On deals with the devil
This is about Kevin McCarthy
We’re back! Our first regular newsletter of the new year!
This week, paid subscribers got the January edition of ET Ask Home, a monthly questionnaire. This month’s featured Kelsey D. Atherton, military technology journalist. In two weeks, paid subscribers will also get ET Read Home, a collection of books I recommend for right now.
I hope you’re all doing well. I’m doing Dry January for the first time since 2019, which is to say that Polar Seltzer is making even more money off of us than it normally does.
And now, onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For Foreign Policy, I wrote up some definitions of 2022’s buzzwords. What new vocabulary will 2023 bring!? (As a reminder, I am writing FP’s Morning Brief daily newsletter this month. You can follow along for free by signing up here.)
Texts reveal that, after an angry mob stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of the US presidential election results, Hope Hicks, former Trump White House communications director, exchanged messages with Ivanka Trump’s aide, Julie Radford. The two were upset that they had become “unemployable.”
Brazilian authorities will reportedly renew a fraud case against Congressman-elect George “I said I was Jew-ish” Santos. This is the person who was elected to the House of Representatives by, among others, the residents of the town where I grew up.
A Louisiana woman who had a (wanted) pregnancy and miscarried said she couldn’t get confirmation of a miscarriage or miscarriage treatment because medical professionals were worried about falling afoul of the state’s anti-abortion ban.
Relatedly, the FDA says abortion pills can now be offered at retail pharmacies.
Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová honored “dozens” on the occasion of Slovakia’s 30th anniversary of independence, including Ľudovít Didi and Anna Koptová, “both of Romani origin.”
Ajai Shukla is incredibly informed on all things Indian military (he used to be an Indian Army colonel, but now he writes) and penned this opinion piece on India-China Himalayan tensions.
This is not hard news but I recommend this piece, in which Michelle Yeoh and Cate Blanchett (a Taurus) interview each other.
And after that you simply must read Zadie Smith on Blanchett’s Tár.
MY VIEWS ON…
…Kevin McCarthy!
The thing about making a deal with the devil is that it is almost certainly only going to work out for the devil. This is why it is known as a deal with the devil and not, like, “a smart bargain” or “an agreement that goes well for all parties involved.”
Kevin McCarthy stood by candidate Donald Trump when the infamous Access Hollywood tape dropped. He defended Trump throughout the tweets and tirades and ethically dubious moments that made up the Trump presidency. He went down to visit Mar-a-Lago after Trump was out of office, which is to say that it was after Trump denied the election results and a mob stormed the Capitol to try to keep him in the White House. The visit was after McCarthy himself said, “The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.”
McCarthy stood by Marjorie Taylor Greene as Democrats criticized her for spewing conspiracy theories and using violent rhetoric against her colleagues. When Democrats stripped her of her committee assignments, he threatened to do the same to them when Republicans were back in power. Democrats sanctioned Arizona’s Paul Gosar for tweeting a violent video that showed Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being killed. McCarthy said he would give Gosar “better” committee assignments. (All of this is just in the last several years. McCarthy’s machinations and grabs at power predate the Trump era.)
And what did he get for his troubles? On Tuesday of this week, despite stressing all the concessions that he had made to certain House Republicans, he did not secure enough support to be Speaker of the House on the first round of votes. This was the first time this had happened since 1923.
This once in a century embarrassment was then compounded. McCarthy failed to get enough votes on the second round, and then again on the third. There was no Speaker of the House at the end of the day. Gosar had voted against him each time. Then, on Wednesday, McCarthy’s “allies” reportedly began the day hoping to adjourn the House until Thursday, presumably so that they would not need to face the music again, but that didn’t happen and so there was another vote. He lost that one, too. Then he lost a fifth vote, and then a sixth. (All of these losses were despite the former president’s support, sort of. Trump finally deigned to post in support of McCarthy on Wednesday.)
What are McCarthy’s Republican detractors doing this for? They don’t appear to have much in the way of specific legislative policy demands. The debate that has gotten the most attention relates to how easy it should be to remove the speaker, should he ever get the position. Other demands include buzzwords like a congressional committee to investigate “a weaponized government.”
Greene said they just don’t like McCarthy. (Greene, incidentally, is voting for McCarthy, which has gotten her criticized from others in the far-right; there is always someone ready to appear more extreme waiting in the wings.) The anti-McCarthy voters “love gridlock and chaos," Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska, said on CNN, and maybe there’s something to that, too.
In the long run, this whole scenario isn’t especially funny, or at least not funny in the “way that fills you with hope about the future of American democracy” sense. This whole brouhaha probably concludes either with McCarthy beholden to the most burn it all down elements of his caucus, or with, like, Speaker Jim Jordan. “A Far-Right Gang Of House Members Will Hold Power Over Their Caucus — With A Megaphone,” the Huffington Post headline read. The headline wasn’t wrong.
Still, this week in “Kevin McCarthy humiliation” was a sort of useful reminder. McCarthy reportedly told Congressman Chip Roy that a vote against him would be a vote “against the conference and the country.” But the time for that kind of speech was when Roy literally voted against the country. Roy voted not to certify the 2020 presidential election results, and he voted not to impeach Trump after the storming of the US Capitol. Those were actual votes against the country.
At the time, though, McCarthy was too busy voting for those same things along with Roy to notice, or at least to care. But that’s the other thing about a deal with the devil. The devil is the only one reading the fine print.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
Israel’s new foreign minister, Eli Cohen, hinted at, as Axios Middle East correspondent Barak Ravid put it, “a more pro-Russian line.” Cohen spoke Tuesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, which was the first “such call since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Cohen said he would draft a “responsible” policy on Ukraine and also pledged to “speak less in public” on the subject, which could be understood as refusal to condemn Russia and Russian actions.
Pinchas Goldschmidt, Moscow’s exiled chief rabbi, urged Russia’s Jews to get out while they still can. “When we look back over Russian history, whenever the political system was in danger you saw the government trying to redirect the anger and discontent of the masses towards the Jewish community,” he told the Guardian. Goldschmidt, who refused to back Russia’s war in Ukraine and left his country in July, added, “We’re seeing rising antisemitism while Russia is going back to a new kind of Soviet Union, and step by step the iron curtain is coming down again. This is why I believe the best option for Russian Jews is to leave.”
From Miriam Berger at the Washington Post: “Israeli forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in 2022 than in any year since the United Nations began systematically recording fatalities in 2005, after the last major Palestinian uprising.”
From Ben Samuels at Haaretz: “The United States on Wednesday set an indisputable red line on the illegal West Bank outpost of Homesh, setting up a potential clash with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right coalition that could spark conflict within the nascent Israeli government.”
Many thanks to Moment for including Bad Jews (at number 3!) in their “12 Books That Made Us Think in 2022” roundup. It was a really lovely way to close out the year.
Spotify “made” me this Klezmer mix so I am sharing it with you.
Finally, if anyone’s trying to reach Iceland’s rabbi, you already have all you need to mail him a letter.
That’s it for now! Hope to see you back here soon.
-ET