Liz Cheney pens Washington Post op-ed amid GOP leadership battle
FOX News congressional correspondent Chad Pergram joins 'Special Report' with the details
The co-hosts of the conservative podcast "Ruthless" blasted the media for attempting to spin the Capitol Hill drama surrounding Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in an effort to weaken the Republican Party.
"What you're not hearing out of the mainstream media is the truth about why this is an issue before us," co-host Josh Holmes kicked off the discussion. "What they will tell you is, ‘Here we are. It’s another referendum on Trump,' right? ‘It’s another Republican Party civil war between two different visions of what the party ought to be.'
"That is utter and complete nonsense.… It doesn't have a damn thing to do with Donald Trump, it doesn't have a damn thing to do with a different ideological view or philosophical view or moral view, which is increasingly the code word that the left uses… what this is about, plain and simple, is leadership politics."
Holmes, who previously served as the chief of staff for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., explained that leadership politics is "not responsive" to the national electorate but rather the elected officials sent to D.C.
"You always have to make your colleague's job easier than it would ordinarily be without you," Holmes said. "That's what it is. What are you doing to create an environment that gives your party and all of its members the ability to be together, to stick together, to have the most cohesive message, the most effective message, and ultimately be on the winning side of elections. That's your job, alright? It's really simple. And then beyond that, do you make it easier. Are they providing a heat shield for you as a member to not have to weigh in to every sh---y thing that the media comes up to or, alternatively, are they making it more difficult for you… The end of every leadership position in Republican Party and Democratic Party politics is when they make it more difficult for their members, right?"
"Ruthless" co-host Comfortably Smug agreed, saying that the "job of leadership is to make the lives of your members easier" and to "keep the team together and not splinter off."
"Folks, think about how this randomly appeared," Smug told listeners. "CNN's ratings are down 50 percent. Do you know why they want this? They don't want to talk about in Texas how we crushed it and it's looking like we got a red wave on the way. No, they don't want to talk about that. They don't want to talk about how Manchin is basically just like, completely killed the Biden agenda. … The entire administration, all their goals, are stuck right now. They can't talk about it. How are they going to fill up the airwaves? 'Well, let's go back to the hits. Our ratings are down. Let's say, you know, Republican civil war.' For anyone to take that bait is not helping your members, taking that bait is not leadership.'"
"Folks, think about how this randomly appeared. CNN's ratings are down 50 percent. … How are they going to fill up the airwaves?"
Smug then pointed out how journalists never asked top Republicans to weigh in on the previous rift between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., but instead approached Pelosi to comment on the Cheney drama.
"They know exactly what they're doing because they don't want us to be focusing on the fact that we're staring down the Green New Deal, and D.C. statehood, and packing the courts, ending the filibuster," co-host Michael Duncan chimed in. "We are on the precipice of gaining back control of Congress and defeating the Biden agenda. The media doesn't want to talk about that. No, they'd rather have us relitigating 2020 forever. Forever! And if Liz Cheney wants to do that, then she's taking the bait that the media wants her to take."
"We are on the precipice of gaining back control of Congress and defeating the Biden agenda. The media doesn't want to talk about that."
"That's right," Holmes agreed. "All the things that you listed, there's no difference between Liz Cheney and anybody else, right? The ideological differences, the direction of the party as they would lead you to believe, there is no difference on. And the question is in the leadership politics question: is it easier or harder to fight the Green New Deal, D.C. statehood, HR1, and all the nonsense… with somebody who's talking about 2020 or somebody who's concerned about 22?"
Smug then stressed how "no one" outside of D.C. and "journo Twitter" cares about the Capitol Hill drama and that it's an "absolute creation of the journalists."
Duncan acknowledged that Trump "isn't blameless" in the saga since he keeps fueling the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, but also gave the former president credit for endorsing candidates like in the special Texas congressional race where Democrats were completely shut out in the jungle primary.
"Yeah, anybody who's still talking about 2020 now from a leadership perspective is fundamentally missing the boat. You're fundamentally missing the boat because the stuff that happened, however regrettable it might be, pales in comparison to the country that you will inherit two years from now if you don't do anything to stop what they're trying to do now," Holmes said.
"I'm already thinking about the hypothetical CNN roundtable where, you know, [Jake] Tapper leads into the segment saying, ‘Republican civil war undermines and casting doubt on our elections. Next on our panel is Stacey Abrams,’" Duncan quipped. "And it's important to point this out that liberals in the media who are clamoring for this infighting don't have an ounce of credibility on the issue of defending our democracy, not an ounce of credibility on preserving confidence in our elections. The whole point of Russiagate for three years was to undermine confidence in the 2016 election."
The co-hosts roasted the Democratic presidential candidates for taking turns saying that the 2018 gubernatorial race in Georgia was "stolen" from Stacey Abrams and how "no one cared" that she never conceded that election and how there were "no panels on CNN about how this undermines democracy."
Holmes stressed how Cheney substantially won her last vote of confidence among her GOP colleagues following her support for Trump's impeachment. He also mentioned that he himself "likes" her and has "great respect" for her family and was even she was supportive of her reelection, but that the congresswoman "made a mistake" for not moving off of 2020 and "focusing on the future."
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"She got caught in the media trap. And the media trap is constantly asking her about Donald Trump and about impeachment and about November and everything and she just kinda got stuck in that and continued to answer the question. That is a mistake!" Holmes exclaimed.
"That's what makes me so furious about this situation," Smug said. "Liz Cheney, you should know so much better. You should know so much better… To take the bait from the media like this is absolutely ridiculous."
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