Republicans Pick Man Who Compared Himself to David Duke as Next House Speaker

House Republicans agreed Wednesday to nominate Steve Scalise, who once reportedly described himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” for speaker.

Eight Republicans voted last week to vacate the speaker and oust Kevin McCarthy, plunging the House into chaos. The chamber is set to vote later Wednesday on a new speaker, but the GOP has struggled to get its act together.

Republicans voted 113–98 to put current House Majority Leader Steve Scalise forward as McCarthy’s replacement. He will now face a vote from the full chamber that will be split at least along party lines. Democrats plan to back Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

But it won’t be an easy road for Scalise. He was up against Jim Jordan for the Republican speaker nomination, and he may still get some pushback from lawmakers loyal to Jordan. Representative Max Miller told reporters that he’ll still vote for Jordan on the floor, even if Scalise gets the caucus nomination, a move others may follow. Representative Ken Buck has said he’ll vote for neither candidate, all but guaranteeing to draw out the process.

A Scalise victory means that the farthest-right wing of the Republican Party would be in complete control. Scalise has refused to say outright that the 2020 election was legitimate, instead remaining loyal to Donald Trump.

But even long before that, Scalise had embraced the extremist movement. At the start of his congressional career, Scalise reportedly described himself as being like Duke, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan, but “without the baggage.”

Scalise also attended a white supremacist conference that Duke organized in 2002. Scalise later described attending the conference as “a mistake.”

But Duke said Scalise was invited because he would “communicate a lot” and was “friendly” with Kenny Knight, Duke’s political adviser.

Former Republican George Conway said Democrats need to wage a “psychological war” against Donald Trump until it makes him so “crazy” that he violates court orders.

“I think you have to wage psychological war on Donald Trump,” Conway, a lawyer and Never Trump activist, said during a panel discussion at The New Republic’s Stop Trump Summit on Wednesday. “I don’t think the Democrats have ever attacked Trump enough.”

In an interview afterward with TNR, Conway explained that Democrats could wage a coordinated psychological campaign against Trump through a series of advertisements. “You can just run ads on TV in the local area where he is,” said Conway, whom Trump had once considered nominating for solicitor general.

Conway said that the ads could target the things Trump feels the most insecure about. “He knows he’s not that smart, he knows he’s not that rich, he knows that he’s not that good. And so, if you go and attack him for the things he knows he is not deep down, it makes him crazy.”

“He’s not that far from his bursting point,” Conway added. And making Trump nuts could impact ongoing his legal troubles.

“The more he gets attacked the more he will talk about things he shouldn’t be talking about,” Conway said. “I think you could even get him thrown into jail, by running the right ad,” he added.

Trump was slapped with a gag order in his New York trial after he made comments attacking New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has accused him and his associates of fraudulently inflating the value of their real estate assets. In the Georgia case, the conditions of his release on bail bar him from intimidating witnesses and co-defendants.

“You run ads that make him angry at those people, like [Mark] Meadows,” said Conway, referring to the former top Trump aide and co-defendant in the Georgia trial. “You run these creepy ads that get into his head, he’ll just go out there and he’ll violate his conditions of release.”

Conway went on to say that beating Trump requires the media to show America who Trump is. “I disagree with some of the critiques that you hear, I think predominantly from the left, about ‘You don’t give him oxygen; you don’t give him air time.’ No. You give him more. Show everybody the crazy.”

Four former Ohio State wrestlers are speaking out against Representative Jim Jordan, alleging that the conservative hard-liner and Freedom Caucus founder is not qualified to be House speaker after he shoved sexual abuse concerns under the rug during his time as a coach at the university.

“He doesn’t deserve to be House speaker. He still has to answer for what happened to us,” former Ohio State University wrestler Dunyasha Yetts told NBC.

Before his explosive political career and nomination to speaker of the House, Jordan served as an assistant coach to OSU’s wrestling team from 1986 to 1994, a period that overlapped with the tenure of Richard Strauss, a team doctor accused of abusing at least 177 male student-patients.

A 2019 investigation found that school officials were aware of Strauss’s conduct as early as 1979 but, instead of taking action, chose to orchestrate a cover-up of the abuse.

Several former teammates and even referees claim that Jordan knew about the doctor’s misconduct but did nothing to stop it.

A Jordan spokesperson, Russell Dye, denied that the Trump-endorsed congressman knew of the abuse during his time at OSU. “Chairman Jordan never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it,” Dye said in an email to NBC.

But Jordan also skirted involvement with the official investigation, which did not name him but found that “coaches, trainers and other team physicians were fully aware of Strauss’ activities, and yet few seemed inclined to do anything to stop it.”

“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” former OSU wrestler Mike Schyck told NBC. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”

At a 2018 hearing before the Ohio House Civil Justice Committee, Adam DiSabato, another former OSU wrestler and the brother of the scandal’s whistleblower, Mike DiSabato, claimed that Jordan had called him weeks before his testimony “crying, groveling, begging me to go against my brother, begging me, crying for a half-hour.… That’s the kind of cover-up that’s going on here. He’s a coward. He’s a coward.”

Representative Nancy Mace continues to try and fail to cast herself as an underdog warrior of the people.

Mace was one of eight Republicans who voted last week to vacate the speaker and oust Kevin McCarthy, plunging the House into chaos. The chamber is set to vote Wednesday on a new speaker, but the GOP cannot seem to get its act together. Throughout it all, Mace has given the impression that she’s fighting off attacks for having principles.

Her latest attempt was to wear a T-shirt with a red “A” emblazoned on it. “I’m wearing the scarlet letter after the week that I just had last week, being a woman up here and being demonized for my vote and for my voice,” she told reporters Tuesday night.

“I’m here to let the rest of the world know and the rest of the country know, I’m on the side of the people. I’m not on the side of the establishment. And I’m going to do the right thing every single time, no matter the consequences.”

It seems Mace skipped the day in high school English literature when the class discussed The Scarlet Letter. In the novel, Puritan woman Hester Prynne is forced to wear a red letter A because she had sex out of wedlock. The book does discuss themes of female independence, but the A is primarily a punishment.

Mace appears to have taken her interpretation from the first half of the 2010 movie Easy A, which initially portrays the A as a badge of honor but then shows how it can also be isolating. Ironically, the movie also mentions several times how important it is to read the original book.

The South Carolina Republican isn’t exactly a victim here, either. Mace’s colleagues aren’t calling her “disgraceful” or threatening to kick her out of the GOP conference the way they are Matt Gaetz, who led the charge against McCarthy.

Instead, Mace’s actions have actually revealed how hypocritical she is. In January, during the seemingly interminable rounds of votes for speaker that McCarthy ultimately won, Mace criticized Gaetz for fundraising off of the ordeal.

But since voting to boot McCarthy, Mace has aggressively tried to fundraise off of her vote. She even asked for campaign donations while doing an interview inside the Capitol—a violation of House rules.

Mace, an outspoken advocate for abuse victims, has also said she will support Jim Jordan as the next speaker. Mace is apparently content to overlook the allegations that Jordan was aware of sexual abuse complaints against the doctor of the Ohio State University wrestling team, which Jordan coached, and did nothing about it.

“Yeah, I’m not familiar or aware of that. He’s not indicted on anything I’m aware of, and so I don’t know anything and can’t speak to that,” Mace said on CBS Monday.

Her comments highlight not only her hypocrisy, but the fact that she didn’t pay attention in English class: The Scarlet Letter is also critical of men who abuse their positions of power.

House Republicans are on the verge of electing a new speaker, but so far, it’s not looking good.

The House is expected to vote Wednesday to replace Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the first ever House leader to be removed from the position after eight rebel members of his own party led a campaign to boot him. However, a closed-door meeting on Tuesday night proved that deep divisions in the party still remain.

Kentucky’s Republican Representative Thomas Massie put the odds of finding a speaker Wednesday at “two percent,” reported The New York Times’ Luke Broadwater, noting that some party members are “dug in” for their candidates, including former McCarthy backers.

So far, party members have put forward two leading candidates: House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Trump ally and Judiciary Committee Chairman Representative Jim Jordan.

But the rules of the game are changing while the ball is still in the air, according to Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman, who reported that the party is still contesting the rules of the election even as the election itself arrives. The House vote has also become increasingly private, with politicians stripped of their cell phones ahead of the closed-door meetings.

“Not [a] fan of snitches,” tweeted Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, referring to the policy change.

Meanwhile, the House remains paralyzed without a leader, unable to move forward on things like the spending bill or responding to the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine.

While Republicans squander more time on their civil war, another government shutdown looms large on the horizon, with just a month and change until the House’s stopgap spending bill expires.