There’s GOP infighting among Trumpy Republicans over future House leadership positions—and Fox News host Tucker Carlson just made it a whole lot worse. What is going on? The New Abnormal podcast host Andy Levy and Daily Beast politics editor and guest host Matt Fuller try to figure it out on the latest episode.
Fuller sets the scene: If Republicans take back the House, “the assumption is Kevin McCarthy would rise to speaker, current GOP Whip Steve Scalise would rise to majority leader, and then there’s sort of this race for the No. 3 spot.”
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Here’s where the tea gets hot: Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) are both vying for the position. But things took a turn for the worse for Emmer, also chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, when he got a call from Tucker Carlson effectively blaming him for a GOP strategist’s quote in a Daily Beast report saying Banks “dies to be liked by the Establishment. He hires Tucker Carlson’s son, a 24-year-old kid, to be his communications director.”
Cue members of the GOP taking sides, and all hell breaking loose.
“Each side kind of has some very powerful allies,” Fuller says.
“We’ve got what passes for celebrities in the MAGA circuit, like your Marjorie Taylor Greenes and your Donald Trump Jr.’s out there attacking Emmer and Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeting ‘I stand with Buckley [Carlson],’ which is just beyond bizarre, but whatever. And Donald Trump Jr. accusing Emmer of directly leaking stuff to the, as he put it, ‘the left-wing Daily Beast.’ And it’s just getting really, really ugly,” adds Andy.
Fuller has questions, the first being, “If Tucker Carlson just gets on the air and starts slamming Tom Emmer, what does that do for the midterms in general?”
Also in this episode, Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, warns Andy about the holiday COVID wave that’s coming with a scary twist that could make it unlike past waves.
Plus, Dr. Hotez shares the group of people who will likely have the most protection going into it and the biggest mistakes people are making right now, including “nobody vaccinating their kids.”
Last, but not least, Daily Beast politics reporter and co-host of the Fever Dreams podcast Will Sommer joins to tell Andy all about the racist, sexist alt-right homophobe who raised $1 million for an alt-right superhero movie and promptly lost it in the most hilariously dumb way.
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