be doing nothing. right. that s why i think obviously republicans would prefer that this was not happening to a republican. but at the end of the day, the public animosity flowing toward congress is not actually that partisan. sometimes democrats have slightly more support. sometimes republicans have slightly more support. but the fact is stories like this, all they do is add one more data point to the general belief that congress is full of crooks and corrupt people. what s also interesting is if you ask people their opinion on their local congressman, who they might know a lot more about, they tend to have a much higher opinion. one thing republicans are going to have to do is come up with a new name for their convention, that more than half their caucus has to vote for something. it s no longer the hastert rule i m betting. a rule which speaker john
boehner has broken but which they presume to still govern. nancy pelosi former speaker of the house, who came in after the hastert reign, to clean up and drain the swamp was on msnbc just a few hours ago and was asked about this. let us hear what she had to say. when mr. hastert was the speaker, our run for winning the house in 06 was to say that we were winning against a culture of cronyism and incompetence. at the time, many indictments but we had no idea that that would include the speaker of the house. i don t know janell. tim mckay s point. we tried. it goes on. are you asking me is this the nature of congress? i don t know, is this the nature of power? although this happened when he wasn t in congress. although the payoffs happened presumably after. i don t know. in fairness, his actual crime is not something that he appears to, as far as we know in terms of the details that have
withdrawals to avoid financial oversight. said at one point he was withdrawing the money because he did not trust the banking system with his cash. so presumably was keeping it for himself and stuffing it under his mattress. that also stood out in the indictment for me. i thought it was interesting that a man who had been a former u.s. government official thought it would be wise to say to the fbi that he did not trust the banking system. and that this would be believed and just sort of go over. okay. so are you no longer using a checking account? just bitcoin all the time. i also think you know we are at a point now where public confidence in our elected officials, specifically in congress, is at an all-time low. and that is, like, a bad thing for our democracy. it is bad to malign congress. i think it s bad to starve congress and have pay freezes and ensure that the only people in congress are people that can afford to be in congress which is to say mostly rich people. i mean we
where he was sending inappropriate maleessages to a male page. how much do you think the republican party is going to have to deal with this again? i don t think the republican party will have to. or congress? it would be better for them if he were a democrat. but it is interesting that the party of family values does seem to have a family values problem. a family values program. to me, though, jond thebeyond the reasons for his apparent blackmail, the fact that a guy after who left high school teaching unable to become an assistant principal for politics, and served 20 years in politics, made millions of dollars as a congressman, and then has made many millions more as a lobbyist enough to pay this guy, whoever it was, the $3.5 million, that s a shocking thing. more than any sexual misconduct he did when he was 30. and apparently so he tapered the sides of the cash