Former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh on Wednesday warned the Republican Party is making a mistake with its new minority leader Jim Jordan.
“I know Jim Jordan. I know Jim Jordan well. I served with Jim Jordan,” said Walsh, speaking on his Wednesday “Social Contract” podcast. “There was a time when Jim Jordan and I were very, very good friends. Let me tell you about Jim Jordan and MAGA: The 2020 election was stolen; We got to keep brown and Black people out of America; this is a white Christian country; Democrats are evil. That's where Jim Jordan is. That's who Jim Jordan is. Jim Jordan is as extreme as you can want in the Republican caucus in the House.”
Jordan is also not about reaching across the aisle with the new House majority or working with independents, warned Walsh. Jordan is about doubling down and preserving the MAGA base, over all else. “The reason we lost, Jim Jordan thinks, is we just weren't ugly enough. We weren't cruel enough. We weren't angry enough,” he said.
Oddly, Jordan did not originally support Trump when the Trump first came on the scene around 2015. Jordan is a Christian man, said Walsh, who professes to believe in what's right and wrong, good and bad, decent and cruel, the truth and a lie. So, he did not like Trump out of the gate.
But once it became clear Trump was nabbing the 2016 nomination Jordan jumped on Team Trump “like nobody else,” said Walsh.
“Once, just very briefly, I said to him, Jim, Trump's a bad guy. He's a horrible guy,” said Walsh. “He lies every time he opens his mouth. He's like a big government authoritarian. Jim — fellow Tea Party guy, Jim — Donald Trump is the very antithesis of what you and me and the Tea Party said we supported. And I'll never forget Jordan's answer to me. He said, ‘yeah, Joe, yeah, Joe, yeah, Joe, Trump's not perfect, but the Democrats are evil.’"
And “that's how Jordan sees the world,” said Walsh. “The other side is bad. The other side is evil. So nothing more matters than defeating the other side. … House Republicans yesterday put someone to be their leader, chose someone. Who believes Democrats are evil.”
Worse, Jordan in charge means the GOP will “double down” on all the mistakes that got the part routed during the midterms, said Walsh.
“All they're going to be about is opposing Democrats and calling them evil and communists,” lamented Walsh. “They're gonna double down on what they said and did that caused them to lose. They've learned nothing. Jim Jordan, either doesn't understand or will never admit that the American people last week said to the Republican Party, ‘you're too extreme. You're too cruel. You don't give a flying f—— about the issues we care about. You are utterly beholden to Donald Trump and you're letting him break any law and be as corrupt as he wants to be.’ That's what the American people told the Republican Party, and that's why the American people spanked the Republican Party so hard last week.”
But Walsh, who repeats that he “knows Jordan” well, said Jordan “sat in his office a day or two after the election, a day or two after this … whooping, and he said, ‘Look, we're right. We're on the right side. We're good. They're evil.’”