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Steve Bannon spoke with hardline GOP Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) on Tuesday to discuss House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) compromise bill to raise the debt ceiling, which Bishop is vehemently against.
“If this bill was at any way looking to save our economy and particularly save, not just future generations, but to make sure we’re not Japan and lost decades of low and no growth. They would be, they would be on fire today about what barbarians we are,” began Bannon, a former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser.
“All you’re hearing from the mainstream media is Kevin McCarthy is an adult. Kevin McCarthy is a leader. Kevin McCarthy is responsible. What does that signal to you, congressman?” Bannon then asked Bishop — a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
“Barely concealed glee. Even Biden said it on the clip yesterday. He didn’t want to gloat because people wouldn’t vote for it. I think that was the word that I’d read in the headline he used was ‘gloat,’” Bishop replied, adding:
This is a disaster. It is an entire capitulation of the dynamic created in January that Republicans could be unified around a core set of real ideas that we were going to go to the mat to accomplish. Kevin McCarthy is emasculating himself and the Republican majority and so this bill’s bad on its own terms, and that’s worth knowing.
“Yes. We’ll go through that in a second,” Bannon added.
“But the significance is that it is blowing up, it is reverting to the norm in terms of the way Washington works and abandoning the possibility of something with a different dynamic through this Congress,” Bishop argued.
Later in the interview, Bishop urged his fellow House GOP members to “force” McCarthy to pass the compromise bill, which includes some spending restrictions, with “Democrat votes.”
“Make them pass it with Democrat votes, make them do that. And you might say, well, that sounds kind of like it doesn’t really help. No. Every Republican you can pull off of that gives life to the promise or the possibility that we can reinstitute somehow the dynamic we started with,” Bishop added.
Force Speaker McCarthy to Pass His Debt Limit Deal with Democrat Votes @RepDanBishop pic.twitter.com/48T4CHNDd0
— Grace Chong 🇺🇸 (@gc22gc) May 30, 2023
“If we take McCarthy out, whatever the path is,” he added, raising the specter of removing McCarthy as speaker.
“But those Republicans have to avoid being destroyed themselves by voting for this. If they do, they’re gone. And if we don’t, and if we leave a majority of Republicans in support of this, that they’re going to be laughing all the way,” Bishop concluded.
Watch the full clip above.
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