Infighting Is Funny

Politico reports: Mike Johnson came up short in his bid to remain speaker on the first ballot. Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Keith Self (R-Texas) voted against Johnson in the alphabetical roll call vote. Johnson can only afford to lose one GOP vote and still reclaim the gavel, meaning he needs to flip at least two of …

“We’ve seen Johnson send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget. So it is clear that Johnson has got some work to do over the next day. But it’s also worth noting that Republicans in the House also have a lot of work to do, because Republicans are really bad at being speaker of the House. …

“I’ve been primaried three times. I think there’s some real threats [from Musk]. But, by the way, what he said was not true. So, for example, Elon Musk put out that we were gonna give ourselves a $66,000 pay raise. That was not true. That we’re protecting Liz Cheney. That was not true. That we were gonna build a new …

“Oh no. You can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting Mike Johnson tomorrow. And you can take that to the bank. You know that, Matt. I don’t know how to say this without cussing. If they thought I had no Fs to give …

Axios reports: House Republicans’ mainstream wing is warning Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) not to repeat his predecessor’s mistake of giving away the store to his right-wing detractors to retain his gavel, Axios has learned. Johnson is facing roughly a dozen right-wing holdouts on the eve of Friday’s speaker election — in which he will only be able to afford a …

The New Republic reports: Technocrat billionaire Elon Musk finally owned up Wednesday to restricting his critics’ X accounts. But the self-described “free speech absolutist” doesn’t see anything wrong with it. Last week, Musk began stripping the verifications from far-right accounts run by people who challenged his support for H-1B visas, after he and his co–DOGE czar Vivek Ramaswamy went to …

Meanwhile in MAGAland: Governor Jeff Landry (R-LA) is drawing condemnation over a picture he posted on social media which showed him posing jovially outside of a steakhouse just blocks away from the deadly attack on Bourbon Street. The governor posted the photo on Wednesday night showing him outside a high-end restaurant on Magazine Street showing him with several companions smiling …

“Donald Trump received a mandate from the American people in November. Chip Roy did not. It is the America First Agenda, not the Chip Roy First Agenda. It is Make America Great Again, not make Chip Roy Great. President Trump is fighting for America, Chip is fighting to keep his brand marketable. “Some people apparently need to understand that in …

CNN reports: Congress has never before tried to certify a presidential election without a House speaker in place, and Republicans across Washington are privately trying to game out what might happen if that scenario were to arise. So far, GOP lawmakers and senior advisers say they have found no clear options to certify Trump’s win without a speaker, according to …

“This is about money and power. It’s not about race. It’s not about gender. It’s not about ethnicity. It’s not about religion. That’s what they want you to believe it is. You’re like a bucket of crabs at each other’s throat. That’s about money and power. Screw you! We don’t care what you do on Twitter. “We love converts. Hell, …

“This is the problem when you when you when you allow for a billionaire to make a $200 million donation. And so maybe we really do need to have campaign finance regulations in this country. “I mean, essentially, what what is happening — and I love President Trump, I’m not saying that President Trump is bought and paid for — …

The Hill reports: Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Tuesday that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) does not have the votes to keep the gavel and that he remains undecided on whether he can support the Louisiana Republican in the Friday floor vote, despite President-elect Trump endorsing Johnson. “I remain undecided, as do a number of my colleagues, because we saw so …

“The working class said, no, we will not cheer as you sell off our children’s futures, and they elected Donald Trump to say no to that. And what did the left do? The left immediately started to call them racist. You are a racist if you oppose the selling out of your children’s future for the enrichment of the leftist …

“What we need is to have a conversation about is what is it going to mean for the future of our country, our national security and the incoming Trump administration. We have a bunch of technocrats who are also essentially welfare queens because their companies are receiving government subsidies and they want to take over our defense industry. You have …

“Unfortunately, we will not be able to deliver on President Trump’s agenda as happened in 2016 because it has to be done legislatively. If we don’t have a Speaker with the courage, vision and the plan – and if Speaker Johnson wants to be speaker – then he needs to lay out the plan and commit to that plan, not …

“Here’s a reality that we have to deal with. By the end of the century, we’re projected to have a population decline. Our birth rate in the last 15 years has dropped from two children per woman to 1.66 per woman. So, the reality is we have a long-term population decline. We have a workforce shortage of doctors, nurses, engineers, …

Posted by Trump last night to Truth Social: The extension of the Debt Ceiling by a previous Speaker of the House, a good man and a friend of mine, from this past September of the Biden Administration, to June of the Trump Administration, will go down as one of the dumbest political decisions made in years. There was no reason …

“This is exhausting. We need legal immigration but we don’t need OVER immigration. We also need to TAX remittances for those who make their money here and send it back to the home country they don’t want to live in but want to subsidize. “There’s a reason we are the number one country in the world and millions flock to …

“Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, is doing an extraordinary job. I tell everybody, I was a pretty effective speaker. I could never do his job. He has no margins. Any two or three members can rebel at any moment. “They need a Republican unity program for the next two years. These guys who wake up every morning and say, …

The Daily Beast reports: Far-right figurehead Laura Loomer has given a grovelling public apology to President-elect Donald Trump‘s AI advisor Sriram Krishnan after she “accidentally doxxed” him. Loomer took a break from her scheduled programming on X, namely saying Elon Musk is censoring her and then begging for her blue check back, to blurt out the apology after she revealed …