MAGA Republicans reached new heights this week with their extremism, hypocrisy, chaos, and — as President Biden would call it — malarkey. In case you missed it: Instead of doing their jobs and, well, governing, House Republicans remain beholden to Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda, calling for him to be a “MAGA speaker” as they fight amongst themselves. 

Meanwhile, their chaos continues: Senator Rand Paul called for cuts to critical programs including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; and Donald Trump ramped up his MAGA extremism by escalating his violent rhetoric.

Extreme House Republicans are so beholden to Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda that they’re literally cheering for him to become speaker of the House. 

@RepMTG: “If Trump becomes Speaker of the House, the House chamber will be like a Trump rally everyday!! It would be the House of MAGA!!!”

@RepGregSteube: “We need a MAGA Speaker.”

@RepTroyNehls: “America misses President Trump’s leadership. He would make Congress great again as Speaker of the House.”

@RepTroyNehls: “Are you ready?”

Not even Republicans can spin the chaotic mess that the House GOP has created by removing a speaker of their own party for the first time in U.S. history.

Ron DeSantis: “I see a Republican majority that hasn’t delivered what it promised it’d deliver, but I also see a lot of political theater and performative stuff … a lot of chaos.”

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel: “Every day we’re taking away from helping the American people because they’re the ones who really lost yesterday, right? Their business isn’t being done when Washington is shut down, which essentially it is for the next week.”

RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel: “We cannot do this and win. If this happens again, we are jeopardizing a very small House majority.”

Laura Ingraham, Fox News: “And now the attention is drawn to Capitol Hill and the fact the Republicans are so incapable of governing, they lost a speaker, which hasn’t really happened before in this way.”

Rep. Tim Burchett: “We took off six weeks this summer … they decided to take over two more weeks, and I feel like that’s a failure of leadership.”

Former John Boehner and Paul Ryan spokesperson: “We are not, right now, fit for governing. We are a party much more made for being in the minority. We like to vote against things.”

Former President George W. Bush spokesperson: “The Republican Party today just can’t govern. Nancy Pelosi, with a five-vote majority, she was able to govern. The Democrats have become the party of discipline and the Republicans have become the party that lacks discipline.”

The latest House Republican drama further proves MAGA Republicans cannot govern responsibly or effectively. 

Politico: “The House GOP Is a Failed State”

The Atlantic: “McCarthy’s defeat was the result of a bitter power struggle within the GOP, and especially due to the efforts of Representative Matt Gaetz, a hard-right rebel, who forced the vote. The House is now without a speaker, and more chaos is sure to follow. The GOP still holds the House majority, but it is a deeply riven and dysfunctional party.”

Washington Post: “And what is the party today? It is a party whose leader for its presidential nomination sits in a New York courtroom, who faces four other trials for criminal indictments ahead, and who promises vengeance and retribution if elected in 2024. It is also a party with a tight group of rebels in the House who have shown that they can make turmoil the order of the day in Congress.”

Washington Post: “They did win the majority in the 2022 midterm elections, but by the narrowest of margins in a surprising underperformance. To succeed as legislators, they needed cohesion, discipline and leadership. Instead, they produced chaos under a speaker who was so weakened after getting the job that he could not lead effectively.”

Instead of producing results for the American people, MAGA House Republicans are producing nothing but chaos. 

New York Times: “But in today’s Republican Party, doing the right thing is considered a transgression, not a virtue — a sign of unforgivable allegiance to the political establishment. … House Republicans, beholden to a base that reveres former President Donald J. Trump and detests compromise, have become ungovernable. And it is doubtful that his precipitous downfall will break the fever.”

Politico: “At the heart of Republicans’ agita is the sense that an uncontrollable faction of their party is suddenly in charge. Gaetz and his disciples barrel ahead without a clear set of demands.”

New York Times: “And he failed to master the art of corralling a deeply divided Republican majority that could never quite bring itself to rally behind him when it came time to choose normalcy over chaos. With the G.O.P. base increasingly hungry for insurgency and confrontation, Mr. McCarthy found himself out of step, a problem that is likely to plague any candidate who tries to succeed him.”

Washington Post: “One other factor has brought the House Republicans to this point. That is the person and example of Donald Trump, the former president. Trump put governing by chaos on steroids (if one can call what he did governing) and in doing so produced a group of Mini-Mes, symbolized most by the politician who brought down McCarthy on Tuesday, Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.). This is the kind of leadership the party now offers the country.”

Rand Paul floated cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, joining the chorus of MAGA Republicans who are coming after these programs.

Rand Paul: “We need to look at ALL spending, and this is my beef even with some conservatives and so-called conservatives — they take entitlements off the table.”

Donald Trump’s violent rhetoric has escalated, including suggesting that General Mark Milley be executed, calling for police officers to shoot shoplifters, and threatening his political enemies.

Axios: “Former President Trump’s violent rhetoric — a staple of his political brand dating back to 2015 — has grown more extreme as the walls have begun to close in on his business empire, livelihood and personal freedom.”

“The normalization of political violence — or at least the threat of it — has been one of the most jarring and lasting impacts of Trump’s dominance of the GOP, especially in the wake of his four indictments this year.”

The Atlantic: “Trump Floats the Idea of Executing Joint Chiefs Chairman Milley”

CNN: “Trump’s incendiary rhetoric is nothing new. In his 2016 campaign, he suggested that protesters at his rally should be ‘roughed up.’ He suggested looters should be shot during the 2020 George Floyd protests. And many of the rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, have said they were acting at his direction.”

The New York Times: “Trump Said Shoplifters Should Be Shot, Part of a String of Violent Remarks”

Washington Post: “The Anaheim speech was part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive rhetoric by Trump — and a somewhat muted response by the news media to his repeated exhortations to violence.”
PBS: “Trump amplifies violent rhetoric against his perceived enemies as civil fraud trial begins”