Speaker 1: Another Republican is quitting and it is now putting the House majority in
danger. This is truly fascinating because it is another disaster of their own making. They lost,
George Santos after he was expelled. We are seeing individually, members of the
House resign. And the latest is Republican Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin, chair of the China
Select Committee. He is bailing out, quitting on April 19th of this year. When he leaves, this is
going to leave House Republicans with a one vote margin. Remember, they won the House in 2022, but
that slim majority to begin with has been becoming slimmer and slimmer and slimmer. There's going to
be a special election for the seat formerly held by Brian Higgins in New York, expected to remain
in the hands of Democrats, Gallagher saying he planned to retire at the end of the term,
but now he is leaving more quickly. And again, it's a similar situation to others that we've
seen. He had discussions with his family, he says. He coordinated with House Republican leadership,
and this is the time that he determined he is going to leave. He was considered a rising star
in the Republican Party, declined to run against Senator Tammy Baldwin over on the Senate side.
And, now we have a situation where it is going to go to 217 for Republicans. Ken Buck, of course,
in Colorado, as we discussed last week or the week before, going to be, resigning as well.
So what is this going to? Do when it comes to the majority? Well, it leaves zero room for dissent.
When you have a majority that is this slim, any dissent can mean you don't pass the bill. It's
that simple. And one of the real questions as we move forward is what is a speaker of the House,
Mike Johnson, going to do about this when it comes to from here through the election? Is it
going to be prevent votes from coming forward, putting the House essentially at a standstill,
unless you really are so confident that you have the votes that you need. You also have
a major risk of defection, where Democrats who control the white House control the Senate and
don't quite control the House can now start to go to some of the more reasonable members of the
House. You only need a few at this point. You go to just a few members of the house and say,
hey, what would it take for you to join us on this particular issue or on that particular issue? And
it actually endangers and dangers from the point of Republicans, obviously, it's a great thing for
Democrats. It endangers Republicans in the sense that just a few members of the House could end up
granting Democrats significant wins that then can be used by Democrats to justify their elections
in November. So this is interesting in a number of different ways, not the least of which it was
supposed to be a red wave in 2022. Well, they fell further behind in terms of control of the Senate.
They did squeak out control of the House. But between Buc and Santos and forthcoming Gallagher
and other problems in the House, their practical majority is going to be almost zero. I love to
say sometimes it couldn't happen to nicer people, but these are generally not nice people. At least
not so far. Not in so far as their legislative priorities go. And if indeed they get crushed in
November, which I'm not predicting, it could happen. They could get crushed in November,
although I don't know. And we all need to get out and vote. It would be deservingly. So. Santos says
he's running again. We've got the Lauren Boebert situation. I mean, this is really wacked stuff
that's going on. If anybody deserves to lose, it's Republicans who squeak out barely a majority,
almost lose it, have no policy platform on which they are running and may end up losing everything
after claiming we're going to win it all. Much of this is top down, so it will really depend on who
gets out to vote for Trump, who stays home, and what portion of Republicans are motivated to go
out and say, Trump's not for me. I'm voting Biden. We've heard from some of them. We'll hear from
another one later on today. So let's take a quick break. Packed program. Much more coming right up