Another Dem Hoax Unravels + Rep. Steve Scalise Joins the Progrum

Summary

Ruthless Podcast Episode Summary:

"Another Dem Hoax Unravels + Rep. Steve Scalise Joins the Progrum"
Date: December 5, 2025
Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook
Special Guest: Rep. Steve Scalise (House Majority Leader)

---

Overview

This episode of the Ruthless Podcast offers a classic blend of sharp conservative commentary, news analysis, and irreverent humor. The hosts dissect a recent Washington Post story they label as a “Democratic hoax,” lambast government “boondoggles” like the USPS electric truck project, and roast media missteps over Morning Joe’s absentee hosts. A major portion is devoted to interviewing Rep. Steve Scalise, who provides exclusive updates on House GOP priorities, including healthcare, higher education NIL reforms, and strategic outlooks heading into the midterms.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The “Democratic Hoax” & Venezuela Drug Boat Story

Main Topic: The Washington Post’s report on a U.S. military operation targeting drug boats from Venezuela.

• The hosts denounce the Washington Post for sensationalizing an incident where SEAL Team 6 engaged foreign drug traffickers.
• They ridicule claims, reported as "blind sourced" in the Post, that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered unlawful strikes—alleging a campaign to paint him as a “war criminal.”
• Big picture: The hosts argue the vast majority of Americans support such military actions against drug smugglers, seeing them as acts of war. They accuse Beltway insiders of pushing irrelevant legal “technicalities” and failing to grasp public sentiment.
• Noted is a lack of confirmation from other major outlets—NYT, WSJ, AP—fueling the “hoax” framing.
• Key quote (Holmes):

  "If you’re intentionally coming into this country, try to harm our people, we’re gonna react to that. I don’t know why that’s a hard concept for people." (04:59)

• Michael Duncan’s recurring theme: the left’s attempt to “blur black and white issues” via “woke nonsense.”

  "Everyone is either a colonizer, a victim—and these are just, you know, these poor, downtrodden cartel members." (05:10)

• Martha Raddatz is cited as an unlikely but credible journalist who helped clarify details—affirming the military’s actions were legal (15:00–16:00).
• Ashbrook brings up the broader consequences:

  "This also funds a multinational human trafficking operation and organized crime in this country that is destroying communities." (20:49)

2. Media Critique: Morning Joe & MSNBC’s Absenteeism

Segment: Running joke about “nobody watching” Morning Joe, noting paid hosts’ constant absences.

• Free Beacon’s reporting: Scarborough and Brzezinski together hosted only 70 of 124 shows in 6 months.
• Willie Geist, regular fill-in, is dubbed “the real hero”—the butt of workplace comedy.
• Widespread laughter over the “truancy” of television’s political elite.
• Hosts mock MSNBC’s rebranding to “MS Now” and the irrelevance of its programming.

3. USPS Electric Vehicle Boondoggle

Segment: Biting sarcasm about the U.S. Postal Service’s failed $3 billion attempt to electrify its fleet.

• Only 612 trucks built (instead of 35,000), costing ~$5 million each.
• Hilarious visual descriptions:

  "Dr. Seuss would have [these] driving around Whoville." (32:18)
  "It’s got a five head, not a forehead." (32:08)

• Postal Service staff are roasted for customer service and inefficiency, especially around holidays.
• Joni Ernst’s critique and Hunter Biden jokes over contracting are referenced ("Hunter Biden is a major stakeholder in the glass company," 38:29).

4. Listener Q&A: “What Criminal Will Democrats Defend Next?”

A running gag: Audience replies range from “Disney Adults” to “Charles Manson was misunderstood.”

• Notable, tongue-in-cheek speculation that Dems may eventually defend Jeffrey Epstein.

5. Olivia Nuzzi Book Rollout and Media Ethics

Segment: Extended lampooning of journalist Olivia Nuzzi’s attempt at a confessional memoir.

• Nuzzi’s interviews (with Tim Miller) are panned as evasive and self-pitying when faced with tough questions about her conduct during a political sex scandal.
• Key quote (Josh Holmes):

  "She decided to roll it all back out in her own words and try to sell a book called American Canto, which is this big depiction of all of her experiences." (47:48)

• Nuzzi accused of embodying the “modern journalist”—self-important, lacking integrity or self-awareness.
• Ashbrook quotes the NYT’s negative review:

  "Amid the noise around Nuzzi... American Kanto itself drops with a soft, disappointing thud... not a tell-all, not yet a memoir, chapterless and scattershot. I mean, that's being generous." (58:07)

---

Interview Segment: Steve Scalise (House Majority Leader)

Starts: [63:13]

Topics Covered:

• Holiday Congressional Tempers: Scalise jokes about the necessity of Christmas break, referencing Schumer’s penchant for end-of-year crises.

  "He might not like his family; I want to be home with my family during Christmas." (63:42)

• NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) Reform in College Athletics:
  • Lawless “wild west” undercuts NCAA governance; bill proposes restoring schools’ self-regulation, student protections, and guardrails for agents.
  • The bill, supported by all major conferences and US Olympic Committee, is close to passage but faces Dem opposition on making athletes employees.
  • Scalise: “Putting structure in NIL… is something everybody wants.” (64:59)
• GOP Legislative Accomplishments & 2026 Outlook:
  • Retention and expansion of the GOP House majority depends on forward-looking “kitchen table” issues (affordability, healthcare, education options).
  • Scalise touts Trump’s “best salesman” status:

    "He would call five people an hour before the vote that were on the fence. And all five of them...voted yes." (74:20)

• Healthcare:
  • Upcoming "breaking news": Real plans to lower premiums and break Obamacare’s monopoly, increase healthcare choice, price transparency, HSA flexibility.
  • “Imagine if you said that [Obamacare subsidy] money can now be flexible to go anywhere and everybody’s going to compete for your business." (81:02)
• Energy and Regulatory Reform:
  • Enthusiasm about bipartisan permitting reform to lower construction and energy costs, speed up infrastructure, and counter predatory litigation.
• Redistricting & the Midterms:
  • Dismisses redistricting panic; expects a slight GOP net gain due to Dems overreaching and “leaving working people behind.”
• School Choice:
  • New federal tax credits for low-income parental choice in education; challenges Dem governors to opt in.
  • Scalise: "Low-income parents are going to finally start looking around going, 'Whoa, wait a minute, I voted for that Democrat 18 times. They're now stopping my kid from getting a better education.' Now it's personal." (90:52)
• Overall Tone: Scalise stays relentlessly forward-looking—with Holmes praising his resistance to “resting on laurels.”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Josh Holmes (re: Cartel Engagement):
  "If you’re intentionally coming into this country, try to harm our people, we’re gonna react to that. I don't know why that's a hard concept for people." (04:59)

• Michael Duncan (on “woke” coverage):
  "These poor, downtrodden cartel members... just trying to earn an honest buck. Poisoning Americans." (05:28)

• Martha Raddatz via ABC, validating military operation:
  "A JAG officer was also giving legal advice. So again... the two survivors climbed back onto the boat after the initial strike… it was determined they were still in the fight and valid targets." (15:18)

• John Ashbrook (on “cartel” reporting):
  "This also funds a multinational human trafficking operation and organized crime... destroying communities." (20:49)

• On Morning Joe absenteeism:
  "One out of every three episodes? Joe Scarborough’s not on that show. Dude, wouldn’t you love… I’d love to try to make that argument." (27:07)

• USPS electric truck roast:
  "That thing doesn’t have a forehead. It is a five head." (32:08)
  "It's like something that Dr. Seuss would have driving around Whoville." (32:18)

• Olivia Nuzzi book panning:
  "I'm writing... about how I felt privately. About my private reaction, how I felt privately. Right?" (52:08)
  (Hosts groan and mock the non-answer.)
  "She spent a whole page telling everyone she’s dumb as hell. And there’s 300 more of them." (62:32)

• Steve Scalise (on Trump & legislating):
  "He is our best salesman, he’s our best closer, because he cares about getting his country back on track." (74:22)

• Scalise (on looming House priorities):
  "It’s not something you see today because it takes effect next year. Let’s wait till those governors have that choice to make. I know where my governor, Jeff Landry, can speak for—we gonna let those parents have that choice." (90:52)

---

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Dem Drug Boat Hoax segment: 02:12–22:31
• Morning Joe/MSNBC absentee humor: 22:43–28:39
• USPS Electric Vehicle Boondoggle: 30:05–40:05
• Olivia Nuzzi discussion: 46:18–62:37
• Steve Scalise Interview: 63:13–91:58
• Closing thoughts & QOTD: 91:58–End

---

Conclusion & Tone

The episode is signature Ruthless: fast-paced, breezily irreverent, and deeply skeptical of mainstream media, woke ideology, and government waste. Holmes, Smug, Duncan, and Ashbrook banter with inside-joke familiarity while delivering sharp political analysis. Steve Scalise’s interview injects substance—his focus on policy detail and pragmatic optimism shines throughout. Even while skewering political opponents and media figures, the show keeps things lively and engaging, with plenty of zingers for the regulars and newcomers alike.

---

For further comedic takes, running gags, and the next Q&A, subscribe to the Ruthless Variety Progrum—you won’t want to miss the inside jokes about Disney Adults, failed EV projects, or the next media meltdown!

Transcript

[Josh Holmes]

First of all, there's a democratic hoax. I don't know if you guys knew this.

[Unidentified Caller]

No.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, they have. There's a tendency.

[John Ashbrook]

They're making stuff up.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Must be the first time.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, no, it might be.

[Michael Duncan]

And it just really bothers me is that they try to like obfuscate and blur black and white issue. If you bring poison into the United States designed to murder Americans, guess what? You're gonna die first. Yeah, I love that poison.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't think this is an issue that Americans are confused about.

[John Ashbrook]

You can't just look at the drug trafficking that's coming in from Venezuela and be like, oh well, we're stopp. No, we're stopping a multinational criminal cartel that is doing violence in our streets.

[Michael Duncan]

But I would hope that the Washington Post, with the zeal that they had in trying to lie about Secretary Hagseth, of trying to paint him as a war criminal, I wish they would go back, offer a correction and thank him for the American lives he saved.

[Olivia Nuzzy]

America stands at the ready to build faster, achieve more. The future won't wait. And TC Energy is moving forward confidently connecting communities, industries, nations here and abroad. At TC Energy, we deliver the North American natural gas and energy that powers communities across the US to aim higher, grow stronger and go further. TC Energy Energy Connected. Find out more at TC Energy.com Some.

[Steve Scalise]

Things stand the test of time, like America's farmers. And they deserve high quality, built to last machines with technology that reduces inputs and saves them money and time. That's why John Deere is investing billions in American factories and launching new tools to help customers repair their machines to keep building for their future, empowering our customers, building America. Because our nation counts on our farmers and John Deere is proud. They can count on us. Paid for by John Deere.

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

[Michael Duncan]

Keep the faith, hold the line and own the lids.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

It's time for our main event.

[Josh Holmes]

Fun Time Friday. Welcome back to the ruthless Variety program. I am Josh Holmes along with comfortably smug Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook. Left to right, across your radio dial. We got a lot in store for you here in this episode. First of all, there's a democratic hoax. I don't know if you guys knew this.

[Unidentified Caller]

No.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, they have. There's a tendency.

[John Ashbrook]

They're making stuff up.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Must be the first time.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. No, it might be. Well, it turns out there's. It has some import. We're going to get into that. It deals with drug boats that we've now gotten to the bottom of and know that the initial Stories were completely ridiculous.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, they're certainly at the bottom.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Thank God. Nicely done.

[Josh Holmes]

Always. Yeah, for sure. So we got that. We've got some lightning stuff. There's fun to be had here. We have some variety. That is fantastic. And then we have the majority Leader of the House of Representatives involved.

[Michael Duncan]

We've been on, like, a hot. We've been on a hot streak with the guests.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. Steve Scalise is here, and we have a lot of. Look, there's substantive stuff. There's news to be made here on the program. We make news in addition to having fun times on Fridays. So you got a lot of stuff coming at you in addition to the fact that. Wait till you get a load of the United States Postal Service and the vehicles. Remember this big thing in the Biden administration where they were gonna spend billions on electric vehicles because they're like, wow, the only way to save. Save the environment is obviously to make the entire postal fleet electric. It didn't work out. It didn't work out.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

I can't wait for that one.

[John Ashbrook]

And we have a nuzzy update, Olivia. Nuzzy.

[Josh Holmes]

And there's a nuzzy update.

[Michael Duncan]

Just when you thought you could listen to an episode with your kids.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

We'Ll.

[Josh Holmes]

Give you a fair warning it's gonna be a bit. So sit back, relax, and enjoy. Let's start with the hoax. So the Washington Post this very week, reported breathlessly on their interpretation of events of the United States military engaging drug boats that were coming across from Venezuela into the United States. You know, this has been quite an issue. We have tens of thousands of Americans who are killed every year by not just drugs in general, but also fentanyl in particular. And so this administration, unlike pretty much every other administration dating back to, like, Ronald Reagan, decided, like, we're not gonna do that anymore. Like, we're gonna put an end to that. It is an act of war when you kill American citizens.

[Michael Duncan]

100%.

[Josh Holmes]

I like that.

[Michael Duncan]

I love it.

[Josh Holmes]

I like that. I mean, if you're intentionally coming into this country, try to harm our people, we're gonna react to that. I don't know why that's a hard concept for people.

[Michael Duncan]

I think, again, it goes back to this, like, woke nonsense that the left has pushed on the American public for well over a decade of, like, oh, everyone is either a colonializer, a victim, and these are just, you know, these poor, downtrodden cartel members.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

Are just trying to earn an honest buck. Poisoning Americans. Come on. You know, like, the fact that they're trying to say, won't Someone please think of the narco terrorists bringing barrels of fentanyl into the country when a handful of this can kill like 50,000Americans.

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

When they're bringing barrels over, they made.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

It very clear they're not trafficking it. They're transporting it from one country to another. That's not trafficking in Democrats definition. We talked about that yesterday.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. And it just really bothers me is that they try to, like, obfuscate and blur black and white issue. If you bring poison into the United States designed to murder Americans, guess what? You're gonna die first. Yeah. I love that policy.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't think this is an issue that Americans are confused about, but it's a perfect example of how things get trapped in the beltway. They're like, well, here, this is a legalese explanation as to how we're dealing with this. Well, maybe there's a war crime involved and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, I don't know. Those people are trying to kill us. They killed them first.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Yep.

[Josh Holmes]

It seems like a good idea. But anyway, this is how the Washington Post started this whole thing.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Oh, boy.

[Josh Holmes]

As two men clung to a stricken burning ship targeted by SEAL Team 6, the Joint Special Operations Commander followed the Defense Secretary's order to leave no survivors. They go on to explain. Two men. Right. Just a couple of. It's like the Maryland man.

The alleged human trafficker who was just. Is a Maryland man. I mean, he's just an Orioles guy. You know, he's just hanging out.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

You know, he just is a human.

[Michael Duncan]

Trafficking, Human trafficking guy.

[John Ashbrook]

The Washington Post would make you think you're watching Deadliest Catch. These guys are just out there fishing.

[Josh Holmes]

Right. The Defense Secretary, Pete Hagseth, gave a spoken directive, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. Quote, the order was to kill everybody. One of them said. And you always, always, always have to be skeptical when you're dealing with defense or intelligence, when you're talking about blind sourcing on operations, because inevitably, there are people who have access to grind, who are careers, who have, you know, they were there because of a Democrat at some point, and they just sort of embedded themselves within. And if you feel the need to be quoted, even on background in a publication like the Washington Post, it is a direct violation of the ethos of the military in and of itself.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Like, it takes. What it takes to get to that point is an incredible breach of trust and breach of.

The hierarchy of the military, starting with the commander in chief.

[Michael Duncan]

Yep.

[Josh Holmes]

And so, like, look, there has been a lot of Episodes over the years where somebody has spoken up about things that have happened that we're good. But when you're dealing with like drug boat operations and somebody's just like spilling out to the Washington Post, you gotta be kinda skeptical about what the motivations are of the quoted. And what I found so interesting about this particular story is the reported this, I think was on like a Monday. Is that right? I don't know. It was early this week and nobody corroborated it. New York Times wasn't on it, Wall Street Journal wasn't on it, the Associated Press wasn't on it. And then a whole host of lefty outfits who would love love nothing more weren't on the original confirmation. The only thing that they would report out was like, well, the Washington Post reported.

[Michael Duncan]

That's the thing is like, typically when a big story like this, just like you say, when the big story like this breaks, all the other journals are racing to their sources to be like, can you confirm? Okay, so then they can get their own original statement. We can independently confirm that. When everyone else is like, the Washington Post said this and it hangs out there for a while, it's starting to get dangerous.

[Josh Holmes]

And Johnny, tell me how this works. But my understanding is that when, like, the New York Times doesn't have this first piece, they're trying to confirm it and then advance the story to get to a point where it's their own story. Like, there's new details involved. So when they don't, it's kind of a conspicuous absence.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

It's incredibly conspicuous. And I think it was the New York Times that sort of came over the top of the Post and reported the facts, which, again, you do not expect from the New York Times.

[Michael Duncan]

No.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

And I'm a little bit surprised. And I know that you guys will give me a hard time for this because I'm the guy here who's more willing to believe that newspapers want to get right and that the Washington Post was headed in the right direction. But every once in a while, even though they seem to have the best ideas in mind now that they're owned by Jeff Bezos and they're trying to do things a little bit more middle.

[John Ashbrook]

Of the road, Boo, hiss.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Every once in a while you see a story like this and it reminds you of your childhood. Reminds you of standing in the grocery store with your mom and you look at the counter and you see that you remember that newspaper. Weekly World News.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. Like crazy tabloids like Bat Boy found in Caves.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Howard Hughes brought back to life.

[John Ashbrook]

All of that stuff.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Every once in a while you open the Washington Post and you're like, what's the difference? Yeah, this story is the perfect example.

[Josh Holmes]

National Enquirer style stuff. Yeah. So the big takeaway from that initial story was some current and former U.S. officials and law of war experts. Okay, so these are the law of war.

Law of war experts have said the Pentagon's lethal campaign, which has killed more than 80 people to date, is unlawful and may expose those directly involved to future prosecution. So what they're doing, for those of you who don't follow the ins and outs of Washington vernacular, is accusing the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, of a war crime.

[Michael Duncan]

That's an insane thing to do.

[Josh Holmes]

That's what they're doing. And recall, this whole thing is about drug boats coming out of Venezuela. And what they're saying is, and this is where this thing gets super hairy for me, is that they're saying that not only is the initial strike unlawful and they have concerns about that, but they're not addressing that. The details that came out in this report were that there was a couple of survivors from the initial strike and the fact that there was a subsequent strike that eliminated the target was a war crime. Now, try making that argument to the average American. It seems to me like you either buy something or you don't, in that people who are poisoning and attempting to kill Americans with shipments of drugs into America is an act of war or it's not. The administration believes that it is. Democrats believe that it's not.

Take that for what it is. That's a surface level argument. But if it's an act of war, then when you're firing a fucking missile at a boat, the attempt is to eliminate the target.

Whether or not it takes two shots or one is immaterial to the argument. It's a threat or it's not. And they start parsing this out by saying, like, well, we understand that we can probably not win the argument about whether or not this is a threat to America. We'll have that at a later date. What now we're concerned about is whether the Secretary of War took a subsequent action that could have preserved lives of drug traffickers in this case, but he didn't. And so therefore, it's a war crime. I don't know if any of you have been on the Internet for, like, more than two seconds, but like the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There was tons of videos of strikes that were happening on militant targets attempting to kill Americans. It's not like one shot and then you just wait and see what happens. It's war or it's not. It's a threshold question. Right. But they're trying to hang this up on. What do they call them? They call them.

Experts of international war law. International war law.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

I believe their argument would be.

That in the law of war, they're shipwrecked at that point, and so therefore they're not lawful targets. But as we found in subsequent reporting, that's not exactly the case.

[Josh Holmes]

So Martha Raddatz shows up again like you've seen her.

[Michael Duncan]

That's the thing is, like, this is not exactly someone who's a fan of the administration coming out and clarifying. No, Martha Raddatz hasn't been like, oh, you know, let's go try. Like, you wouldn't expect her to come out and be like, oh, we gotta clarify this a bit, folks.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Longtime established voice in the legislature.

[Josh Holmes]

Exactly. Her appearance alone validates that 72 hour gap when everybody was like, I don't know if this story has what they say that they have, but when she shows up, she lays it to rest. CLIP 1 and tonight, new information. According to a source familiar with the incident, the two survivors climbed back onto the boat after the initial strike. They were believed to be potentially in communication with others and salvaging some of the drugs. Because of that, it was determined they were still in the fight and valid targets. A JAG officer was also giving legal advice. So again, David, that video will be key. And Admiral Bradley will be on the Hill tomorrow behind closed doors.

It's almost as like they had this buttoned up. Yeah, there was a JAG officer involved. They were trying to reconstitute drag in other drug traffickers to salvage the drugs and potentially bring in some kind of a salvation unit to what it is that they were doing. Kind of like when you're at war.

[Michael Duncan]

And can I just say something like, you know, a lot has to be said for the fact of how professionally run this operation. And it seems like this military has been in this administration where you're dealing with a missile strike on some narco terrorists and they've got like jags live on the horn offering advice in real time of what to do in case anything happens. Like they are ready for any situation, clearly. And then you see that, like they hit the boat. The surviving drug trafficking guys are like on the radio being like, yo, we're trying to get the drugs and keep the mission rolling. And they could be like, not anymore. Like, we should be proud of the folks we've got in this military, not trying to put them in jail like the Washington Post.

[Josh Holmes]

It's a mission. And again, you can have an argument about whether the mission should exist. You can have an argument about whether or not trafficking drugs that kill Americans, I would say intentionally, in many cases, constitutes an act of war. This administration has interpreted it as an act of war, and they are engaging it thusly. Right. But when you have determined that something is an act of war, you eliminate the target.

Whether it takes one shot or two. That's what you do. This is the only argument. I've said this for years. The political class in D.C. is so far behind the arguments that. That the American people have. You know, it went all the way back to my childhood and watching the Bill Clinton situation with Monica Lewinsky when all that came out and everybody at home was like, oh, I know what went down.

[Michael Duncan]

Yep.

[Josh Holmes]

You know, and he's like, oh, what's the definition of his.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

And everybody, every husband and wife, every family were like, oh, dude, I know what went down. Right. He doesn't want to say it. He doesn't want to say it in front of her, but I know what went down. And then we spent six years, like, litigating that whole situation as if there was like, you know, technical, legal, like.

[Michael Duncan]

We need, as a pruder report, we need the film back into the room.

[Steve Scalise]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

It's like, dude, I don't know. The guy got a blowjob in the Oval Office.

[Michael Duncan]

My God, there's children listening. Sorry, we haven't gotten to the nuzzy segment yet.

[Josh Holmes]

We haven't gotten to the nuzzy. But you know what my point is? But it happens in each and every scandal where they've gotta find. They gotta hang a technicality on an otherwise perfectly clear thing. Now, if you think that the US Military has absolutely no business in the situation of protecting the American citizens from drug trafficking, you're gonna have a different opinion than this administration does. It's a worthy opinion, one worth litigating. And I think that's something that will play out in court at some point. I happen to believe this is exactly what needs to be done.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

But.

[Josh Holmes]

But it doesn't matter whether or not your first shot took six of eight out, and you had two terrorists that were sitting there willing to reconstitute their mission, and it took a second shot to eliminate the threat. The point was to eliminate the threat.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Right, Right.

[Josh Holmes]

The shame of it is, am I missing something here? Like, that's the way that most of us process this thing.

[Michael Duncan]

I would hope and they won't. But I would hope that the Washington Post, with the zeal that they had in trying to lie about Secretary Hagseth, of trying to paint him as a war criminal, I wish they would go back, offer a correction, and thank him for the American lives he saved. Because if those barrels of fentanyl didn't happen. Nope. If those barrels of fentanyl get into this country, they do what every one of these fentanyl doses that come into this country have done is they'd kill Americans. They've killed so many people. More Americans have been killed by fentanyl than every war since World War II combined.

[Josh Holmes]

And I think about that. I think about that. But I think that that point is one that resonates. Every single election cycle for the last 10 years. The American people have risen to the top to say, I have a friend, I have a family member, I have somebody I know in my community who is close to me die of fentanyl.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Yep.

[Josh Holmes]

In every single election cycle, you get these multibillion dollar bills that were like, well, now we've solved the crisis and nothing happens. And you've got an administration now that in trade deals, they're baking in, yeah, fentanyl stuff. They're doing this narco, anti narco trafficking stuff by actually, dude, you got to break some eggs to make a fucking omelet when it comes to stopping what amounts to a genocide of people, a generation in this country.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Like, it's hard to do.

[John Ashbrook]

And I think the thing that offends me the most about a lot of this reporting is how it decontextualizes the entire thing and sterilizes the drug trafficking into the United States is just like, oh, drugs are going in the United States. It's like, no. This also funds a multinational human trafficking operation. And organized crime in this country that is destroying communities.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

That is allowing foreign drug cartels to take over apartment complexes.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

And like, we had in, you know, the director of ICE in talking about, you know, tda, just like, all of the drug trafficking that they are doing in communities that is entirely funded by these operations. Like, you can't just look at the drug trafficking that's coming in from Venezuela and be like, oh, well, we're stopping drugs. No, we're stopping a multinational criminal cartel that is doing violence in our streets.

[Josh Holmes]

100%.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

That's 100%.

[Michael Duncan]

100%, dude.

[Josh Holmes]

And then you get to the back end of this and you get guys like Jack Reed, who was on our. We did the clip of him where he's twisting themselves into knots to try to explain why it is that this is concerning, but stopping drugs is not. And they're like, well, the guys driving the boats aren't the real problem.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, it's the market in the United States.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, well, it's a supply and demand issue. It's like, okay, well, might as well blame America.

[Michael Duncan]

That's the thing for that. It's the whole dumb woke colonizer versus the colonized whatever thing that this dynamic that left tries to create of like, no, Americans are the bad guys. America's bad. We're done with it. God bless Secretary Hegseth for killing these fucking people because they just bring barrels of poison in the country. They murder Americans and I'm glad they're dead.

[Josh Holmes]

Well said, smug. Coming up next, we're gonna have some yucks. We're gonna have some laughs. Much lighter than the first segment, although I think it was an important one. Fellas, Morning Joe, you familiar with that show?

[Michael Duncan]

Guys, remember that?

[Josh Holmes]

I'm unfamiliar. I watched it, I don't know, 15 years ago. I didn't know that. It's still kind of. I didn't know what their sets looked like. And I just was familiar with how they started it.

[Michael Duncan]

They're on Ms. Now, the rotting corpse zombie of msnbc.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, but it's been at least a decade. I mean that I'm not being hyperbolic. It's been at least a decade since I've tuned into that show. It turns out it's very different than it used to be. Morning Joe in maa. Not quite a full time job.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh no.

[Josh Holmes]

And our friends at the Free Beacon have highlighted some of this in a fantastic way. We got a super cut that you're going to definitely want to see right after this.

Why was the government shut down? Because big insurance greed knows no limits. The same insurance companies pocketing billions in profits were demanding billions more in taxpayer funded subsidies. Again putting millions of families at risk. Shutting down our government. Now, unless they get their billions, the big insurance companies are threatening to raise your premiums even more. Putting greed and profit before patients. It's time to hold them accountable.

Okay, so our good friends over at the Free Beacon, doing great work over there, I might add, always have. But I find their stuff to be very compelling. And they pick up on things that like, you know, frankly, the rest of us don't. Because who amongst us is watching Ms. Now? Yeah, well, it turns out that Morning Joe is a hobby for Mike and Joe.

[Michael Duncan]

Even the people who work at MSN now don't take it seriously.

[Josh Holmes]

It turns out Morning Joe hasn't had much Joe at all over the last several months, according to. Oh, really? Ms. Now. Yeah, as host Joe Scarborough and co host slash wife Mika Pruszynski, which by the way, that in and of itself is worth exploring at another time treated their flagship program like a hobby rather than a job racking up remarkable number of absences. A free Beacon analysis found Scarborough and Brzezinski were paid millions of dollars to host a show from a specifically built home studio in Florida. So last time I watched this thing, they were all in New York.

[Michael Duncan]

I think in Covid. They moved and they just Florida and had a studio built and they're just like, well, why would we go back?

[Josh Holmes]

Just never came back.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Nobody's watching anyway.

[Steve Scalise]

They're like.

[Michael Duncan]

Remote. It is. Anyway.

[Josh Holmes]

Check out this supercut clip too.

[Steve Scalise]

Welcome to Morning Joe on this Friday, June 27th.

[Michael Duncan]

I'm Jon Plamier. Thanks for being here. They don't even show you by the.

[Steve Scalise]

BBC's Caddy Cadillac K, who is host of the Rest of Politics podcast. Joe, Mika and Willie have the day off.

[Josh Holmes]

It is Monday, July 28th.

[Steve Scalise]

I'm Jonathan Lemire in for Joe M and Willie. It is Friday.

[Michael Duncan]

August in for Joe and M, bro.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

And Willie.

[Steve Scalise]

I'm Jonathan in for Joe M and Willie.

[Michael Duncan]

Like, I'm done with this.

[Steve Scalise]

August 22nd. I'm Jon Flamere in for Joe, Mika and we will know that Mika, Micah not here today, so stay tuned for developments.

[Michael Duncan]

They give a further development. I'm Katty K. And I am. Joe's like, she's upstairs.

[Josh Holmes]

M and Willie.

[Steve Scalise]

Good morning.

[Josh Holmes]

Good morning, Joe. It is Friday, August 29th. Very end of summer, guys. America is being remade. I'm Katty K in for Joe, M and Willie, everybody.

[Michael Duncan]

I'm so sorry, honestly. Willie's the real hero here, dude. He's got. Will is the hero. He's got himself a contract where he has like, everyone knows like, Joe and Mika have to be on the hook for this, right? Willie's getting the money but not showing up, like at all.

[Josh Holmes]

Will, anytime. Joe and Mika are in that. Willy's like.

Let'S let Catty K take care of this one, dude.

[Michael Duncan]

I bet Willie's Jonathan Lemaire, dude, you're up, pal. Willie's golf game must be tremendous. Dude is just like out there hitting the links. He's done with this shit.

[Josh Holmes]

Willie's really working it through. So it turns out, according to the Free Beacon, they've appeared together on just 70 of 124 episodes between May 27th and November 15th.

[John Ashbrook]

Holy wow.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

70 shows.

[John Ashbrook]

Where's a truancy officer when you need one, man?

[Josh Holmes]

Scarborough has missed 29 shows. Brzezinski has skipped 41 or one out of every three. One out of every three episodes? Joe Scarborough's not on that show. Dude, wouldn't you love. I'd love it. I'd love to try to make that argument.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, you see, here's what I'd say. It says Brzezinski skipped one out of three. I'd tell the CEO at MSNow. Listen, if you got a batter who's hitting 66%, you're pretty happy with that situation, right? You'd give him a pay raise.

[Josh Holmes]

You don't understand how impactful the one out of every three is.

[John Ashbrook]

Just imagine being the CEO of M S now.

[Josh Holmes]

We had to fucking rebrand the shit.

[Michael Duncan]

We can't have anything to do with you people. You gotta go. I mean, that's how dire things are, if I'm being honest.

[Josh Holmes]

Thanks for putting the shoulder to the.

[Michael Duncan]

Wheel, Ms. Now, I will do a show. I'll do the smug show.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, don't do that.

[Michael Duncan]

Okay? And listen, if I just have to show up one out of every three times or whatever, it does not sound like a bad deal. And no one's watching anyways. I mean, Ashbrook's right. No one is watching the network. So it's like, why would you show up? And also, if you're based out of Florida, it's gotta be tough. It's gotta be tough to be like, okay, back to the studio. We gotta manufacture brain damage for people and cry about Trump. It's like, oh, no, he killed some narco traffickers. How am I gonna spin this in a way that makes Trump look bad? I don't wanna do that.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, the Washington Post will do that for sure.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, like, you just simply need to read it.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, it's a tough. I can understand why they don't show up to work. It's clear they were wrong repeatedly. You know what I mean? Like, they've done their best. And then Trump wins again. And we independently reported, like, they showed up to Mar A Lago being like, don't jail us, Donald. And I guess he's like, well, you're not showing up to work. There's nothing to jail you for.

[Josh Holmes]

Nothing to jail that. Maybe that was the thing.

[Michael Duncan]

That was the deal.

[Josh Holmes]

We did report that here on the variety program that they had made a pilgrimage to Mar A Lago because they were Concerned about their freedom. And they, in their liberal brains, had been convinced that anybody who disagreed with President Trump was going to jail upon his inauguration. And so they went down to plead their case. I mean, first of all, the brain damage involved, first of all. But second of all, what they've apparently taken it as is like, well, if we show up a third of the time, we're gonna be less offensive than we would be in a full compliment.

[Michael Duncan]

The best clip was the one of like, Joe actually did show up to work and like, well, Micah's not here today and he's just like. I mean, they literally built a studio into your house and she's not even gonna come downstairs for that shit.

She's like, I'm not doing it. I'm gonna stay up here. You go do the damn show. You just gotta show up Joe.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Oh, man.

[Josh Holmes]

You son of a bitch.

Oh, it's so good. We got so much more. More variety. The United States Postal Service, you know, it's. It's a group that you don't want to go too far out on a limb with. I mean, they. They get testy.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Oh, boy. That do they ever at times.

[Josh Holmes]

But it turns out you like. Money management's not exactly, I would say, a forte of the United States Postal Service. I mean, you know that if you try to go get stamps and like, I don't know, get out of here. Two years ago you had. You had like a 32 cent stamp.

[John Ashbrook]

You're telling me it's not a profitable enterprise?

[Josh Holmes]

Well, it's.

[John Ashbrook]

It's run so well and then it's.

[Josh Holmes]

Like a buck overnight. You know, those forever stamps, by the way, that was a good investment. By the way, if you did that a couple years ago, I mean, you're making out like a demon if you have to mail anything. Anyway, they decided that they wanted to make some trucks because of course, this planet will be saved if the United States Postal Service has electric vehicles.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Okay.

[Josh Holmes]

Because it's important, as one knows, that you have to import all the materials for the United States Postal Service from China.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

In order to make sure that our planet has saved. Well, they've taken it upon themselves. And according to the New York Post, the USPS electric fleet is behind schedule with $3 billion in taxpayers funds spent in only 612 trucks that were built. Now, can I take a look at what the $500,000 truck looks like?

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Come on, dude, that's not real. That's got to be. AI.

[Michael Duncan]

No, dude, is that.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

That's a real picture. Look at the Forehead on it.

[Michael Duncan]

Dude, it's not so. So. So to do the math, that's not a $500,000 truck. Oh, that's a 5 million.

[Josh Holmes]

It's a 5 million dollar truck.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Are you kidding me?

[Michael Duncan]

Jeez, I carried the hundred of them for 3 billion. That's 5 million a pop.

[John Ashbrook]

That thing doesn't have a forehead. It is a five head.

[Michael Duncan]

Dude, keep it up.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Keep it up.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, we got to see that. Look at this thing.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

I was going to say it's like something that Dr. Seuss would have driving around Whoville.

[Michael Duncan]

It does look like Dr. Seuss.

[Josh Holmes]

It kind of looks a little bit like an adaptive. Remember those Pope mobiles? Yeah, they still have it back in the day. But like the Pope, they glassed him in.

[John Ashbrook]

Bulletproof.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's kind of like what they've got there. But can you imagine? Like, they're like, here's what we need to do. We need to build an electric vehicle, folks. It can't simply can't be gas. We have to reinvent, invigorate our entire fleet. What I'd like to do is have a 35 foot windshield.

Because that is going to help us deliver the mail more effectively.

[Michael Duncan]

I mean, here's the thing is, so the post service is trash. They're horrible. It's not what it used to be. Everyone just remembers what it used to be, like when you were kids.

[Josh Holmes]

And you actually need postal workers right now.

[Michael Duncan]

That's the thing is, like, anyone who's been to a post office in the past, like, five years, you're gonna have a hostile experience. They're showing. You'll ask them, like, I've already done all the work. I've already taped the label and everything at home because I know no supplies are available. They're like, oh, you want to tape something to it, you have to buy it. You want a scissor, you have to buy a scissor. We have nothing available to you. Right? So all I want is I'm gonna give you the package. Just scan it in.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, you need a box.

[Michael Duncan]

You've asked for my firstborn child to sacrifice. Like, this is the most inconvenient thing. You people are paid to do a job and you're not willing to do it. And then, like I'm saying, everyone's memory of the post, the postal service, of what it used to be is when you were a kid, when you knew the guy who was dropping off the mail.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, yeah, he's a good friend.

[Michael Duncan]

He was a nice guy. Rain or shine, the Guy's gonna get that package from grandma to you. You knew his name, you'd leave him like, cookies for the holidays and whatever. Those days are gone. You've got a hostile, angry government employee who occasionally is gonna show up with a package that looks like it's been punted across an entire football field. Right. Good luck trying to ship something to somebody in this country and having it show up on time. These people are monsters. Don't put them in a truck like this. Put them in worse trucks.

[John Ashbrook]

For the record, I think my mailman does a pretty good job. I disagree with him.

[Michael Duncan]

No, he doesn't. Nope.

[John Ashbrook]

But really, what blackpilled me on the USPS was when I had to go in.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, no, That's a problem.

[John Ashbrook]

And schedule appointment to get passports for my kids. It was one of the most horrific experiences I've had with the federal government.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Absolutely horrible.

[Michael Duncan]

And that's by design. They're like, if I'm a rotten, horrible person, people will stop bugging me at work. And I can just scroll through my phone. Cause that's what they want to do. These people don't give a shit about your mail. They don't give a shit about you. They want to scroll through their phone all day long. So when you show up and you're like, I've done all the work. I've taped it. It's all good to go. Just scan it to the machine. Like, oh, my God.

[Steve Scalise]

Really?

[Michael Duncan]

Just put it over there. It's like, lady.

The amount of taxpayer money that's paying your salary. And everyone's like, oh, no. It's a private enterprise. No, it's not. We all know we're all paying for this shit, and we're getting nothing out of it. And it's all going. So this lady's got, like, nine inches of nails on each one of her fingers that she's focused on scrolling on her phone, then just scanning my goddamn package. You know, like, GD too. Here's the thing.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, half the rails.

[Michael Duncan]

They don't need trucks. Half them should be put in jail. I'm done with the postal service.

[Josh Holmes]

The jail.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Jail.

[Michael Duncan]

They've got to jail them. Jail them and beat them. I had no idea. Dude, I beat them.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

I beat my mail carrier. I get the impression the system treats them like trash.

[Michael Duncan]

No, they are trash. And they're not being treated like, I'm done with them. I'm done with them. Your packages will never show up. Good luck. If you order. If you're foolish enough to order anything on Black Friday, you're not gonna get it before Christmas. You're not gonna get it, period. They're gonna lose it. And they're gonna be like, please put a notice in the mail. They don't care.

[Josh Holmes]

I don't have such a relationship with my man.

[John Ashbrook]

It shows like a very personal problem.

[Michael Duncan]

Just a second. Look at Duncan. Just a second ago, he's telling us about the awful experience he had taking his children to the post office. He forgot about that.

[Josh Holmes]

Go in. The post office.

[Michael Duncan]

Right there's full of trolls. So that's the problem, is the place is full of these trolley people.

[Josh Holmes]

I'll fully admit that. If you have to go into a post office and you're like, belly of the beast.

[Michael Duncan]

That's where they come from. Where the horrible postman come from. They all live there.

[Josh Holmes]

Live there.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a den of these monsters.

There needs to be some accountability.

[Josh Holmes]

If you go into a post office and you're like, oh, my gosh, like, I need a different box than the box that was prescribed. They basically are like, loosen your belt and come around the corner, take it out on your ass. I mean, that is basically the feeling that you get. But, like, my day to day mail carrier doesn't feel that way. He kind of does his job. Shows up day in and day out.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

My guy seems like a pretty good guy.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

He always says hello, he's always there.

[Josh Holmes]

Shake his hand.

[Michael Duncan]

And then, you people deserve the poor treatment that the USPS gives you. Your packages don't show up on time. Well, the guy I see, he's a nice guy. Yeah, right. This whole system is rotten to the core. These people don't do shit at their job. You show up to a post office, they're not doing shit. They're like, just use the kiosk. Then what's your job, dude? If I wanted to talk to a robot, I got a phone in my pocket. I wanted someone to do their job. All right, put kiosk. I'm not using the kiosk. I'm paying for you to do something, so do something.

Bro.

[Josh Holmes]

I had no idea the post office.

[Michael Duncan]

Was gonna take such a. I'm done with these people, man. We all got to hold him accountable.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, so. But this backstory is worth noting, just for a moment, if you will. The former president Joe Biden, as you know, he's terrific with math. In 2022, as a part of the Inflation Reduction act, they set aside billions. And Joni Ernst had flagged this situation that is being called a boondoggle. And I think that's generous. And what it ultimately was is they. They contracted with people who don't make electric vehicles. And when they didn't make electric vehicles, you can understand how you have a windshield like that. It's like, I don't know. We designed this thing. I'll get a huge piece of glass.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Anyway, that's what they did.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Glass guy made out like a bandage.

[Michael Duncan]

Unrelated. Hunter Biden is a major stakeholder in the glass company. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

He's like, fuck, man. He's out there, like, putting the sides.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Of the things in.

[Josh Holmes]

It's like this thing's 5 million bucks per. Anyway, so as of November 10th, just this month, only 612 of these bad boys have been put onto the road. Credible quote. Instead of spending another billion dollars on an EV fleet that's lost in the mail, it's time to pull a plug on this boondoggle and return the money to sender, which is the taxpayer.

[John Ashbrook]

They were right on. They were supposed to produce 35,000 of these.

[Josh Holmes]

618. That sucker passed in 20, 22. Three years ago.

[Michael Duncan]

Dude.

[Josh Holmes]

Dude, I believe. I honestly believe the four of us, we would do more than that.

[Michael Duncan]

It's that postman that you guys love so much who's taking billions of dollars.

He's such a nice guy. He just robs us blind.

[Unidentified Caller]

Okay.

[Michael Duncan]

When he shows up, you should bring this up to him. Hold on. Be like, where's my $3 billion nice guy.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

He's like, come the jolly little postman. When he shows up and you're so happy with this guy. Be like, where's my $3 billion?

[Josh Holmes]

He's like, oh, I don't know. I've been busy mining the rare earth minerals that have been required to build this sucker. Can we pop this sucker back up?

[Michael Duncan]

It's time to take a stand.

[Josh Holmes]

All right.

[Michael Duncan]

So you see a post office worker, you let him know, bro, this is.

[Josh Holmes]

It leads to a question of the day. And the question of the day is, what drug was the designer of the new postal truck on when he designed it?

Because it's gotta be some kind of a. Methamphetamine.

[John Ashbrook]

I was gonna say more like a acid.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. It strikes me as lsd.

[Josh Holmes]

I just don't understand. It's like that they. I mean, they looked at it and they were like. Cause it doesn't really need the hood, right? Cause the whole battery is underneath it. And they're like, let's just make the whole thing, dude.

[Michael Duncan]

$5 million. 5 million for that?

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

But my guy doesn't have one of these, he's still like, there's only six engine in the front.

[Josh Holmes]

You've seen one of these actually, right in. If you've seen one of these.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, I want to hear.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

I've never seen one.

[Josh Holmes]

If your neighborhood is serviced by.

[Michael Duncan]

What if these are just like Delaware? Like, this is 100% just Biden gravy train.

Actually, the money's all just in Delaware.

Folks from Delaware, if you're listening. Write in if you see one.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, if you see it, just let us know, because we'd love to know. Anyway, that's our question of the day, boys. It is Friday. And when it is Friday, we start looking towards the weekend. And we got a big Christmas party. We got Christmas parties everywhere. We're doing stuff. And when we do that, you gotta come prepared. And to come prepared, you need Zbiotics.

[Michael Duncan]

That's right. The one and only. There it is. There's on camera for the YouTube viewers. So ZBiotics, what you do is. It's pretty simple. You just have one of these before you go out, before you have a drink. And what happens is, in the morning, you feel like a million bucks. I mean, it. So it's true. That's the thing. It's true. Most people think that if you have a few drinks the following day, you feel terrible because you're dehydrated. It's not that at all. You can chug all the Gatorade, Pedialyte, and whatever you want. That's not the problem. The problem is when that alcohol is broken down your stomach, there's these toxic byproducts. Well, Zbiotics actually knocks that all out.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

And you know this because you've passed these out. It's not just you saying it. You've passed these out to everybody. You know you've got 100 testimonials from dudes out there who didn't believe you at first and then called you the next morning.

[Michael Duncan]

That's the thing. So Zebiotics does all the work making this, but I like taking the credit. So when we go to the convention or whatever, everyone's like, man, smug. Gave me this, like, magic cure to make sure I didn't feel terrible in the morning. That's right. It was Zebiotics. It's the best.

[Josh Holmes]

Lest the Zebiotics folks think that this is altruistic. And he is not.

[Michael Duncan]

He likes the credit.

[Josh Holmes]

And he believes that everybody who experiences this, which has been our experience, comes back the next day and they're like, what magic potion?

[Michael Duncan]

That's the truth.

[Josh Holmes]

Did you Give us. And it has been our experience. It really has. It's been an incredible deal. You gotta go to ZBiotics.com Ruthless to learn more. You get 15% off your first order when you use Ruthless at the checkout. ZBiotics is backed by 100% money back guarantee. So if you're unsatisfied for any reason, and trust me, you will not be, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. So you've gotta go to zbiotics.com ruthless and use the code ruthless at the checkout for 15% off. Do it. I'm just telling you, if you can't encounter this guy in the wild, you're gonna have to go get your own. I mean, if you can.

[Michael Duncan]

And then you can be mean. Get your friends in on it. Cause it works. It's incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, that's how you buy friends.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

He'S heading to the post office, folks.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, that's how this asshole ends.

[Steve Scalise]

Gets people to like him.

[Josh Holmes]

Anyway, our last question of the day, we had a good one. Which criminal will Democrats defend next? You'll recall in Thursday's episode we featured four different stories from four different criminal elements where you had Democrats basically taking the opposite end of whatever Trump had come up with and Trump administration had come up with to try to defend whether it's a drug trafficker or what have you in supporting their arguments. Amazing. We asked you what's the next criminal they're gonna defend? You have an incredible answer when you like and subscribe to the Ruthless Variety program. We read every single one and get back to you the next episode. To do that, we start with the voice.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Well, Josh, our first comment comes from Scott Purchase.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, I like the name. It's a strong name.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

I do too. Great name. Scott Wright. What criminals will Democrats defend next? Disney Adult.

[Josh Holmes]

What a great audience. I love it. So good.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

So good.

[Michael Duncan]

Scott charges.

[John Ashbrook]

Scott charges worse than narco terrorists.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Wait till they see what Hegseth has planned for Small World.

[Josh Holmes]

Not going to like it. All right, what do we got?

[John Ashbrook]

Dunks from Rob Robin Heinz. Robin writes easy answer. They'll defend Epstein after demanding the release of the files they've been withholding to protect their party and their donors for more than a decade. They will soon be flocking to MSM Studios to protest that Jeffrey is just misunderstood and that he was only looking out for the children of the world.

[Unidentified Caller]

Incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

So the heel turn on that, by the way, is not impossible. No, it's genuinely not impossible. Yeah, I mean, I've seen these people flip on the most dead rights issue of all time, where they're like, this simply needs to happen. And all of a sudden the partisan wind shift, and they're like, that's the worst thing in the planet. 100% that could happen. All right, Smock, what do you got?

[Michael Duncan]

Comment 3 is from lady Saw. Lady Saw writes Demslover's visionism. Charles Manson was misunderstood. His followers were spreading misinformation about him and his peaceful cosmos.

[Josh Holmes]

Incredible.

[Michael Duncan]

Incredible.

[John Ashbrook]

He just wanted to make music with the Beach Boys, right?

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

That's it.

[Josh Holmes]

He was a musician. A simple musician with a dream and a devoted following.

Oh, my God, that's so good. All right, so listen, you all deserve this. We want to do this. When we come back, an Olivia Newsy update.

[Michael Duncan]

Oh, my God.

[Josh Holmes]

She's got. There's a couple more entries. She's decided to try to roll this book out. You're not gonna believe what we've got right after this.

Okay, so for those of you who've been with us the last couple of weeks, you know about the story of Olivia Newsy, who.

Was a bit of a flanderer, as it turns out, as a journo.

[John Ashbrook]

Wait, she wasn't doing the philandering, though?

[Josh Holmes]

Well, she was engaged.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

She was the flandery.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, well, I don't think that makes you a flanderer.

[Josh Holmes]

What does it make you?

[John Ashbrook]

A mistress?

[Josh Holmes]

A cheater maybe? Yeah, she was engaged.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Well, I guess.

[John Ashbrook]

I guess she was engaged. You're right. You're right.

[Josh Holmes]

So, I mean, I. Yeah, no, you're right. Listen, you're trying.

[John Ashbrook]

I stand corrected.

[Josh Holmes]

That was a. It was a fairly.

[Michael Duncan]

I think it makes her a journo.

[Josh Holmes]

Some reverse misogyny going on here. Anyway, what she's done is try to roll out this book, and it's not going well.

And I think you've taken a particular liking to some of this stuff. Dunks in clip three. He sits down, or she sits down with Tim Miller, who is another notable garbage human who. They have a garbage conversation, as one does, when you have two garbage people and the waste management of political conversation. And what happens is this.

[Unidentified Caller]

You said you helped him, right? During the campaign.

[Olivia Nuzzy]

And am I right about it? Yeah, right. About what I did wrong.

[Unidentified Caller]

And it's like, once you've done that, you didn't.

You cease to have become, like a journalistic actor and like, you're.

[Olivia Nuzzy]

Well, I lost my job.

[Unidentified Caller]

Right.

[Olivia Nuzzy]

I was fired. I was fired and I was in hiding and I was afraid.

[Unidentified Caller]

Were you scared?

[Olivia Nuzzy]

Yeah, I was. I was terrified.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Olivia Nuzzy]

I mean, I I write in the book of. About, you know, I was terrified of.

The man I did not marry, and I was very worried about people knowing where I was.

[John Ashbrook]

And.

[Unidentified Caller]

I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, we can pause it.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, sorry.

[Unidentified Caller]

No, I'm sorry.

[Steve Scalise]

Okay.

[Josh Holmes]

All right, all right, all right. So.

[John Ashbrook]

What a table setter.

[Josh Holmes]

Lest you feel.

[Michael Duncan]

Can I say, bro, she played the trump card women love to pull. Oh, no accountability. Time to cry.

She hit that switch fast, bro.

[Josh Holmes]

Dude, I am totally with you here.

[Michael Duncan]

Get out of here.

[Josh Holmes]

Just remember, the reason that you're hearing about this woman is not because people have decided to gang up on Olivia Newsy. It's because she decided throughout the course of her career to try to write profiles in a high profile public way of Republican candidates, some of which she evidently had extramarital affairs with. And when she did that, she got fired from her job. Now, she could have gone away. That could have been a humiliating experience. Had I been caught red handed in something like that, you probably wouldn't see me again. For her, she decided to roll it all back out in her own words and try to sell a book called American Canto, which is this big depiction of all of her experiences. Now, she left behind a very scorned lover in the process who decided. I'm gonna provide some texture to all of that to give us a little bit of an idea of what other extramarital affairs this woman was having. And now she's not totally in love with the framework for her book rollout. And she goes on this dude's podcast, and he asks her, like, the most simple questions, and she's like, I don't know.

[John Ashbrook]

She's absolutely dumbstruck at the idea. She'd be asked a question about all the things she did.

The thing that's so remarkable about this, it's like, to your point, Holmes, she chose to engage in this. She chose to write a book and put herself back in the limelight. Nobody harassed her and brought her onto camera. Nobody. Nobody made her do this.

[Josh Holmes]

She was dark for a year where no one harassed her whatsoever because she decided everybody thought, you're gonna go away. You made a terrible mistake. We all made a mistake. And America likes second chances. That's okay. We're not gonna harass you about that. Then she comes back out like she's a conquering queen and she's gonna roll this whole thing back out. And her publisher makes the decision to roll her book back out with the RFK excerpts. The most explosive part of this alleged extramarital component that she's talking about. And then she lands in the first interview that she's doing totally unprepared for the question about the thing they rolled the fucking book out of.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, okay, so that's the thing that's so amazing. It's why we have to go to the next clip here. But just to preface that clip, she's asked that basic question about the, you know, alleged digital affair with rfk, the central thesis of this whole thing, and the reason why it's all relevant that she wrote the book in the first place. This is how she answers that question. Let's play that clip.

[Unidentified Caller]

He was trashing you. He's being nominated to be HHS secretary. His reign, I think, as you said in the newsletter today, you agree with, has not been good. Like, you had information that you could have shared. Look, Matt Gaetz got. Got denied. Like, they're like, it's possible RFK wasn't even a Republican. It's possible that these senators could have not.

You know, confirmed him and you didn't share anything about. About him. Why, like, why did you still love him? Or, like, was it just.

[Josh Holmes]

You're making. You're just.

[Olivia Nuzzy]

I. I don't know how to responsibly handle this on camera.

[Josh Holmes]

You just.

[Michael Duncan]

You're amazing.

[Olivia Nuzzy]

I'm writing in that scene that you're talking about about how I felt privately. About my private reaction, how I felt privately. Right?

[Josh Holmes]

You wrote a book.

[Unidentified Caller]

You'd acted to help him. Like, you admitted you'd acted to help him over the course of the campaign. And so, like, once you realized that he was screwing you over, you didn't. You didn't take any counteraction. You just let him. Right. Walk over you.

[Olivia Nuzzy]

You're fighting about it now.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay? There's so much, so much. There's so much before you get it. Because I know you got wonderful stuff on this, Duncan, but there's a thing that journalists do when they write a book where they'll expose something that they use to sell the book that becomes sort of explosive, a little bit controversial, which is what increases excitement and therefore sales of that book. And they always, always, always, always say, I wrote about that, and stop. As if the writing of it, like, the whole point of the fucking interview is to give you a little tease, a little something like, give us some humanity about what's going on and what your thought processes are, and give us a reason to buy this book. And she's like, I wrote about it. I'm not prepared to talk about that on camera. It's an amazing thing. But this is a journo, I think this is a generational journo issue. And I'd be interested in John's. I'd be interested in Ashbrook's point of view on this, in that, like, look, we've all heard the arguments time and time again about, you know, generations being addicted to their phone. And it's all like social media and you have keyboard warriors and they don't know how to interact with one another. They don't have interpersonal relationships or whatnot. But when you see this in a journalistic context and they're writing just like, salacious shit that is, like, designed to stir up a hornet's nest for this man's life, who is now the HHS secretary, who's married, who also is writing a book, by the way. And then she's asked about it and she's like, well, I wrote about it.

[Michael Duncan]

So this is the thing is wrote about it. She is just what a modern journalist is. This is all of them. They're all like this. They have zero ethics, zero talent. That's so fucked. The New York Times.

[Josh Holmes]

That's not true.

[Michael Duncan]

This is all true. All of them are like this. They're all horrible little monster people. So when she had that tweet that she was like about that Netflix show, she was like, why do they depict journalists as sleeping with sources? Gee, I wonder why. Sweetie, why don't you take a look in the mirror? Why don't all you journalists take a look in the mirror? Because here's the thing is they all love this story. No one's been more excited about this than all the journals on Thanksgiving. They don't have families. Their families don't want to see these journals. So they're all just tweeting about it and talking to each other about it. And they were so excited about it. This write up the New York Times did, where they're like breathlessly trying to tear it apart is because they hate her. Because their newsrooms are full of people like her. They see people like her every day. Next to them in the cubicle to their left, in the cubicle to the right. It's all people who are unaccomplished, don't deserve any kind of a platform. But these are the people who write our newspapers. These are our journalists. You saw her, she's like, well, I need to turn the camera off. It's like they have no skills, no talent, no ability to do anything. And we trust these people as being the guardians of the Press. It's a shame and they should all feel ashamed.

[John Ashbrook]

She doesn't take any responsibility in that with Tim. And Tim's asking, like, why didn't you blow the whistle? Why didn't you say something? And the reason why is because journalists like this write themselves into their work.

[Michael Duncan]

Bingo.

[John Ashbrook]

And they think that is their responsibility. Like, that is their involvement in the story. They make part of the story. And so she has no responsibility outside of the written word that she put on the page. She doesn't have any distance from what she wrote. She's now a part of that story. It goes back to the earlier part of, you know, the Lizza substack where he talked about how she wrote a fake article about. About herself, about, you know, Mark Sanford and Olivia Nuzzy have been rumored to be in a relationship. And it tells you about the sort of mental space that these people occupy and that they are the story.

[Josh Holmes]

Yep.

[Michael Duncan]

Such a good point. He's right.

[Josh Holmes]

No, it is a good point. But it's also like, look, for people we grew up with in the places that we grew up, the answer to that question is pretty simple. I imagine that when you have a job that you love, that you're pretty well known for, because you've done a lot of big things that you get fired for for making a big mistake, and subsequently you lose your job, you lose your fiance, and your life goes into shambles where you can't like, even make public appearances anymore. After somebody who's on cable TV more than Wolf Blitzer, like, all of a sudden she's gotta go dark for a year. I imagine the answer is like, you gotta understand, my life is completely ruined. The idea that I'm gonna show up in a public setting and relive all of that on a day to day basis is a pretty sympathetic argument, one of which that if she had any semblance of relating to another human being, everybody would be like, I get it. I wouldn't do it either. You wouldn't see my face. I get it. But they don't have that.

[Michael Duncan]

Nope. They have no shame.

[Josh Holmes]

They don't have that.

[John Ashbrook]

So we've talked a lot about Olivia Nuzzy talking. We have not talked a lot about Olivia Nuzzy's writing.

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, yeah, this is your hobby horse.

[John Ashbrook]

We are finally getting to. This is the New York Times review of American Canto.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

I have not seen this.

[John Ashbrook]

The headline is, olivia Nuzzy's memoir is self Serious and altogether Disappointing. And my favorite excerpt here from the review. Amid the noise around Nuzzy, of which we've discussed here.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[John Ashbrook]

American Kanto itself drops with a soft, disappointing thud. To paraphrase Britney Spears, a pop culture touchstone for the author and fellow blonde millennial. It's not a tell all, not yet. A memoir chapter less and scattershot. I mean, that's being generous. I would say it's an attempted letter from Trump's America in the style of a. Would be Joan Didion on Adderall rather than a Lavell. I don't know what a Lavel is. I assume some sort of pharmaceutical.

[Josh Holmes]

Okay.

[John Ashbrook]

Or may. Or maybe Simone de Beauvoir, who wrote in America day by day that there's something in the New York air that makes sleep useless. Nuzzy naturally also suffers from insomnia. This is my favorite part. On page 15 of this 303 page bafflement, we get to the astrology.

[Michael Duncan]

No, dude, you knew. You knew it was coming to astrology.

[John Ashbrook]

I knew a Gemini nation under a Gemini ruler.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Oh boy.

[John Ashbrook]

At the book's midpoint we learn that the author and Kennedy were born under the same kind of January Capricorn gobbledygook quote. Do you think this means we're compatible?

[Josh Holmes]

Oh, jeez.

[Michael Duncan]

Now that's. You knew she was into astrology. Dude, that's good writing. She was into astrology, man.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

It's very good writing.

[Josh Holmes]

Ah, it's just all so predictable. But one of the things that we highlighted out of this was a graphic that was displayed on social media that was, I think an excerpt.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, it was, it was a screenshot of the page on the book.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, from the book where she's. Evidently this thing is about politics. They haven't billed it, by the way. If you were to just follow this like it was your job to know what was in American Canto. You think it's about Mark Sanford and rfk? It's not. It's like this. Her life in politics as she sees it.

[John Ashbrook]

It's just like an overdramatic reading of quote, Trump's America at this moment, when really it's just kind of about this digital affair and she makes it into a bigger thing than it is. Anyway, let's put up that graphic cuz it's honestly hilarious.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Now you may find this hard to actually read on the screen, so I, I will do that for you in dramatic fashion.

[Josh Holmes]

Please do.

[John Ashbrook]

Okay, so just by way of background, she's calling up WWE headquarters.

[Josh Holmes]

This is the World Wrestling Entertainment.

[John Ashbrook]

Uh huh.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

There was always something new to consider or something to consider in a new way. Sentence. What the hell are you doing?

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, this is what?

[John Ashbrook]

In that spirit, I called WWE headquarters.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

So ridiculous, dude.

[John Ashbrook]

Sorry. Not possible. The receptionist said.

[Michael Duncan]

This is to visit the WWE hall of Fame.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Not possible? I asked. Visiting would be impossible, she said. My eyes narrowed. I looked out the window of my newsroom in the Frank Gary Gary building on the Hudson river that looked like a big block of glacier ice. I did not like to be trapped any place, even somewhere I considered architecturally defensible, and I wanted to escape. Today had been counting on this opportunity to escape. The news of the possibility of a visit to the hall of Fame depressed me. It's private. I asked. There's no place to visit, the receptionist said. No place?

[Steve Scalise]

I asked.

[Michael Duncan]

Right.

[John Ashbrook]

She said. It moved.

[Steve Scalise]

I asked.

[John Ashbrook]

No, it's, you know, an idea, she said. An idea?

[Michael Duncan]

The hall of.

[John Ashbrook]

She cut in. No hall. There's no hall. Then what is it?

It's an idea, she said. An idea. She had mentioned that already. It doesn't exist? I asked. Well, it exists, she said. Where? As an idea?

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

It's like Larry David, dude.

[Josh Holmes]

It's unbelievable. It's like a 10 minute interaction of which she can't conceptualize the idea of this woman telling her there's no building that she can visit.

[Michael Duncan]

She spent a whole page telling everyone she's dumb as hell.

And there's 300 more of them.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, I just can't. There's 300 more of them. It's truly remarkable. We can't get enough of this story. I mean, listen, we've now made you invested in Olivia Newsy and everything that is American. Kanto, we're gonna continue. You know, I don't think we're Gonna read all 300 pages of this, but it's nonsense.

[John Ashbrook]

I mean, I think I've said it before and I'll say it again, it feels like rubbernecking a car crash. I just can't help myself.

[Josh Holmes]

I can't help it. You just have to hear it. Yeah, you really do. Anyway, we got a very big guest. He's the House majority leader, Steve Scalise.

Want to welcome to the program a good friend of ours. Been on a few times. I think the first time in studio, though, he's the House majority leader, Steve Scalise. How are you, sir?

[Steve Scalise]

I'm doing great. Well, thank you for having me in your fancy gig over here. Nice digs.

[Josh Holmes]

I know. I think we've only done this over zoom and stuff.

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah, y' all came to the Capitol a few years ago. It was great to have y' all at our office, but nice to meet yours.

[Josh Holmes]

Ah, listen, you got a lot going on.

[Steve Scalise]

A few things. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

And, you know, you notice that, like, the temperament of everybody at the end of the year gets a little, Little shaky.

[Steve Scalise]

I. I think, look, breaks are really good. Christmas break is necessary. You know, Schumer always want these end of year Christmas Eve omnibuses. And we're like, yeah, stop this foolishness. We. He might not like his family. I want to be home with my family during Christmas. And we don't need to be around each other during. There'll be food fights.

[Josh Holmes]

Yes.

[Steve Scalise]

And so. So we've got some really, really big things to do before the end of the year, but then everybody go home for Christmas. Love your family, and then we'll come back at it right after. But we're going to do some big things in the next few weeks. We've been doing some really big things. We have been doing some things with the narrowest majority that we've maybe ever had. So it means every day is going to be a journey and an exciting day. It's like, no day is boring.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. I want to talk to you about a few things here. One, sort of what you're up to here for the next month and then prospectively over the campaign season, what it is that you guys are talking about, healthcare, clearly, is a piece of that. But right now, you guys are dealing with this nil situation in the House. And I know we sat down back in spring, I guess early spring, maybe late winter, with the heads of the four major conferences and an awful lot of others who were talking about the important importance of all of that. I know you guys are trying to do something about it. How do we feel?

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah. This is one of many big issues that we've been dealing with. There are three committees of jurisdiction that have, frankly, been working on this for a few years. And this goes back years where over a long time, lawsuits have eroded the ability for the schools to govern themselves. And that's really the heart of the issue, is, like, you had the ncaa, whether you like them or not, having an entity that governs college athletics has always been the case, but they've lost that ability to erode it through mostly lawsuits that they've lost to where today it's the wild, wild west, you know, and this isn't about whether or not athletes get paid. That genie's out of the bottle. Putting structure in nil, I think, is something everybody wants. Student athletes have no protections. We put those in place in this bill. Guardrails for even the agents, you know, there's a lot of unscrupulous people out there approaching kids in high school, juniors in high school, getting signed up to deals they don't even know, take away their rights for 10 years. We limit those things and give the student athletes real rights, better protections that they don't have. We protect, for example, women's sports, Olympic sports. The Olympic, US Olympic Committee just came out in support of this bill because a lot of our Olympians who win gold medals, do great things, come through the college ranks, and we will preserve that here, too. But it's really allowing, again, not Congress governing student athletics. It's Congress giving the schools the ability to govern themselves again so they can have rules of the road. Everybody wants it. All the major conferences support it. The HBCUs came out in support of it. And it's, you know, you're a big school, medium school. You want to be in a different conference. That's a fight for another day. Somebody solved, problem solved somewhere else. This is just allowing the schools to govern themselves again. Look, millions of people go and enjoy college athletics. You know, hundred thousand people will go into different stadiums every weekend and enjoy the games. You know, they just want sports. You want a referee that's honest. You want the governing authorities to be able to be effective at having rules that can be enforced. You know, kids that can transfer every year and play till they're 28 years old. Is that really what we want? It used to be the case where you had limits on that, lawsuits evaporated, all of that put structure back in place. That's what the bill does.

[Josh Holmes]

No, I think it's really smart. I mean, we've talked to a lot of folks who have discussed about all kinds of a hodgepodge of different state rules that sort of try to advantage their own. You know, obviously, everybody's got a rooting interest in their own home state school, as you do. No question about it. But this provides sort of rules of the road.

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah, fair set of rules for everybody. You know, still, schools are gonna still go out there and try to get the best players. And schools are figuring out how they could put nil money on the table. That's all still in play. It's just, can you have enforceable rules? And that's what this does. And again, that's why all the schools, all 12 schools that will be competing against themselves for a national title support this bill. So it's not like this gives my school an advantage over that school. It's about just allowing everybody to play under the same set of rules.

[John Ashbrook]

So what's the impediment to getting this done? Because I know that the Democrats were whipping against this Shock the Score Act. And I'm curious, you know, you think you can get to daylight on this thing and what are their objections and how can we rectify that sort of thing?

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah, you know, we're getting close to getting there. Some people want the student athletes to be employees of the school.

[John Ashbrook]

Crazy.

[Steve Scalise]

I tell you, a lot of student athletes don't want that. You know, they're like, hey, look, I'm a student and I'm gonna go and go out in the real world and do some other things later on, and if I get my own nil deal, the school isn't getting that from me and they shouldn't be able to stop me. So, you know, we specifically say in the bill they can't be employees of the school by virtue of being a student athlete. You know, it's all about just trying.

[Josh Holmes]

To unionize the situation.

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah, I think it is. I think they just want to unionize them. But regardless, we still have some Democrats that support it, but the Democrat leadership has been whipping against it. But at the end of the day, we're building the coalition. We're really close to getting there, and we're going to move the bill and eventually pass it.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm glad to hear that. That's. Listen forward.

[Steve Scalise]

Progress.

[John Ashbrook]

Well, we're on the topic of sports, I got to ask you, because I know you're an LSU guy, Link Kiffenheir.

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

How you feeling?

[Josh Holmes]

Let's do that.

[Steve Scalise]

I'm excited about it. You know, obviously, my friends in Mississippi, I don't know if they're still my friends. I think we, you know, look, we went through a lot of gyration on this thing. You know, it was excruciating to fire. Nobody wants to have to fire a coach, especially when you have to pay $54 million for that coach to leave. But once it happened, it's like, okay, we need to get, you know, a coach that gives us a chance to win a national title again. I mean, you know, I.

[Josh Holmes]

These are what you do.

[Steve Scalise]

You know, we had three of the last four coaches now won a national title, and Lane coming in is going to be able to have that opportunity. And I think he really wants that. Look, you can tell it was hard decision for him. He had to leave a team that is going to be in the final 12. And he did it because he knows the infrastructure is there at LSU again to win A national title. Three of the last four guys did it, then had that job. You know, two of the last few Heisman Trophy came out of LSU with Joe Burrow.

[John Ashbrook]

Oh no, we're going to get him started.

[Steve Scalise]

So you've got a lot of really.

[Josh Holmes]

Good Bengals, great quarterback.

[Steve Scalise]

Just a little side tidbit, by the way, not only did I graduate from LSU with a degree in computer science, I lived in Tiger Stadium. Used to be a dormitory. Today it's office, really, it used to be a dormitory. And so the north side of Tiger Stadium. I lived there my second year at lsu and right across the street was Mike the tiger's cage. So at like seven in the morning you get woken up by this loud growl of a tiger, a real tiger. Mike the tiger was my wake up call every morning. Talk about a pretty cool story. Wasn't cool at the time. I didn't like waking up at the 7am As a college student, did you.

[Josh Holmes]

Ever take down a couple of six packs and then just in there?

[Steve Scalise]

You know, maybe one day, you know, I saw the movie the Hangover. Who did? I never woke up with a, with a tiger in my room, but I had a tiger right outside my window every morning. You know what I love about, luckily Mike Tyson wasn't in my room going, why did you steal my tiger?

[Josh Holmes]

No, that's an important thing to try to avoid. What I love about these guys is it seems like the representation of Louisiana. They all one, they all know ball two. They're kind of involved in it.

[John Ashbrook]

No, Governor Landry.

[Steve Scalise]

Jeff and I served together in Congress. I translated for him, you know, like, yeah, well, you know, we got these guys over there.

We go shoot the alligator, you know, and people like what the hell did he just say? I, I don't know what he said, but I want to go with him and do it. And I'm like, we're gonna go alligator hunting and eat some good jambalaya. And they're like, I'm in. I mean.

He'S governor now, doing a great job. I mean we brought billions of dollars of investment into Louisiana. But he's, he's a guy that wakes up every day like Trump, you know, he just does stuff every day. He never sleeps. He's non stop. We got a lot of really good things, exciting things happening in Louisiana. I'm glad that got resolved. But you know, you look, we're passionate people, passionate about athletics, we're passionate about a lot of things. Passionate about food, passionate about, you know, music. But we, you know, we love what's Great about our culture in Louisiana. But I think most people do, you know, you look again, we don't. We might have Tulane University, which is in my district in the final 12. But you know, you look at the schools that are in the top five, you know, those states love their college athletics too. And you know, we're working on a lot. We're walking and chewing gum, we're working on healthcare, we're working on affordability, we're working on the housing costs and you know, energy costs. We passed a lot of bills to lower energy costs and you're seeing those prices already start coming down. Love to see them come down more. We're producing more energy in America. We're exporting it to our allies. So Russia and other bad nations like Iran don't do that. So you know, we're working on a lot of things right now. It's gonna be a busy again busy month the rest of this year where it's almost over. But we have a lot still that we want to do.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

Yeah, well you, you mentioned Trump and it's a Thursday in Washington D.C. and so the New York Times decided to write another article trying to take him down a peg.

[Steve Scalise]

Unreal, these guys. Yeah, they, they hate him so much and they hate his success. That's I think what they're jealous of, that he's been so successful. When Joe Biden, you know, they auto pin. Joe Biden didn't even know what he was doing cuz there was an auto pin doing so much of it, you know. But I mean this guy doesn't sleep. He'll call me at seven in the morning on a Sunday, you know, you hear from at 11 o' clock at night. I bet you love President Trump has been the funnest guy to work with. But I'll tell you he's engaged, you know, because he might want to talk to you about something but you might bring two or three things up to him and he's familiar with those things too. So he understands what's going on in all of the different areas of. You saw the cabinet meeting yesterday, how many times he had cabinet meetings in public view. I don't think Biden had won. He has them like once a month and they go on for two hours or five. Trump is engaged. He knows what each cabinet secretary is doing. And it's like that on legislation. I mean, you know, when we're moving the one big beautiful bill, the working families tax cut, it was a tough bill to pass because again, one vote majority most of the time we Were moving that bill through. And I mean, anybody has a bad day, they're like, okay, I'm voting no. The bill might go down. Well, we weren't going to let it. Failure was never going to be an option. But Trump was like, steve, give me names. I will. And he would call them. He would call five people, you know, an hour before the vote that were on the fence. And all five of them, I can tell you this, voted yes.

[Josh Holmes]

That's a hell of a tool to have in your.

[Steve Scalise]

He is our best salesman, he's our best closer because he cares about getting his country back on track. And he knows the details, too. He can get in the weeds with you if you want, but he also loves the country and you see that passion every day. And it's sad that people hate him for that. You know, the fact that he's getting done what he said, he ran on very specific things. I mean, I'm gonna secure the border. No tax on tips. It's all done. All done in like his first three months. And so if somebody hates him for that, would they hate America? I mean, this guy's delivering for America on the things that he was elected by 77 million people to do.

[Josh Holmes]

It's well said. I think as you look forward, obviously there are components about the challenges of a midterm that are coming up. I mean, look, the historical challenges of having a unified government where you're in charge of.

Typically doesn't go well. Right. I think you guys have surfed into that wave here in the recent history and been able to over perform expectations in the House. But as you look out at 20, 26, how do you feel?

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah, it's always going to be a tough year. You know, when you look at history, you mentioned it. I mean, history is never good for the party in power in that first midterm. This Congress is anything but traditional. You know, we have defied gravity on so many levels and obviously we, you know, we expect to and want to and are working to it. You don't just hope for good things to happen. You work your tail off. We're working to deliver for the American people. I mean, obviously we've done some big things already. There's more we want to do. You know, and everybody's. I know the buzzword today is affordability, but it's really, you know, do you have more money in your pocket today? Do you feel better about how things are going in the country today than a year ago and three, four years ago when Joe Biden was there and that's ultimately the question next year. I sure know what I feel because I see what we're doing and I've already seen how it's making an impact. We've seen tens of billions of dollars per state come in in new investment per state. You know, you're talking about hundreds of billions, if not over a trillion dollars in new manufacturing plants being announced in America since Donald Trump took office. And this Congress came in and set better rules of the game. We set better tax policy, by the way, not giving new tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires saying nobody's taxes will go up. Only three people got a tax cut. You'll never hear that from the mainstream media. The old millionaires and billionaires.

No tax on tips, average pay, by the way, 32,000 a year. Elon Musk is not working for tips, you know, but the, you know, the single mom may be working two shifts at the diner. That's going to be $1,500 more in her pocket by the end of this year. It's retroactive to January, but a lot of people won't really see it till a file returns in April of next year. They're going to get a lot of money back. By the way, no tax on overtime. Who's that? Again, not millionaires and billionaires. Even if a millionaire is working for overtime, he's not eligible. But the guy making 70, 80,000, 60,000 a year, he's not going to pay taxes. He'll pay taxes on his regular income, but if he's away from his family, working an extra 12 hours, 15 hours to help his company, he's going to be able to get all of that money in his pocket, buy extra Christmas gifts in a few weeks for his kids. That's real money for those people. And the third new tax break we gave was for senior citizens, again capped at an income level. But 85% of seniors will, in essence, pay no tax on their Social Security. That was a Bill Clinton tax put in place that President Trump said I want to get rid of. And we put a new tax credit in place for seniors. They're going to see that when they file their returns. So those are real benefits for real people, not to mention no tax increases on anybody. Every Democrat, by the way, voted to raise your taxes 30%. There's a real contrast going into next year. What kind of America do we want versus Democrats? You know, the Mondami wing of the party, they want socialism, they want higher taxes, they want more regulations, which means, by the way, you are paying more Money at the grocery store for everything you buy because of all the crazy regulations. We're bringing a permitting reform bill, by the way. We've worked really hard to make it bipartisan, but you're going to see in the next few weeks a bipartisan permitting.

[Josh Holmes]

Reform bill, important to your state, that.

[Steve Scalise]

Will not only allow us to build more things in America, but it'll allow us to lower costs. Why does it cost so much money for things? If you want to build a road, a bridge, a pipeline from Pennsylvania where they can actually frack and produce oil and natural gas into New York where they don't allow it, so you have to bring it in on a tanker from a foreign country. How nuts is that policy? But imagine if you could have permitting reform and then all of a sudden you can not only build things, but build them in two years instead of 10 years. Because people aren't abusing the Endangered Species act and there's some mouse nobody's ever heard of, and people like, I don't even find the thing. Like, you know, they don't even exist anymore, but they're using it and filing lawsuits.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, we'd prefer to have an economy.

[Steve Scalise]

How about we actually allow people to build stuff and care about the endangered American worker and bring them back? I think more people would rather bring them back. And so we're working on bills to do all of those things. That lowers costs. It brings more jobs to America, but it also lowers costs. It allows us to build things quicker, too.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

By the way, I know you guys are also working on a lot as it comes to health care.

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

And I wonder if you could just tell people a little bit about what to expect. You know, there's so much speculation out there. There's been so much written in the media, and it's hard to know what to believe. What do you. What did House Republicans do?

[Steve Scalise]

Yeah, there's some real exciting things coming. But for anybody that really went through the scars of Obamacare, their first Affordable Care act, they named a couple of them. Anybody want to make the argument that it's affordable? You know, that's one of the big lies. It's like the Inflation Reduction Act. The Democrats love naming things the opposite of what they are. Inflation Reduction act jacked up inflation. Democrats did the Affordable Care act. What happened? 80% premium increases on families since that bill became law, no Republican voted for it because we knew, number one, it would jack up costs for families. Higher health care costs. It also destroyed the doctor patient relationship. We have more doctors in Congress now because a Lot of them had to leave the practice of medicine because it didn't work. What we want to do is not spend hundreds of billions of dollars to insurance companies, by the way, which is the Democrats plan. So they want to prop up insurance companies, mask the high cost of the Unaffordable Care Act. And oh, by the way, you still will pay higher premiums. We want to lower premiums and give families options. So we're bringing a number of bills to the floor in the next few weeks.

[Michael Duncan]

Wow.

[Steve Scalise]

Not next year. I'm talking about in the next few weeks. This may be breaking news. And so I've been meeting this morning, I was meeting with the Doctors Caucus. I met with every different group along with the three chairmen of the committees of jurisdiction. Energy and Commerce has been working on a lot of really big things. Ways and Means Committee, the Education and Workforce Committee have all been working on different pieces to do things like association health plans. We've been hearing from small businesses for years. Why can't we just pull together and get the buying power of a big Fortune 500 company? Well, there's laws that prevent it. We knock that down. We allow you. You want to go to Sam's or Costco, you're an individual. You're not even owner of small business. You can buy into a good plan that you want or let the Geico lizard go sell you, you know, in health insurance. Because now there will be competition. There's no competition in health insurance. Really? No transparency either. Imagine bringing those elements in. Even look at the Obamacare tax credits that everybody talks about. Not the ones that are expiring. How about the ones that still exist. You're trapped. Only looking at an Affordable Care act plan that you cannot afford. How about if you made that flexible and said, hey, we're gonna roll that into a health savings account and then you can go shop it around and, and buy a better plan. You want to stay in Obamacare, that's your choice. I think a lot of people would love to get out of it, but they're trapped right now. Imagine if you said that money, taxpayer money, can now be flexible to go anywhere and everybody's going to compete for your business and want you to move to a lower cost plan for you and your family, maybe a lower deductible. How about we allow those kind of things to happen? We've got bills to do that. Other things on lowering prescription drug costs. We're going to be bringing bills to the floor in the next few weeks to do exactly that. So we've Been putting that together for a few weeks again, doing a lot of things, walking and chewing gum. A lot of committees are working on all of these issues. You're going to see these votes. I love to see where Democrats are going to be on those votes. By the way, lowering health care costs. I have a guess, giving families options. Is that what they're going to vote for? Are they going to just vote to bail out the big insurance companies and continue to trap you in a plan.

[Josh Holmes]

You don't like the existence of Donald Trump? I think I know exactly where they're gonna. Anything he'll sign, they're gonna oppose. I remember when Johnny and I were working to oppose Obamacare and we called around various states and hospitals and we were like, let's just do a test, we'll call around and just ask what an X ray costs.

[Steve Scalise]

Oh my gosh. Right. So we picked, videoed that.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, it was unbelievable in this day and age we could have. Back then it was like, you know, we were fairly primitive. But we called and asked, you know, four or five different hospitals, different states all over the country, everybody said, well, what plan are you on? And you're like, does it matter? Like what is the price? What's the price of the, the X ray? And then we couldn't tell you. Yeah, and that's, I think the point.

[Steve Scalise]

That you're getting a cash price, let alone if you have insurance, it's this or if you have Medicare, it's that or cash. You know, why not have price transparency? You get it for everything else. People will literally drive across five lanes of traffic to get 2 cents less in gasoline because you see it right there on the board.

[Unidentified Caller]

Right.

[Steve Scalise]

You know, imagine if you could shop like that for health care. And there's so many things in health care that are really, really not designed to help the consumer. And so imagine opening some of that up. And obviously, you know, we're going to have some big fights over this because the Democrats, when they created Obamacare, you could see it, they wanted to have a single payer government run system. They didn't care about how it worked. I mean, go to Europe where they do this, you're waiting five years for basic procedure. People die waiting for procedures.

[Josh Holmes]

They all show up in the Mayo Clinic or wherever else trying to do.

[Steve Scalise]

We had a provision in the working families tax cut that was scored by CBO to lower premiums in health insurance by 12.7%. Lower premiums. Democrats fought to get that removed from the bill. They don't care about lower premiums by the way, we're bringing that back, too. It's gonna cost share reductions coming back 12.7%, lower premiums. Democrats wanna vote against it. That's their biggest thing.

Why? They don't care about families having lower costs. I don't hear people going, hey, I just want a higher subsidy for my unaffordable care plan. What they say is, I want lower, I want better options and I want a lower cost. And how about we give that to them? So we're going to be bringing those bills to the floor.

[Josh Holmes]

Let me ask you just two quick things here before we go as it relates to the midterms. One, the redistricting discussion obviously started with Texas. We got California. Now you hear about Virginia. We've got the situation that it was in Indiana.

As you're looking out here on the map, we're all optimistic that this thing will sort itself out in one form or another. Did we make a sort of a strategic error here in getting into this mid decade district redistricting discussion? I mean, are we gonna come up with a short end of the stick or is this just what Democrats do?

[Steve Scalise]

No matter what decades, states have done mid decade redistricting for a long time, Democrat states have done it, Republican states have done it. This time it'll probably be a wash. Maybe Republicans might net one or two more seats. Net. You know, when you factor in California and other states, regardless, what you're focused on for the midterms is you look at the 13 seats Donald Trump won that are held by Democrats, and these are Democrats that won by maybe a point or two. Trump might have won by five. Those are districts trending our way. We've already got one that's. We're favored right now, Maine. You know where Jared golden announced he's retiring. Because we got Governor LePage, former Republican governor, amazing governor. Find another line of line to announce he's running. And then Golden's like, okay, I'm retiring. We're gonna flip that seat. You know, there are seats like that we're gonna flip regardless of redistricting. And a lot of it is because the Democrat Party has left so many people. They don't stand for working people anymore. They want socialism, they want Marxism. There's a niche of 20%. Maybe the mandami wing of the party, the rest of America doesn't want that. And that's all the Democrats have right now. You know, they're gonna talk about fake issues. They'll talk about, you know, you know, they'll act like they care about Cost of living for people when they jacked it up. Well, this is what I want to get into. If you like what you have, you can keep it. Yeah. Who told the big. That's the biggest lie in all of politics, which is a big thing to say. That was the Democrats lie on Obamacare. They said, oh, everybody's gonna get a $2,500 reduction in their health insurance. 80% increases later. They're still lying about health care. So they're going to make up lies about all of this stuff. At the end of the day, we got to keep delivering on what we've been working on. Lowering energy costs already. Let's lower insurance costs in health care, let's lower more costs, even more at the grocery store. We're working on all of those things. President Trump already brought down the price of eggs dramatically. They don't talk about that anymore.

[Michael Duncan]

Why?

[Steve Scalise]

Because he fixed it. But you know, we still, we're not going to get complacent. We have a lot more work we want to do because we want people to be really fired up. Not just saying they're horrible, saying look at the good things we've done, but let's keep that progress going. We can do more good things. Democrats, if they get the majority, you know, you look at who's going to be chairman of their committees, for goodness sake, let alone they're going to be focused on impeachment, hatred of Donald Trump, vendettas. We already know it's what they did last time, they'll do it again. They don't care about workers.

[Josh Holmes]

I want to compliment you because I think, look, it's easy when you're in a party of incumbent power and you've gotten the amount of success done that you have in a relatively short amount of time. There is a sort of tendency to try to defend everything that you've done and not have a prospective outlook on it. And I think that's the trap of being in power is that you are talking about how all these great things that you done, but nobody in a midterm election is satisfied with status quo. They want to know where you're going. Everything you just talked about was forward looking and it was what you're going to do next. Listen, if everybody in the conference had that point of view, I have no doubt House Republicans are going to retain a majority.

[Steve Scalise]

Well, I feel really bullish on not only us maintaining it, we can grow it. Not going to be a 30 seat majority. Just with redistricting. Those days are okay. We could get up to an eight seat majority. When you're at a two seat majority, an eight seat is like bonanza. We got a wealth of lagniapp in Louisiana. You know, it's like Mardi Gras every day, you know, but we're gonna do it with bold ideas. You know, let's keep exciting people. When you say, hey, geez, you know, right now you're trapped in Obamacare. Imagine if you could take that money and go buy a plan better somewhere else. You know, we did in the work and families tax cut. There's so many parts of that great bill that people don't even know about. You know, we're modernizing the air traffic control system. Every Democrat voted no. We did a federal school choice program that's funded by individuals, not federal money. But we create a tax credit system where you can pay in for low income people, not for millionaires and billionaires. But low income people who are trapped in failing schools can now have some options. But states have to choose to opt in or out. What's Gavin Newsom going to do? What's Hochul in New York going to do? Is she going to keep her kids that are trapped in failing schools, is she going to keep them trapped there or let them, let them have choices? And it's really not them, it's the parents. Those low income parents are going to finally start looking around going, whoa, wait a minute, I voted for that Democrat 18 times. They're now stopping my kid from getting a better education. Now it's personal. And so that choice is coming next year. So it's not something you see today because it takes effect next year. Let's wait till those governors have that choice to make. I know where my governor, Jeff Landright can speak for. We gonna let those parents have that choice.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

And two crawfish dinners.

[Steve Scalise]

And two crawfish dinners. And it'll be better than anything you're gonna get when Gavin Newsom, Gavin Newsom will probably tell three different versions of a lie on that because he won't answer the question. And by not answering the question, he's answering the question, you know, so let everybody have that choice. But we put those things in place and when we go to voters and say, we're gonna keep fighting for you with these kind of ideas, not we secured the border. People like, all right, I'm very excited you're secured the border. I'm onto the next thing already. So yeah, we can't be fighting yesterday's victory, you know, put a trophy up on the wall, you know, but you Better be talking about the other things that we wanna do, because all they're gonna do is just say they hate Donald Trump. You know, they wanna burn down cities and defund the police. They still stand for that. They'll try to mask that next year like they did in that Tennessee special election.

[Josh Holmes]

That is what it is.

[Steve Scalise]

You know, listen, let's keep going and winning. We got to keep delivering, and we're going to. We're not. We're not getting complacent.

[Josh Holmes]

I love it.

[Steve Scalise]

We're hungry.

[Josh Holmes]

I love it. Listen, very well done. You guys are doing a great job. Got to get to the end of this year, get everybody's mind. Right. Get back into next year, go home.

[Steve Scalise]

To your families, enjoy some presents. You'll have some extra presents now with, yeah, you know, better tax money and, you know, and then let's get into next year and go do some more good things.

[Josh Holmes]

You're the man, Steve Scalise.

[Unidentified Host/Announcer]

I mean, big week for news on the Variety Program. We had news from the Senate Majority Leader, and now we have news from the House Majority leader. I mean, get out of here. That healthcare stuff was really interesting, and it's all happening before Christmas, it sounds like.

[Josh Holmes]

It's not all just yucks. Here on the Variety Program, we bring you some hard news.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah. And Scalise brings a lot of energy to the whole thing, and I think he's a fantastic messenger.

[Unidentified Caller]

Yep.

[Josh Holmes]

I agree.

[John Ashbrook]

If he's out there selling the midterm message, I feel pretty good.

[Josh Holmes]

It's all perspective. It was all important. It's all stuff that people need to hear. I just hope everybody gets on the same page, because you can't sell what you did. You got to sell what you're doing, which is where his head is at. He's a great friend of the program. Really appreciate him coming in. Remember our question of the day, which is what drug was the designer of the new postal truck on.

When he designed that vehicle? Can you just give us your thoughts on all of that when you like? And subscribe to the Ruthless Friday program. We read every one of your comments and get back the very next episode with that. Fellas, I believe we did it.

[Michael Duncan]

I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thanks so much, Steve Scalise, and thank you, dear listener. Remember, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube hit that. Subscribe because it's more fun in video. So until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the lips. We'll see you on Tuesday. Stay Ruthless.