A Mass Exodus Of D.C. Politicians: What The Hell

America’s Lawyer E76: Members of Congress are heading for the exits in numbers we haven’t seen before, and most of them say that the dysfunction in the House is simply too much to deal with. Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against Media Matters, alleging that the group deceptively manipulated algorithms to make it look like advertisers were putting content next to anti-semitic content. All that, and more is coming up, so don’t go anywhere – America’s Lawyer starts right now.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The number of US representatives announcing their retirement is growing by the week, and most of them are saying the same thing and that is that Congress is too dysfunctional to get anything done. Most Americans would probably agree with that statement. I have Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins with me to talk about it. No surprise here. It's an exodus by both Republicans and Democrats. So it's hard, although I looked at this article, New York Times tries to say, well, it's just the House. Hell no, it's not just the House. You have Democrats leaving because they're saying that they haven't been able to get anything done for decades.

Yeah. And it is very interesting here with both the Republicans and the Democrats finally coming to the same conclusion of, what the hell are we doing? Why am I here? Three dozen members have already said, I am leaving. And that doesn't even include George Santos, who is probably not.

We should have left him a long time ago.

Yeah. So we have all of these people who say, I can't take this anymore. But to me, what's kind of funny about it is the fact that these folks don't see the irony of every one of them saying, there's too much dysfunction. Not realizing that you're part of it. You are part of this dysfunction and this system. So don't sit there and pretend like it's everybody else but you.

They're concluding the same thing that you and I have concluded a lot of times. You've been asked to get in politics. I've been asked to get in politics so many times and my response is same as yours, is we get a hell of a lot more done doing what we do as a lawyer and as a TV analyst than you do in politics. It's a frigging waste of time. I mean, really. But three dozen now. Okay. How does that play itself out? I don't think it's clear whether that changes anything in the next cycle because it's so close. Right? What do you think?

No, I think you're right. And a lot of these folks are from either safe red districts or safe blue districts, so they know the next man up, next woman up is gonna win.

It's gonna win.

Yeah. But this kind of goes back to what you and I had talked about weeks ago and the fact that everything has become so tribal. There is no more reaching across the aisle. Let's work together on this legislation. Actually, I think one of the last times we saw real bipartisanship was actually Matt Gaetz teaming up with AOC on legislation. I forget it right, it slips my mind what the legislation was, but they were working together on something kind of big. And other than that, though, the fact that we can point to one time it's happened shows us that it's not happening enough.

Isn't it the dumbing down of our culture in general? Name one statesman. Okay, give me a statesman where you would say, well, this is a statesman. I think Blumenthal, frankly. I think that's a statesman. How many of those can you name that are up there? It used to be, you could name real statesmen. I mean, their goal was to make something happen. Their goal was to get along. Ted Kennedy, one of the greatest statesmen of all times that could reach across the aisle. He'd have all kinds of social interactions with them. Those days are gone. It's like, it's so dysfunctional because part of it is the dumbing down of America. That's really, read between, it's the dumbing down of America. Everything is like an MMA fight right now.

It really is because it's all about, can I get a zinger across to this person during this hearing?