, with a big seat majority, a red wave, how can we get comfortable with McCarthy and they all kind of thought and made their bed, accordingly. And we have a new opportunity after being on the other side of the election and I've seen it. I've seen it this leadership team from the inside.
Kevin McCarthy was part of the leadership team that I got to see behind closed doors, and I have not seen any evidence other than him being okay to work with with President Trump, but I want someone that is okay with the America First agenda. I want someone who's committed to the America first agenda when Donald Trump is temporarily in Mar-a-Lago. That's what I want. I don't want someone that is willing to you know play ball with President Trump while he's in office. I want someone who's actually committed to the issues and the agenda and wakes up realizing how late the hour is for our country and seizes the moment with every opportunity we have.
I think that's the opportunity that House Republicans can have. There's many many different end games, whether that's Jim Jordan or whether that's seizing control of the Rules Committee in the House of Representatives to the House Freedom Caucus actually owns all the process control. There are many many end games here, but I think it's important that we unpack what is real and what is not real. And Liz meaning as a Speaker is not a real threat.
Steve Bannon:
Walk me through what would a speakership, I'm not saying he's competitive right now but he's alternative. What would a speakership under Andy Biggs look like?
Russ Vought:
It would look like for the first time the leadership team not being at war with the grassroots, not being at war with this program and the activists that it represents and talks to and channels and provides action plans for. You know I got asked over the weekend why does this never happen on the Left.
And President Trump used to always joke around, why is it that the Left why the Democrats always stay together, and everyone was divided on our side? It's because their leadership team is committed to the objectives and the purposes of the Democratic Party and the Left. There is no daylight between the two. So, there is always a question of how far they can get or not, but that you never have to know that you're getting played.
Our leadership team is different. Our leadership team is all about playing the grassroots. They come up with shiny objects and they try to manage their activists away from the fight, away from the signal. They move towards noise in your words.
And so, an Andy Biggs speakership, a Jim Jordan speakership even a Lee Zeldin speakership would look fundamentally different. It would look like real talk to real grassroots and saying this is the fight and getting as far as you possibly can and knowing that you don't have all the power in the world. We're not asking for you to win on every occasion. We’re asking you to fight on every occasion and to fight with all of your might. I think that's what you would see under Andy Biggs.
Steve Bannon:
I got to get to the omnibus and the debt ceiling in a second. I want to leave time for that but they're going to meet tomorrow on Tuesday to do I guess the first vote for the leadership now. Why is that important and that'll take place looks like anyway because it just takes a majority of the conference, I think. And that is also in secret. That's a secret ballot I believe. Walk people through the process over the next couple of weeks. We don’t have to take it to all the way to the speaker’s vote in January. Over the next couple of weeks what should people look for?
Russ Vought:
The real vote is in January. That's the leverage point that's the moment where you have to go to the House of the floor. It's all in front of the cameras and say who you're voting for and who you're not voting for. Tomorrow or Wednesday is the cartel vote. Its behind closed doors think of it as a locker room.
It has a lot of the atmospherics of the locker room, the team the rah rah, don't be against the team. That's the nature of what the cartel is like and it's going to be hard for House Republicans, House Conservatives that are against Kevin McCarthy but what they need to know is none of its real, none of its real.
All it is, is an opportunity for them to go in there and say I'm not for Kevin McCarthy. I'm not for Andy Biggs or some other person who might be running that's what this is for. So, if there's any drama it is the extent to which the no votes, we have will have a sense of, but we you know it's behind closed doors, but it will be a shot across the bow to the McCarthy folks that they have a growing problem. I think a fatal problem with regard to his candidacy, but again I think it's important for people to realize it is one part of this and it is a part of a process that grows and builds to January where the real vote occurs.
Steve Bannon:
Whether we're at 219 to 2221 or a few votes more 5,6,7,8 members of the House Freedom Caucus if they're in looks under the leadership of Biggs and Gaetz, if they dig in and say anybody but McCarthy, how did the McCarthy forces get around that because it's kind of a you've got to you've got command by negation what we call in the military. How do they really get around that?
Russ Vought:
Steve, I don't want to I don't want to be too presumptive but that's why they're panicking. I mean we are very close to being a situation where three or four members themselves can dictate this and we're already at those numbers and there are a lot of House Freedom Caucus members in reserve that are fully committed to the mission they just haven't publicly declared.
So, you know we're in a very good place. I would say that we are ahead of schedule in the sense that in previous speaker battles you really had to build all through November, December to get to January where members were finally waking up to the cartel busting nature of what their grassroots was demanding, and we are ahead of schedule on that.
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