Trump And Republican House Speaker In Talks To Hold California Wildfire Aid Hostage

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson says that he is in talks with Donald Trump about holding wildfire aid for California hostage. Johnson and Trump want the state to enact strict Voter ID laws in exchange for getting the money to help the state recover, a condition that has nothing at all to do with the fires. As usual, the media is nearly silent about this, but they would be up in arms if Democrats tried to do this to a red state. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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

On Monday of this week when Republicans were down at Donald Trump's Doral golf resort for their little annual get together, where they, you know, basically came up with ideas to be more evil than they were the previous year. Republican House speaker Mike Johnson took some time to talk to members of the press. And CNN's Manu Raju asked Johnson straight up about aid to California for the wildfires. You know, it's been a hot button issue. Republicans have said we want to put strings attached to it. And Manu Raju asked quote, the president said on Friday that he would insist on voter ID as a condition for aid to California. Would you insist on voter ID in exchange for aid to California? You know, I mean, voter ID is in no way related to wildfires. So, so why, why is the president saying like, yeah, they have to do that, or we're not gonna help them.

Johnson responded, yeah, we've gotta work out the details of that. I have not spoken to the president about that issue since he said it, but he'll be here tonight, of course, for dinner with us. And that's one of the topics of discussion. We were deeply concerned about it in this last election cycle. And, uh, the house Republicans saw three of our seats, frankly, slip away from us in the weeks that it took to continue counting ballots in California when seemingly every other state and nation and American can get it done. So we've talked about conditioning the aid that will go there to policy changes.

Voter ID would not change how long it takes to count votes, bud. I, I don't, I don't know what you think VO voter ID would, would do to speed up the counting process. That doesn't even make any sense. 'cause those aren't even related. Like, if I show my ID in order to get a ballot, it, it doesn't mean they're gonna count my ballot faster. I mean, you, you know that, right? Clearly you don't. Well, actually, I think you do. You're just pretending to be dumb. And here's the thing, and I'm gonna point this out every single time I talk about this. Why are we putting strings on this?

We have never, never, in the years I have been covering politics in the years that I have studied politics, went to school for a political science degree, none of that have I ever seen a Democratic administration or a Democratic Congress say, yes, we will give you this aid, red state after your natural disaster, but you gotta do a couple things for us instead. If you want that money, you will do everything we are telling you you have to do to change your policies into liberal policies. That's literally never happened, folks. And if it did happen,

Of course the media would be out there every day, all day for eternity, talking about how cruel these Democrats are. They're withholding aid from these, you know, natural disaster, ravaged red states. They're letting people suffer because they want the red state to change their policies to those matching blue states. It simply hasn't ever happened yet. This has happened with regard to the aid to the California wildfires multiple times. It happened during Trump's first administration. It's happening during his second administration. And the media doesn't seem to care. Like they're, they're not pointing this out. They're not really talking about this here. They are admitting this is what we're gonna do and we're gonna do it not because we want them to change their policies about, you know, fire mitigation. No. We want to tie it to something completely unrelated. That's insane. And that's how this issue should be framed. That it is insane. It is cruel, it is disgusting, and it's the way that the Republican Party does business in America today.