With their new control of the House of Representatives, Republicans now have the ability, the option, the possibility of setting the agenda in the House of Representatives. Are they going to come together and do what is best for the country and best for the largest number of people and bring them in on — blah blah blah — no, they’re not. I don’t even have to go on with the question. They’re not.

Republicans have made it clear what their priorities are going to be in this legislative session. And speakership fiasco aside, okay, for a moment, credibility gap aside for a moment, they are going to focus on three primary things. Number one, they’re going to focus on obstructing and blocking Democrats on almost everything. If it comes down to something really obvious. The US is, you know, hopefully this doesn’t happen. The US is attacked. And there needs to be a bill passed in the House and Senate to fund whatever to respond to the attacks. Republicans are going to do it. They’re not going to say no to that. But beyond that, and maybe voting to keep government funded and open, Republicans are going to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. Don’t let Democrats do a damn thing unless they absolutely have to, then claim in 2024, you’re not going to vote for these Democrats, right. They didn’t do anything. Well, they didn’t do anything because you obstructed everything in the house.

That’s one priority. Second priority. They’re going to go after Joe Biden. Now will they impeach Joe Biden in the House? Remember, impeachment is done by the house. The indictment or acquittal is handled by the Senate, by the Senate vote. Are they going to impeach Joe Biden? I don’t know. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to. I believe Lauren Boebert wants to. Some other Republicans say absolutely impeached, Joe Biden, they don’t really know what for. But that doesn’t really matter in modern politics. I don’t know that they’ll go as far as impeachment, but they are going to investigate what they call Biden’s crimes and all these different things. That’s number two.

And then number three, Hunter Biden, which you could say is really kind of part of number two, they are determined to investigate Hunter Biden. They have all sorts of long debunked conspiracy theories about the things Hunter Biden did or didn’t do and crimes he committed, or whatever the case may be. It’s all pretty uninspiring particularly because Hunter Biden, number one, has no role whatsoever in Joe Biden’s administration, unlike Ivanka and Jared and others. And number two, because Hunter Biden isn’t running for anything. So really, when we say their priorities are obstructing investigate, investigate Hunter, it’s really two priorities, obstruct, investigate the Biden’s. The question is, will that be a viable strategy to justify getting elected anywhere, taking control of the Senate keeping control of the House taking the White House in 2024? Will that be enough? Will it be enough to say, we looked into Hunter when we looked into Joe and we held them accountable? And we prevented Democrats from doing bad things that they wanted to do? Is that enough to justify, I don’t know, putting Trump back in power in 2024? To me, the answer is obviously no. But these are the very same Republican voters who voted for Trump in the first place in 2016. So I never want to overestimate the intelligence of the Republican electorate. When you overestimate their intelligence, you often end up getting burned and with incorrect beliefs.

Last thing, on that part of this discussion, Donald Trump’s campaign may flame out. And what I mean by that is, the polling is not great. Since announcing hilariously early in November that he’s running for 2024, he’s barely left his house Mar-a-Lago. And he seems to be dramatically diminished in terms of energy and spunk and whatever else you want to say. There are a growing number of commentaries and predictions hypothesizing that if it doesn’t look like Trump really can win this thing, he will bail before the first primary votes are cast in 2024. Do I think Trump’s ego would really allow him to do that? I don’t know. I genuinely don’t know. Michael Cohen told me when I appeared with him, he never thought Trump would even run because Trump would know he can’t win and Trump can’t stand losing. Well, maybe Trump thought in November of 22 that he could win and maybe in six months or twelve months he’ll revise that view.

If Trump does bail,  I believe he will use some kind of excuse like it’s a health issue. He has other interests. The Republican Party has abandoned him, whatever. The last element to this is, could Trump drop from the Republican primary and then ended up running third party? And that will really be a quagmire for the Republican Party in the House. Because if they follow Trump, that could really damage the chances of many of those people of getting reelected as Republicans in 2024. And so they are going to have to find a balance between sticking close to who they think will be president versus remaining in a position where they can credibly justify their reelection as Republicans to the House of Representatives. Will be very interesting to see.