How Biden Faked His Border Visit

Holy cow. I cannot believe they pulled this off. The rebels is who I’m talking about. The 20 Republicans from the Freedom Caucus and the House of Representatives, who held the speakership hostage until Kevin McCarthy caved to their demands. I said last week that I did not understand the huffing and puffing that we heard from so many on the establishment Right about how terrible this was, that Matt Gaetz and Lauren Bobert and Chip Roy were holding this, holding this thing hostage. I, I found it delightful and hilarious, and I wanted them to pull it off for a minute. There I was a little unsure of whether they were gonna be able to do it, but they did it, and I am so impressed, and I am so delighted. Welcome to the Liz Wheeler Show. I’m Liz Wheeler. We have a great show for you today. If you haven’t already subscribed to the show, please do that.

As we’re getting started, if you like to listen to the show, go to Apple Podcasts. If you have an iPhone, go to Spotify. If you have an Android, hit that subscribe button. If you like the video version of the show, you can go to YouTube, you can go to Rumble, or you can go to Locals at YouTube.com/LizWheeler, Rumble.com/LizWheeler and hit the subscribe button over there. I greatly appreciate everybody who’s been subscribing. It does not go unnoticed how many people have been following the show lately, and I’m grateful for each and every one of you. So what are we going to talk about today? Well, we’re going to talk about the Real Housewives of Congress, or the Real Housewives of the GOP, is what I like to call what happened this past weekend, the election of Speaker McCarthy.

We’re gonna talk about exactly how these 20 Republicans pulled this off, because that’s a pretty big differential when you’re talking about less than two dozen Congress members versus 200, 200 Republicans. And that’s not even counting the Democrats, of course. How do they pull this off? What does this mean for this Congress? Is this going to be the most conservative House of Representatives in recent history, even if the leadership is not the most conservative? We’re gonna talk about this, what this means. We’re also gonna talk about, not to reign on anybody’s parade here, but the rules that were demanded by these rebels. By the way, I think I mentioned this last week, but it was CNN’s Jake Tapper who started calling these Republicans the rebels, and he was using it as an insult. I think it’s a compliment. I think it’s amazing, and I think that they should call themselves that.

So I’m going to call them that. But these rebels demanded certain changes to the rules package in the House of Representatives. That’s what Speaker McCarthy ended up capitulating to saying, okay, well, in order to get your vote, or at least in order to get your present vote, I will include your demands in the rules package. However, it gets a little tricky because the rules package also has to pass a vote in the House of Representatives, and that hasn’t happened. That is supposed to happen today on Monday. So we’re gonna talk about that. Will this rules package actually pass? I have a little insider information and prediction on that, so you’re gonna wanna stick around for that. Before we get into all of that, we’re gonna talk about Biden’s border visit from last night. Essentially a fake, staged, propagandized visit. This is like something that you would see in communist China or in Soviet Russia. It’s despicable. And honestly, when I first heard that Biden was going to the border, I didn’t care. I do not care if Joe Biden goes to the border because all it’s going to be is a photo op, and he proved that correct. So we’re gonna break down exactly what’s going on at our southern border. So let’s get to it.

Okay, let’s start with Biden’s border visit. Here’s my take. I don’t care. I do not care if President Joe Biden goes to the southern border or not. This is true. This opinion is not just directed in an isolated manner at President Joe Biden because he’s a Democrat, because I think that he’s failed at protecting the sovereignty of our nation, especially at the southern border. I actually generally don’t care when politicians go to the scene of what’s happening, because it’s just a photo op. They’re not actually helping by being there, unless it’s so much of a tragedy that George Bush at Ground Zero, America needed to see him there. We were looking for a leader in this time of abject tragedy, except for really extreme cases like that. And Bush, of course, at that time, did not shy away from going to the most horrendous part, where there was the most death, the most destruction.

Other than that, when politicians go places, it’s just in their own political interest, they’re not doing it to help, they’re not doing it because they presence is going to bring anything good to the area. Most of the time, their presence is a pain. Their presence impedes whatever’s going on because of their security, because of their prepping, because of all kinds of different demands from the White House Communications Department and everything else. So when I heard that Biden was going to the border, I thought, okay, I don’t care about this. The only thing that it tells me is that the White House, Biden’s White House understands that the border is a serious liability for him, a political liability. And keep in mind, the Biden White House has had every opportunity to fix the problem, and they haven’t done it. So by sending Biden to the border, they are just trying to make it seem like Biden cares about this in order to trick you into thinking that Biden cares about it, so that maybe you will vote for Biden in 2024.

It’s disgusting. It’s completely disgusting. And one of the other reasons I don’t care is because they were never going to allow Biden to be staged to show the reality that’s happening at the border, ever. So we have the caravans that are pouring across our border. It’s not like Biden’s gonna stand there with a selfie and say, Hey, look at, look at this enormous, enormous group of people that are just flooding across our border, crossing rivers. They were never gonna show him in that circumstance. They were never gonna show him with any of the Americans. Hundreds of thousands of Americans who have overdosed on fentanyl coming across the southern border, never. They were never gonna show him with the women who were sexually assaulted or sexually abused as they were being trafficked across the border. They were never gonna show the children who were part of the recycling rings of the coyotes and cartels that get adults across the border and then get the adults a get-out-of-jail-free card because they have that child.

And then the child is sent back, never gonna show him with those people. They were never gonna show him anywhere where there’s cartel apparatus or coyotes that are dropping people over the wall. This was never gonna happen. So what’s the purpose? What’s the purpose? And as soon as he arrived in Texas, this became evident that not only were they not going to put Joe Biden in a scenario that portrayed reality, they were going to alter reality in order to make you think that it was different. This happened in El Paso. Check this out. This is a before and after photograph of what they did in order to make it seem like where Biden was touring was not as overrun by migrant camps as it actually is. So on the left here, we see what it looked like on Wednesday with just, I mean, it almost looks like a homeless encampment in Los Angeles, migrant camps, people camping out.

It’s just, the street is an absolute mess. Fast forward to Thursday in advance of Biden’s visit, and what happens? They cleaned up the migrant camps. The sidewalk is empty. It looks clear and nice and safe. Why did they do this? They did this so you and I don’t see the truth so that they can stage Joe Biden, the way that North Korea stages their full grocery stores for people that are touring North Korea to make it look like the people of North Korea aren’t starving. But to make it look like the people of North Korea have everything that their hearts desire. It’s fake. It’s completely fake. They also, of course, the White House is not gonna let Biden answer any questions from the press, any probing questions from the press. Like, why did you invite illegal aliens here? Why are you pushing for amnesty? Why are you refusing to enforce laws that are on the books that could stop the flow of illegal immigration across our border?

That didn’t happen. I didn’t expect it to happen. That’s why I don’t care about this posturing. I don’t care if President Joe Biden goes to the southern border. It’s just fake. It’s fake. What I care about is policy. A President doesn’t have to go to the southern border to take care of the problem. A President doesn’t have to go to the southern border to make the problem worse. He can do that both things from the White House. What I care about, I care about these policies of Joe Biden. First, he issued an invitation to illegal aliens, basically saying, yeah, come on up. You can come across our border. We’re gonna just let you go. Just all you have to do is claim asylum, and we’ll give you a court date. But who really shows up for those court dates? He issued this invitation, then he reinstituted the policy of catch and release, which is something the Obama Administration started,

The Trump Administration stopped, and then the Biden Administration brought back into play. Catch, and release is exactly what it sounds like. You come across the border, you’re caught by border patrol, you’re given a court date and told to come back and show up for it, and then you’re let go. But a majority of people who are given those court dates just fade into the shadows. They do not show up for their court date. Catch and release incentivizes people to come here. And it doesn’t matter if you’re caught by border patrol because what does it really mean, a day or two in a border patrol facility before you’re let go? The Biden Administration stopped the Trump Administration’s extremely effective remain in Mexico policy. So we know that the asylum system is abused, or claims of asylum are abused in this country. Any migrant that’s crossing the border claims asylum, the same thing happens.

They’re given a court date, they fade into the shadows. What the Trump administration did was implement a remain in Mexico policy that if you come across the border from Mexico to the United States and you claim asylum, you have to wait on the Mexican side until your court date. What does that do? That disincentivizes people fading into the shadows. It disincentivizes fake claims of asylum. The Biden Administration, Biden himself, is pushing for amnesty. He’s pushing for all of these people, who have been trafficked by cartels into our nation, to be given citizenship, the same rights and privileges that you and I have the right to vote, the right to taxpayer-funded benefits, after they came into our country illegally. Joe Biden has actively let the cartels continue their trafficking, drug trafficking, and human trafficking without trying to stop it while simultaneously claiming that they’re doing something.

This is what I care about. I care about the policy. I don’t care about the posturing. I don’t care about the photo ops. I certainly don’t care if Biden goes down and stages this fake visit to the border. Here are some of the policies that I want, some of the policies that Joe Biden should implement, if he actually cared about the sovereignty of our nation. Spoiler alert, he doesn’t care about the sovereignty of our nation. I think, by the way, not to go on a tangent here. I think it’s gotten past the point where there is a reasonable good faith argument to be made that would claim that Biden is simply unaware of what he’s doing. Or that the Democrats don’t actively want our nation to be flooded with illegal aliens, that they want to become citizens because they want those people’s votes.

And of course, those votes assumed to be Democrat because they would promise them, hey, if you vote Democrats, Democrats will make you legal. Democrats will give you citizenship. Democrats will give you benefits. But those evil Republicans, they’ll send you back from where you came from. I don’t think there’s any good faith argument anymore. Anybody who’s sensible, anybody who is authentic in claiming that the Democrats are just trying to be compassionate. We all know that this is a political ploy. We all know what the Democrats are trying to do. They’re trying to undermine the sovereignty of our nation and fundamentally change the voting demographic, populate it with illegal aliens who they have promised citizenship and benefits in order to bolster their own electoral chances. This is not even a controversial thing to say. I think it’s very obvious to say this. So here are the policies that I want.

I want a closed border until the problem is fixed. I know, cue the pearl-clutching here. So many people on the Left are saying, oh, a closed border, that’s inhumane, that’s xenophobic. No, it’s not. It has nothing to do with the race or the culture of any of the people coming here. It has to do with the sovereignty of our nation, the security of our nation, and fighting back against the cartels, who are trafficking people and drugs, harming the people they’re trafficking, and harming our people with the drugs. I want a closed border until we can fix the problem. I want the border wall built. There’s funding. Congress appropriated money to build a border wall, and the Biden administration hires refused to do so. I want that built. I want the personnel, in addition to the structure, to be built up as well. I want Border Patrol empowered to stop the border crossers.

And what I mean by that is I want Border Patrol empowered to conduct immediate deportations. If they catch somebody, deport them, if they catch somebody, put them back across the border. None of this catch and release nonsense, catch and release must end. We must have remain in Mexico. There’s no way our border is going to be secured unless we have these things. Title 42 is about to expire. Title 42 says that because we are in a quote unquote public health emergency, in the name of COVID, people who cross the border can immediately be put back across the border even if they claim asylum, because it is in the interest of protecting our nation against COVID-19. Now, you know my opinion on COVID-19. You know whether or not I think it’s a serious threat. You know whether or not I think it’s an emergency.

But if the Left is still going to impose policies on us in the name of the COVID emergency, then go ahead and use it as justification for immediate deportation. The drug cartels need to be declared foreign terrorist organizations so that we can then use the National Guard at the border to stop them from their trafficking. If we do these things, in addition to forcing employers to, or punishing employers, I should say, forcing employers to verify the citizenship or the legal status of their employees and punishing them if they knowingly hire illegal aliens, this is the E-Verify program, right? If we do these things, it would take, like, a month to solve the border crisis. That’s all it would take. And yet, what is Joe Biden doing? He’s staging a fake photo up at the border to try to trick us because he thinks we’re too stupid to see the truth.

There might be some people in our country who are gullible enough to believe that. So it’s incumbent on us to show the truth. It’s incumbent on us to make sure that our members of Congress, especially now that we have these rebels fighting for the base, the Republican base in our Congress, to make sure that they’re fighting for an actual, secured border. And then we don’t let the mainstream media and the Democrats co-opt this idea of being compassionate and being welcoming, and using that just to push for amnesty and open borders. Absolutely not. When Biden arrived at the border, Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, handed him this letter. It read, dear President Biden, your visit to our southern border with Mexico today is 20 billion too little and two years too late. Moreover, your visit avoids the sites where mass illegal immigration occurs, and sidesteps the thousands of angry Texas property owners, whose lives have been destroyed by your border policies. Even the city you visit has been sanitized of the migrant camps, which had overrun downtown El Paso,

because your Administration wants to shield you from the chaos that Texans experience on a daily basis. This chaos is the direct result of your failure to enforce the immigration laws that Congress enacted. Under President Trump. The federal government achieved historically low levels of illegal immigration under your watch. By contrast, America is suffering the worst illegal immigration in the history of our country. Your open border policies have emboldened the cartels, who grew wealthy by trafficking deadly fentanyl, and even human beings. Texans are paying at especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you, if given the chance all of this is happening because you have violated your constitutional obligation to defend the states against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws. Halfway through your presidency, though I can finally welcome you to the border.

When you finish the photo ops and carefully stage-managed version of El Paso, you have a job to do. You must comply with the many statutes mandating that various categories of aliens shall be detained, and end the practice of unlawfully paroling aliens and mass. You must stop sandbagging the implementation of the Remain in Mexico policy and Title 42 expulsions and fully enforce those measures as the federal courts have ordered you to do. You must aggressively prosecute a legal entry between ports of entry and allow ICE to remove illegal immigrants in accordance with existing federal laws. You must immediately resume construction of the border wall in the state of Texas using the billions of dollars. Congress has appropriated for that purpose. You must designate the Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. On behalf of all Americans, I implore you, secure our border by enforcing Congress’ immigration laws.

Sincerely, Greg Abbott, Governor. He handed this letter to Biden in person. Here’s the letter. That right there, forgive my French here, is a badass move. Now, will Biden do anything with it? Can Biden even read it anymore? Who’s to say? But the fact of the matter is, it caused a lot of Americans who might not otherwise see what’s happening at the border to see what’s happening at the border, even if the Biden Administration has faked this visit. Again, it’s why I don’t care that Biden himself went to the border. There’s some Republicans saying, well, finally he’s going to the border. Sure, but for what? Why is this a good thing? It’s not if the visit itself is fake. Okay, so let’s turn to the Real Housewives of the GOP, the Real Housewives of Congress. I gotta tell you, the other night when Republicans finally elected Kevin McCarthy, speaker of the House, I was sitting up, I was sitting up actually in my darkened bedroom.

This was, like, midnight when they finally cast that 15th vote. And I have my AirPods in and I’m watching CSPAN on my phone, just unreal. These cameras are unreal. And that’s actually where I wanna start. So one of the reasons that this was so exciting, watching Republicans elect, or, you know, for 14 votes not elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker, is because the CSPAN cameras were zoomed up in the middle of all this drama, giving us this front row view to Congress members almost coming to literal physical blows here. And here’s the point that I wanna make. This is something I think a lot of people don’t really realize. CSPAN is usually limited to the shot that we’re all familiar with, that very zoomed-out shot of the entire House of Representatives. It’s a dumb shot, right?

It looks like it looks like a shot from 30, 40, 50 years ago. Nothing like we can do with cameras today, but CSPAN is usually only allowed to broadcast that particular shot because that is stipulated in the House rules package. So every time a new Speaker of the House is elected, that Congress has to adopt a rules package with all kinds of different provisions in it. And believe it or not, CSPAN is included in those provisions. So the reason CSPAN in this case was not governed by those rules is because when Speaker Pelosi was gaveled out, there was a period of time, a couple days where there was no Speaker of the House. When there was no Speaker of the House, that means there also was not a rules package. When Pelosi was gaveled out as Speaker of the House. When that Congress ended before the new Congress was sworn in, there was no rules package governing that house.

So CSPAN was like, okay, well we’re not constrained by this. We’re gonna go ahead and film this the way that we want to film this and broadcast this the way we think will be most interesting to our viewers. And boy oh boy, did they. There was not a new rules package. There still isn’t, actually. Not a new rules package until this Republican Congress passes one. But what CSPAN filming the drama in, in the House of Representative showed us is how important it is for you and I to be able to see that. It wasn’t just entertaining, although it was, it was really entertaining. It also allowed us to see who were the primary power players, who was conducting negotiations, who was almost fighting. It allows us a transparency that helps you and I in our role. Yes, we play a role in Congress, in our role holding our Congress members accountable because it’s almost impossible to hold people accountable if you don’t know what they’re doing.

And how are we supposed to know what they’re doing if CSPAN doesn’t allow us to see these negotiations and conversations and debates and heated arguments up close and personal? So I highly, highly, highly recommend, I implore this Congress to add to the rules package, before you vote on it, a provision that allows CSPAN to broadcast how the sausage is made in the House of Representatives. The American people will be better for it. The House of Representatives will be better for it. So let’s show a little bit, let’s talk a little bit about what this showed us. Because understanding how the rebels pulled this off will allow us to replicate this again, and it should be replicated again. So before we get into the good stuff, I don’t know if you guys follow the account. They have a YouTube account. They have a Twitter account.

I think they have an Instagram account too called Bad Lipreading, which is exactly what it sounds like. You take a video of two people talking where you don’t have any audio. And this lip reader puts captions on the video that look like the words that are coming out of, of the person’s mouth, but it’s obviously not really what they’re saying. It is so funny. There was a video, I wanna show this before we get into the real analysis here, of Congressman Gosar and AOC sitting in the House of Representatives talking about God knows what, I wish we knew, and bad lipread added captions. So take a look at this.

You dreamt of Dracula? While we’re on this sort of stuff. You heard of the pipe Piper? Well, my dream Pied Piper had toilet paper, one sheet of the cheap cutter. Yes. And he took that and he ripped out a creme brulee and a little tiny pepper before he ate a tree. You didn’t have that dream? Es I did. Okay. Nope. Okay. You did not, don’t tell me you did. It’s not true. You didn’t ever get to tree of a Pied Piper eating a tree. I mean, I, you’re telling me you dream that, too. I then it wasn’t as cool as my dream.

I mean, you gotta know that’s fake, right? Because if the Pied Piper actually ate a tree, AOC would go crazy because that’s like a murderer against the earth or something. Every interaction, if you haven’t already checked out the Bad Lipreading YouTube accounts and Twitter accounts, highly recommend it because every interaction that we saw on the night that the House elected McCarthy as speaker, Bad Lipreading put captions on every contentious interaction, and one is funnier than the next. They’re so funny. But getting to the real analysis here, some of the things that we were able to see go down because of, not just CSPAN, but because of photographers in Congress capturing these moments up close and personal, is this one on the screen here. This is Marjorie Taylor Green holding up her cell phone. On the cell phone, you will see that there’s an open phone call.

She’s holding it up to Congressman Rosendale, who was a no vote for Kevin McCarthy, but look really closely on that photo. What is the name on that photo? It says DT. That’s former President Donald Trump on the phone, who was trying to broker this deal presumably from Mar-a-Lago. Marjorie Taylor Green was being his mouthpiece and trying to give Rosendale the phone, who was rejecting it. This is something, this picture. I’ve seen this picture probably a dozen times in the last day and a half since this happened. And I don’t think I’m ever going to be, I’m never going to find it less striking because it shows exactly what Marjorie Taylor Green is, and it shows exactly what Rosendale was standing for, that he wasn’t swayed by a politician. He was standing on principle, and that Marjorie Taylor Green wasn’t speaking for herself.

She was speaking for President Trump. Now, you can make what you will of that, that maybe that’s neutral analysis, maybe that’s positive analysis in favor of Rosendale and not so much in favor of Marjorie Taylor Green. But it is striking to see these negotiations. And then of course, we have the interaction that was seen around the world, and that is, in these negotiations, let me just say in these negotiations, typically they are done by surrogates. This is kind of the job of the whip of each party, is to try to convince members to vote how the, in this case, the majority leader, who was McCarthy before he was speaker, how the majority leader wants the rest of the caucus to vote. So typically if you say, if you take Matt Gaetz because he was the holdout, Lauren Bobert, she was a holdout. They were two of the ones that were voting present

when their votes were needed to elect McCarthy, typically the negotiations with them would take place with the whip. But what did we see on the floor of the House of Representatives? Matt, can we play this clip? This is McCarthy himself approaching Matt Gaetz. This is, look, you can see him. He’s walking towards Matt Gaetz. You can’t hear what he’s saying. You can just hear kind of the rumble in the background in that row. As it pans out, you see Matt Gaetz shaking his finger at McCarthy. Sitting next to Matt Gaetz is Lauren Boebert. I mean, if you look at this just from the perspective of posture and power positions, this is Matt Gaetz leaning back in his chair, and McCarthy is standing up leaning forward. What is this? This is McCarthy begging for Matt Gaetz’s vote. My jaw. I could barely pick my jaw up off the floor when I saw this play out.

If not for CSPAN cameras, we would never have seen this. What did this show us? This showed us that Matt Gaetz won. He had every ounce of power to be had in this negotiation, because otherwise there ain’t no way that Kevin McCarthy goes, walks up, meets Gaetz where Gaetz is, without Gaetz even standing up, and basically begs for a vote. Gaetz could have anything he wanted, and Gaetz knew this. Gaetz knew this. McCarthy knew this too. McCarthy knew this too. So then let’s play this next clip, Matt, if we can. This next clip, during this interaction, it’s a little bit of a contentious interaction. Watch the upper right hand corner, after McCarthy goes up, watch the upper right or the upper left hand corner, I’m sorry, the upper left hand corner. You see Mike Rogers of Alabama suddenly come out of nowhere. He looks watches, and then he lunges for Gaetz and starts yelling.

He’s restrained and someone covers his mouth. And when McCarthy realizes what’s happening, oh my goodness, did he turn around quickly? Oh my goodness. And we got this photograph out of it. This happened on the floor of the House of Representatives. And if not for CSPAN, would we have even known that this happened? This is something, all of these videos, all of these photographs of what happened the night that the Republicans finally elected Speaker McCarthy, is CSPAN cameras bringing real value. They bring transparency, which allows us to hold our members accountable to see what is happening here. Again, as I said, McCarthy knew that Gaetz was in the power position. Gaetz knew that Gaetz was in the power position. In fact, Gaetz asked for so many concessions before he finally agreed to vote in favor of McCarthy’s speakership that Gaetz said, listen, I’ve actually run out of things to ask for. Take a look.

I am grateful that Speaker designate McCarthy has been so receptive to each and every change that we have demanded. And Sean, we’re at the stage right now where I’m running outta stuff to ask for. I mean, read the bills, have a balanced budget, have a border plan. Kevin McCarthy is agreeing to all these things. And again, it’s never been about him. It’s been about draining the swamp, making this a more honest, transparent, open place. And we may have a few finishing touches. We may be able to get this resolved tonight, but I am proud of the entire Republican conference, and we’re gonna be stronger and more unified and more able to hold this Administration accountable because we have had these early moments of sorting things out.

I actually love that, that he admitted, you know, I was gonna keep asking for things, but I just ran out of things to ask for and I got everything that I could possibly squeeze out of this. A lot of people are asking who was behind this, right? Because Gaetz was the primary holdout. Gaetz was the one who was doing the negotiating. Gaetz was the one making the demands. But this was masterminded by Congressman Chip Roy, who played a silent leadership role in the background of this coalition of 20. So that does not go unnoticed and kudos for Chip Roy. So in this rules package that the House is supposed to adopt, here are some of the demands that these 20 now because McCarthy was forced to concede them, have gotten inserted into this rules package. The first one is a church style committee.

Now, the church committee, as you remember, revealed CIA malfeasance back in the day. That’s like the MK Ultra experiments that the CIA performed on people. Completely unethical, completely illegal. And a church style committee is now part of the House Rules package. But this one would investigate the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI. There’s actually a really funny tweet I saw about this on Twitter. A guy by the name of Wade Miller. I’m just gonna quote his tweet exactly. He goes, honest question. Given how much work Congressman Dan Bishop did to advance the concept of creating a church style committee, should we call it the Bishop Committee from here on out? My vote is yes. Not only is that puntastic I mean, you can’t get any better from that. Of course we could. Of course we should. So some of the other things on this list are McCarthy agreed to have a term limit.

Bill brought to vote, McCarthy agreed to keeping pieces of legislation bills to a single subject, so no omnibus situations. McCarthy agreed to have a minimum of 72 hours for members of Congress to read bills before they are brought to the floor for a vote. McCarthy agreed to bring the Texas border plan to the floor for a vote. Now, the Texas Border plan is some of the stuff we were talking about earlier. It’s infrastructure stuff. So like a border wall, it’s fixing border patrol enforcement policies to allow border patrol to actually, you know, patrol our border. It forces the executive branch to enforce laws that are on the book and it targets cartels in criminal organizations. This will actually be brought to the floor of the House. This is incredibly important because it’s one of the strategies I’ve always advocated for in Congress that everything possible be brought for a vote so that we, the people can see where our Congress members, whether they’re Republican or Democrat, where they stand on this.

Imagine Democrats in the House of Representatives voting against this. This is not gonna look good to their constituents, who see the flood of illegal aliens, the drugs, the cartels, the trafficking across our border. That’s part of the House Rules package. Also, part of the House rules Package is an end to COVID mandates and an end to funding for COVID mandates and end to emergency funding. Part of the House rules package will be budget bills that stop increasing the debt ceiling. And this is perhaps one of the most important things of all. This is the mechanism of accountability, because you can make all these promises. McCarthy could make all these promises, but how do you hold him to it? Unless you trust him as an individual, unless you think he’s a gentleman who will keep his word? Well, he’s a politician. So a mechanism of enforcement is appropriate.

There’s included in this House rules package a Jeffersonian motion, which means that a single member of Congress, a congressman or a congresswoman, can make a motion to remove the Speaker and it will be brought to a vote. One person. That’s pretty significant because one disgruntled person, and there’s a referendum on the whole speakership. Lauren Boebert at one point mentioned that a fair tax might be brought to the floor to vote. There was also some mentions of three Freedom Caucus members being seated on the Rules Committee. Not sure if those things are included or not. We have two different members of the Freedom Caucus Congressman Clyde and Congressman Scott Perry, who each tweeted a photo or a graphic of what these concessions were that McCarthy gave to these 20 members, what will be included in the House rules package.

You can see those on the screen. They’re essentially the same. A bunch of the stuff that I just listed, that one’s from Congressman Clyde. And the next one is from Congressman Scott Perry. They include all of the same things. So a couple things. We aren’t out of the woods yet. I know I’ve said, holy cow, I can’t believe they pulled this off. I can’t believe they stood strong in the face of all this pressure, pressure from even people within their own caucus, pressure from President Trump, pressure, from the media pressure from almost everyone. They stood strong. They did not cave, they did not bend a knee. And they rode this out. They did it. They actually fought back. And before we even get to I guess the rain on the parade here, I’d wanna just say, this is how you fight.

You and I have said for how long now that we want a Republican Party that has fire in their belly. We don’t want squishes, we don’t want establishment figures. We don’t want timid little bunny rabbits in Congress. This is how you ensure that when you are in the minority, which Republicans are going to be sometimes. We are right now, if you consider the fact that the Senate’s controlled by the Left, the White House is controlled by the Left, and we have a shred of a majority in the House. We are in the minority overall. This is how you ensure that the minority gets a vote, gets a voice by actually refusing to cave when your principles are on the line. And by the way, it also shows us exactly who was not fighting, who was not willing to demand these concessions. I’m talking about Crenshaw.

I’m talking about Marjorie Taylor Green. Very important for the American people to acknowledge who was willing to stand strong and who was not willing to fight this. There were some Republicans, especially in the pundit class, who called what happened, those videos that we saw before where Rogers looked like he was going to attack Gaetz, called this unseemly, called all these arguments a degradation, disrespectful to the chambers of the House of Representatives. And I dissent, I object. I completely disagree with the premise of that argument. First of all, the House Sergeant of Arms is tasked with making sure that the members of the House of Representatives and their staff and visitors and dignitaries and all of that are safe. But the history of the House Sergeant at Arms this sergeant at Arms was originally tasked because back in the day, members of the House of Representatives would bring their guns and bring their hunting dogs to Congress and they would get in really, really heated fights, really heated arguments and debates.

And that’s a good thing. That’s a really good thing. I mean, even before the history of the United States, this is a very parliament-like thing. Think about in Britain, the House of Commons. What do they do? They stand there and they shout their faces off at each other. And that is how you make law. This very intense, very loud, very aggressive debate. That’s the proper way to make law. This is a good, good thing. So this is the opposite of unseemly. This is what I wanna see every single time a contentious issue is brought to the floor of the house. I wanna see it. I wanna see a fight, not a physical fight. I wanna see it fought the way that this was fought. I wanna see every detail and every nuanced milked for every drop that’s in it, in order to get the best deal possible for the American people.

Which is what these rebels did. However, this is the slightly rain-on-the-parade part. This rules package hasn’t actually passed yet. The vote is supposed to happen today, but this rules package needs to pass. So the question is, will it? Because McCarthy can claim to make all of those concessions, but he’s not entirely in control of inserting all of these provisions that he promised to the Freedom Caucus into the package. His entire caucus has to vote on it. The entire Congress votes on it, but the Republicans are in the majority, so they should be the ones that okay it. But there are some moderate Republicans right now, who are voicing opposition to some of these provisions that McCarthy conceded to the Freedom Caucus to put in the rules package. Two in particular, we have Congressman Tony Gonzalez from Texas.

This is what he said this weekend. He said if this insurgency caucus, that’s what he was calling the Freedom Caucus, decides to put an anti-immigrant legislation on the floor and masquerade it as border security policy, that is not going to fly. Just a note for you voters in Texas. You might wanna take a look at Tony Gonzalez and decide whether you want him to be representing you in Congress because he doesn’t seem that conservative to me. He says, I mean, that’s essentially tipping his hands saying that he doesn’t wanna vote for this rules package. Congresswoman Nancy Mace also said that she is on the fence about whether to vote for this. Republicans could only lose four of their caucus, four votes of their caucus, just like for the speakership election. Four votes in order to cause this rules package to be derailed.

So what will happen, if that happens? What happens if four moderate members of the Republican Party or leftist members of the Republican Party decide not to vote in favor of this? What happens if none of the concessions that McCarthy agreed to in exchange, essentially, for the votes of those Freedom Caucus members for his speakership? What happens if none of these concessions become reality in the rules package? Well, the answer to that is actually another question. It’s what will McCarthy do? What will McCarthy do? So, as an individual in politics, when you’re a politician, you are expected to act as a a person of character, right? Everyone across both sides of the aisle hate hypocrites, hate people that abuse power when they’re in politics. And we expect our politicians to act with character. But what does that mean?

What is character in politics? Well, character in politics is twofold. It’s principles and it’s promises. Do you have principles and will you fight for them? Will you stand for them when they’re challenged? And will you fulfill the promises that you have made to the constituents who voted for you to represent them in Congress? Character is made of two things, principles and promises. A key part of the second part of character, the promises part, is keeping your word. So McCarthy promised these 20 members of the Freedom Caucus that he would include these provisions in the House rules package. Now if he made that promise and then members of his own caucus decide to vote against that rules package because it’s too conservative for them, what does McCarthy do? Well, he has two choices. He can either make good on that promise on his own and bring those things to the floor and create this church style committee and vote on border security and vote on term limits because he gave his word that he would do so, or he can choose to violate his promise.

My guess, in this situation, is that McCarthy will make good on his promise, even if there is not the mechanism in the rules package that requires him to do so, I think he will. The second part of this is that it is a very, very good thing when leaders in Congress, leaders in politics, leaders in our parties, leaders in our party, when their political self-interest is tied to fulfilling the policies that their base wants. Meaning McCarthy is speaker for two years if the Jeffersonian motion isn’t actually included in the rules package and one Congress member can’t say, hey, I want a motion to vote on him, a motion of no confidence. Even if that’s not possible, even if that mechanism of accountability is absent, McCarthy wants the power that he has. He’s worked his entire career to ascend to the most powerful position in the House of Representatives in the Lower House of the United States Congress.

He wants to stay in this position of power, and the only way that he stays in this position of power is if these rebels, these 20 Republicans in the Freedom Caucus, are happy with the job he’s done. So his political self-interest, his interest in keeping his job and keeping his power, is intricately tied to the interest of the Freedom Caucus. This is exactly how it should be. This is actually, to zoom out here, this is exactly what happened with President Trump and the pro-life issue. There are some people that say President Trump had a true conversion of the heart. He was pro-abortion and then he became pro-life. That’s fine. I’m not here to dispute that. I don’t know what’s in Donald Trump’s heart. He seemed sincere, but the absoluteness of his pro-life position, of Trump’s pro-life position, was tied to the fact that he needed absolute loyalty from the pro-life movement.

So his political self-interest was tied to a policy desire of his base, and it worked perfectly. He was the most pro-life president in the history of our country. He appointed pro-life Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. What more could the pro-life base ask for? This is what we’re seeing right now with Speaker McCarthy. Character is twofold in politics, principles and promises. Principles, we’ll have to see with McCarthy, but promises he will keep this promise because it’s in his political self-interest to serve the Freedom Caucus members who are serving the political interests of us, their base. Now that being said, I said at the beginning of the show, a little congressional insider information here, and a congressional insider tells me that the Republican caucus, even these moderate Republicans who are sort of badmouthing this rules package right now are just doing so for attention, and that the Republican caucus expects the rules package to pass, including the provisions that McCarthy promised to the Freedom Caucus, that from an insider in the U.S. House of Representatives. We’ll see if that comes to pass. But something tells me that it will because these revels, holy cow, they pulled it off, and our Congress and our country will be better for it. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is The Liz Wheeler Show.