Knives out: GOP infighting begins to replace Karoline Leavitt

0:01Brian Tyler Cohen:The battle to replace Caroline Levitt heats up and I've got two interviews, Tommy Vietor from Pots of America and the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota, Peggy Flanagan. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. With Caroline Levitt set to leave her post as White House press secretary at the end of August, the battle to replace her is now heating up. So the odds-on favorite to be Trump's top sycophant was, of course, Scott Jennings. But now it looks like the knives are out because another Trump ally spoke out against that possible choice. Matt Gaetz took to Twitter, writing, Scott Jennings for press secretary is a bad idea.

0:36Brian Tyler Cohen:And he included a screenshot from a CNN opinion piece written in 2001 by Scott Jennings titled Trump caused this insurrection and every Republican must condemn it. Now, first of all, is Matt Gaetz merely looking out for Trump's best interest or is Matt Gaetz looking out for Matt Gaetz? Like, I've been around politics long enough to know that virtually everybody is self-interested. Literally everybody in the MAGA coalition is self-interested. And Matt Gaetz especially, who's been relegated to hosting a show that nobody watches, on a network nobody watches, after his very unceremonious departure from Congress amid allegations of sex trafficking of a minor, is probably not how he wants his political career to end.

1:15Brian Tyler Cohen:So if anybody had a vested interest in lifting up himself, it is Matt Gaetz. Although I must say, if there's anybody who appropriately represents an administration currently engaged in the cover up of a pedophile ring, it is probably the guy who himself is contending with allegations of sex trafficking of a minor. So if Trump is looking for a good fit, I'd say that this one fits like a glove. But in opposition to Gates's point, if someone at some point having had the spine to speak out against Trump was disqualifying, nobody would be working in this White House. Here is just a small smattering of what Trump's own current officials said back when they had an ounce of their dignity still intact.

1:53Brian Tyler Cohen:We're on the verge of having someone take over the conservative movement and the Republican Party who's a con artist. Donald, you're a sniveling coward and leave Heidi the hell alone. I'm a never Trump guy. I never liked him. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough. I've tried to be helpful. We were really trying hard to figure out how do we hold a president accountable that put all of our lives at risk. There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. So the fact that somebody in Trump's orbit told the truth before they sold their soul to him isn't the exception.

2:36Brian Tyler Cohen:It is the rule. It shows the truth about this movement, which is that all of the people who are employed by Donald Trump know better, but it was politically and financially and personally more beneficial to them to sacrifice their dignity and morals and values in exchange for fealty to the God King. They all know better. They just don't care because power or proximity to power is more important to them than standing for anything. So Matt Gaetz can point to, you know, a previous iteration of Scott Jennings having once done the right thing as if it's disqualifying. But in fact, there is nothing more appropriate for Donald Trump's White House than tapping somebody to speak for Trump who once had some dignity and then sold it the moment they realized how much more lucrative it was to breathlessly defend him.

3:18Brian Tyler Cohen:So look, between somebody like Matt Gates and Scott Jennings, Donald Trump will certainly have a tough time choosing. You've got an accused sex trafficker on one hand versus a shameless sycophant on the other. Truly all of Trump's favorite things. But whoever he chooses, I'm sure that person will be well prepared to lie on behalf of somebody who couldn't tell the truth if his life depended on it. Next up are my interviews with Tommy Vitor and Peggy Flanagan. No Lie is brought to you by ZocDoc. So I have a bad habit of putting off making doctor's appointments because I know it's just going to be endless phone tag only to finally get through and find out the next opening is months away.

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4:27Brian Tyler Cohen:Appointments happen fast, usually within 24 to 72 hours, and you can even score same-day appointments. And ZocDoc is free to use. Your health matters and taking care of yourself should not be complicated. Find and book the right doctor with ZocDoc. Head to ZocDoc.com slash BTC to get started and check that appointment off your to-do list. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash BTC. It looks like Donald Trump just got the news that he dreaded most as far as Natalie Harp is concerned, because now it's not just political news, Tommy. Now we're talking about something that has crossed the threshold from politics into culture.

5:02Brian Tyler Cohen:So I'm going to throw to a quick clip that I covered on this channel earlier today, and then we'll come back and talk about it. I am your guest host, Rosie O'Donnell. That's me. A special hello to those of you watching from home and from the White House. But I do have some bad news for President Petty Roosevelt. That's all I'm going to say about you tonight, sweetheart.

5:31Brian Tyler Cohen:You got to realize it's time to hang up your wig and let Natalie tuck you in.

5:42Brian Tyler Cohen:Time to go nighty night. So Tommy, you can see now that this has gone from containment within the political zeitgeist into pop culture. To what extent do you think that that's going to be a problem for Trump as he tries desperately to contain this thing? I mean, I just think this story is inherently very weird and it's completely fair game. And because the White House flipped out about it, John Ossoff's original clip where he lands this hit on Donald Trump has over six million views on Twitter alone. Yeah, it's like the Streisand effect to the nth degree. To the nth degree. And so not only like so this was a story like all these political reporters know who Natalie Harp is.

6:19She see they see her with Trump everywhere. They're like, who is this young 35-year-old person who literally sprints behind him on the golf course with a printer to print out good news about him and then writes him these insane letters that were so weird that apparently the Secret Service took notice? And so they've all wanted to dig into the story. They all wanted to understand it. And so Ossoff's line gave them an opportunity to call their editors and be like, we got to do a feature on this. But the fact that it's now like a late-night fodder, like people are making jokes about it. Everyone's wondering who Natalie Harp is.

6:48Like Trump, like, you're right. It's the Streisand effect. Trump put so much attention on this story because of how he and his surrogates flipped out.

6:55Brian Tyler Cohen:We have seen so many instances of this administration bungling whatever it is they're doing that a lot of stuff has left containment. A lot of stuff has moved from politics to the cultural zeitgeist. We saw it with the Epstein files, for example. People are still talking about that. Normies are still talking about that. The ICE shootings left the political containment in a huge way to the point where the whole country was talking about that stuff. And now we have we have this. And so the Trump administration is kind of being what is it hoisted on their own petard because like this is something they benefited from in the lead up to 2024.

7:30Brian Tyler Cohen:They were able to to kind of manage or run all of these cultural issues to their own benefit. And now they are the victim of so many different political narratives that have, you know, garnered a massive amount of attention among people who are generally apolitical or nonpolitical. Yeah, it's just like, it's like also a mindshare thing. You know, like a normal president and a normal presidency would be trying to focus on your message of the day, whatever it might be. Trump obviously is an idiot and is like doing nonstop press events about his ballroom or the construction of like the heliport or whatever, this dumb granite circle thing that he's building for the helicopter to land on.

8:11Helipad, sorry. And this is another thing where the entire administration is now seemingly focused on defending Trump from some sort of vague charge about his relationship with Natalie Harp. And to be clear, John Ossoff never suggested that there was anything sexual about it.

8:28Brian Tyler Cohen:No, no. All he said was that Trump was not interested in helping regular people. He was focused on his ballroom and on flying with Natalie on, you know, a flying palace from the Emir of Qatar. All he said was with Natalie, which is objectively true. And now you have people coming out and saying, how dare you smear her like that? And I think that it's their own insecurity. It's their own accusations really being borne out into the surface. It's the Trump defenders who are assuming that everyone's saying they're having an affair. Right. Because it's really weird that they have this strange relationship.

8:58Brian Tyler Cohen:But the byproduct of that is that they're giving a massive platform to a really effective communicator in the Democratic Party. Like John Ossoff, young, charismatic, articulate, able to go on right-wing media. And his pet issue, the principal focus of his campaign is Trump's corruption. So you're going to hand a massive megaphone to the guy who is exploiting one of Trump's principal weaknesses and you're doing it, what, 75 days out before the midterms? And John Ossoff is running for Senate in Georgia. This was supposed to be one of the top races in the country, the most hotly contested, the most targeted.

9:32Instead, he is kicking the shit out of his opponent because he has been able to drive the narrative week after week after week, in part because of the corruption hits that you just mentioned. Like, he has been laser. He is like one of the more on-message people I've interviewed. I'm sure you've interviewed him too. It's like, even when the mics go off, it's like, it's hard to get him to kind of goof around. No, he's, and I noticed that. He's a serious person.

9:54Brian Tyler Cohen:He's really serious. Like my, you know, I mean, he's a young guy. I'm like, oh, this guy's gonna be like, you know, he'll be able to like joke and throw down. Like he is, he's very on point. He's very, he's a, he's a really serious dude. He's one of the few people who, when the camera is on, he is virtually identical to how he is when the camera's off. Yeah. And look, you know, Gavin Newsom's similar in that, like he'll goof around and have fun on mic and off mic. But when the mics go off and Gavin Newsom, when the interview ends, he'll just want to sit and talk shit about politics or what's happening in the world or gossip a bit.

10:24Ossoff, it was none of that. It was like, he was up, he was out.

10:25Brian Tyler Cohen:He's buttoned up. And like, look, I interviewed him just a couple of weeks ago and there was a big talking point that Trump was going to make this speech where he denied the legitimacy of John Ossoff's election win. And I asked him about that and he answered in one question and then immediately pivoted back to his talking points. Like he is he is so disciplined when it comes to messaging. And so by handing a megaphone to that guy who is laser focused on hitting Trump where it hurts most, I think is a huge, a huge self-own, own goal by this administration. Yeah, it's very strange. They're just like they just swing at every single pitch.

11:05And sometimes a little discipline goes a long way in politics. But it's Donald Trump. It's Donald Trump. Not his thing.

11:11Brian Tyler Cohen:I think, too, that that's something that really shows the unseriousness of this whole movement and puts on full display the extent to which these people are just engaging in faux outrage is that this Republican Party and especially Donald Trump are not capable of being able to present themselves as these defenders of women. When you've got Trump who five minutes ago just called the reporter piggy. I mean, hell, Trump denigrated a female reporter asking about this very instance. He lost his mind on the CNN reporter in the Oval Office. Yeah, there's a lot of cynical creeps out there, like Scott Jennings, are suggesting that it's sexist to question whether the president of the United States is having an inappropriate relationship with one of his own staffers.

11:53The reality is, no, the problem is Donald Trump. It's not his staff, it's him.

11:57Brian Tyler Cohen:In fact, the most cynical, perhaps, is this guy right here. All right, so he brings in Natalie Harp, who is Trump's assistant. and he implies that there's something untoward here. You don't get lower than that. This is the lowest you go. This woman is working for her country, whether you like a Trump administration or not. She has no history of doing anything untoward, none. President Trump actually helped her with health matter cancer. And this Ossoff brings her in as someone who should be denigrated and laughed at and implies there's something going on here, which would be impossible with the Secret Service cadre there is now surrounding a president at all times.

12:54It's impossible. It's not like JFK where the Secret Service guys, he said, take a hike, they took a hike. That doesn't happen anymore. So I hear this and I go, oh, every American should condemn Ossoff. No. No. I mean, they were laughing, the far left. There's a guy named Mehdi Hassan on MS, I guess. He's laughing. Laughing. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I call it gutter sniping. All right. They're smear merchants. This Ossoff. I would not vote for, I'd vote for Putin over Ossoff. That's how bad this guy Ossoff is. Believe me, if I were President Trump, I'd be combing everything that Ossoff's ever done.

13:52Ever done. For doing this. But you don't get any of that from the press. You got ho, ho, ho, ha, ha, ha, but you didn't get condemnation. What do you think, Tommy? First of all, I did not realize Bill O 'Reilly was still alive and cooking like that. Cooking is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Wow, that shocked me. I did not know he was still doing commentary. If I'm not mistaken, he paid out$32 million? Yeah, what I would say to our audience is Google Bill O 'Reilly and falafel. And the reason that might not make sense, because it doesn't. Bill O 'Reilly used to call a female producer of his and detail his own sexual fantasies.

14:45And one time one was about a shower and he thought a falafel was a loofah. So that's your messenger on this one.

14:53Brian Tyler Cohen:Yeah. Bill O 'Reilly, in case you were wondering whether self-awareness exists in today's Republican Party, it is Bill O 'Reilly denigrating John Ossoff for saying that Donald Trump wants to, quote, travel with Natalie. And you have Bill O 'Reilly being the one to make that point. With that said, in terms of messengers for this White House and the people who have taken it upon themselves to defend Donald Trump at all costs, we have Caroline Levitt, who made news because she is leaving her post or has left her post as White House press secretary, which now means that the jockeying is on to see who's gonna replace her.

15:32Brian Tyler Cohen:And a lot of eyes have been on one person in particular. Let's see who that is. We all know that Scott Jennings is more than happy to defend a war with a country that starts with the letters IRA that we are currently failing, that is gonna put us trillions and trillions of dollars more in debt. I was only a few years old while you were in the administration defending prior endless wars. Now, this war is failing. Eight weeks is endless to you? Okay, you said it was going to be four to six weeks. You have the attention span of a net? I debated you on TV four to six weeks ago, and you said we were weeks away from it.

15:59Now you're making condescending remarks because you can't defend the fact that this war is not going your way. Wait, one more time. Not going your way? Name one political concession. Name one political concession. Honestly, I'm not going to have this guy's name on my face. Everybody, hang tight. Honestly.

16:13Brian Tyler Cohen:So, Tommy, does Scott Jennings have what it takes to be the new face of this administration? Recently, he's been sporting a really terrible goatee. So I would step one would be shave that. Look, apparently the White House is seriously considering him. I think CNN reported that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles met with Jennings recently, that she thinks he's an adult. She thinks he could like be professionalized their relationship with the press. I find that to be insane personally. I don't hear anyone on or off mic who has a lot of nice things to say about Scott Jennings as a person. He's not seen as an honest broker.

16:50Remember, just recently was like three or four weeks ago. He told us that he did a 20 minute call with Mitch McConnell from his hospital room where they like talked about U.N. reform in Iran. It's like, give me a break. This guy's not credible in any way, shape or form. He gets triggered on air by like YouTubers. You know, Adam Mockler is like 23 year old, a 24 year old guy, like just trying to debate him. He gets his ass handed to him by Adam. Like, I don't know. I wouldn't be my choice.

17:14Brian Tyler Cohen:Well, look, I think he does have the one thing that Donald Trump is looking for. Trump isn't looking for competence. He's not looking for an even keeled demeanor. He's not looking for somebody who's going to be a fair broker of the news or of politics. He just wants somebody who's going to be a breathless sycophant for him. Somebody who's going to show slavish devotion to Donald Trump. And that's what Scott Jennings does. I mean, there's not even any topics on which Scott Jennings is going to moderate his views a little bit or play both sides. Like he will always be in Trump's corner no matter what happens.

17:49Brian Tyler Cohen:And so this is really, you know, it's on one hand, it's either a massive audition to be the next White House press secretary or Scott Jennings just is a complete shameless sycophant who does it for the love of the game. But either way, he's doing what Trump wants him to do. You know what? I think kind of both are true there. Like, I think he probably did this for the love of the game just because he's the shameless piece of shit, like you said, who wants attention. Yeah. But it worked. It got attention. And it got like heard in the White House. And they were like, oh, this guy will defend literally anything.

18:15I think like Trump, you know, Steve Bannon and the people who are on the Trump campaign, they often talk about their favorite people being the ones who stuck with Donald Trump during the Access Hollywood scandal. And what that really like what that translates to is people who have no values whatsoever.

18:32Brian Tyler Cohen:No shame, no morals, no values, no principles. Yeah. And really, that's what Trump 2.0 has been. I mean, Trump 2.0 is composed of people who will never do what happened to Trump, which means the Constitution, what happened to Trump and what Trump 1.0, which is you have Mike Pence who's refusing to fail to certify the election results in deference to Trump. You have Rex Tillerson. You have Rance Priebus. You have, you know, all of these people who had, you know, a modicum of independent thought or adherence to the Constitution or to our laws. That doesn't exist in Trump 2.0. He's found these people who are not willing to allow any shame to get in the way of of just their their sycophancy for him.

19:17Brian Tyler Cohen:And yes, you're going to inherently get people like Sean Duffy and RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth who are completely unqualified for the roles that they occupy. But that's not a bug. That's a feature. He wants people who are incompetent and unqualified for their roles because that means that they're malleable to be rubber stamps for him. And so in Scott Jennings, again, if he's just going to show blind devotion to Trump, then he fulfills the one qualification that Trump sees in the role of press secretary. Who would be the funniest person to make press secretary? J.D. Vance would hate it so much that it would be kind of like entertaining for us.

19:57Brian Tyler Cohen:Is it going to be like press secretary George Santos? George Santos is a great pitch. Hulk Hogan, is he still alive? I think sadly we have lost Hulk Hogan. So he's probably in the same physical state as Mitch McConnell. What about the macho man, Randy Savage? I can't. He apparently also has died. Well, I think we've run out of right wing coded wrestlers. I'll think of some more current wrestlers. J.D. Vance, every question he'd be like, just like condescend to you. Yeah. Or I mean, I was just going to say, you know, you know that at the end of the day, it's going to be his 12th job is going to be it's going to be Marco Rubio.