Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees: Interview with Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD)
Interview
"I'm not surprised. Tensions and tempers have been running pretty high for the last nine months.
Anderson, you know it, but there is a small group of hardliners that are just making it impossible for us to run the House like it needs to be run. I would note, just with a tiny bit of amusement, that one of the allegations that Matt Gaetz leveled at Speaker McCarthy was that he had not passed 12 appropriations bills off the House floor yet.
Part of the reason for that is if these hardliners had been voting against bringing these appropriations bills to the floor, despite that Kevin McCarthy managed to get 70 percent of discretionary spending through the House before the deadline. But for Matt Gaetz, you know, attention and chaos is what he seeks.
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I'm pretty frustrated, still. I'm angry. I try not to make decisions when I'm angry. I would counsel all of my colleagues to listen, just take -- let's take a couple of deep, deep breaths from the next couple of days.
And before we make any decisions about accountability or before we make any decisions about who should be Speaker of the House, let's make sure that we're clear headed and we're actually focused on what can move the House in the right direction, because, Anderson, if we don't fix what the foundational problems of the House Republican Conference, the new speaker is just going to be in the same old stupid clown car, but a different driver, that's not going to get it done.
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I thought that was a bit of an unfair allegation at the top of your show. Nancy Pelosi also had narrow margins last Congress, she agreed to a number of rule changes. This is what happens.
You know, Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy both cut the deals they needed to get -- they needed to cut to get to 218. In some respects, those rules made the House better and others they made them a little harder to govern.
But, let's not blame rules, although I would tell you the Motion to Vacate at one is insanity.
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It does, and we should change that rule. But it seems like the most DC thing ever to blame an arcane rule, when the problem is actually the makeup of the House. Yes, let's change the rule. But I'm not going to change the rule, at some point, it's garbage in and garbage out.
If you have members that don't want to work, if you have members that crave chaos, if you have members that have never actually figured out how to work with any other human being to find common ground ever, it is going to be kind of a mess, regardless of the rules.
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I think they're capable individuals, but we really need to do a better job of putting them in a position to win than we did with Kevin McCarthy and Kevin McCarthy is as emotionally intelligent as anybody I've ever worked with. He listened as much as any leader that I have ever served with. He really found common, frankly delivered some victories that many in the media and many in the House didn't think he could deliver.
But the next speaker is not going to last any more than nine months if we don't take care of some business.
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Thank you.
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