'Shriveled, Irrelevant'! MS NOW Panel Disses House GOP Picking Jim Jordan as Leader

On Tuesday afternoon, MS NOW host Katy Tur and panel members went negative on House Republicans for choosing Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as their leader. While Tur was hosting her The Moment show, MS NOW correspondent Mychael Schnell informed her of the news that congressional Republicans had elected him.

Alluding to the media's negative reaction to President Donald Trump promoting Stephen Miller to White House chief-of-staff, Tur turned to contributor Molly Jong-Fast and cued her to go negative: "It feels, Molly, like making Stephen Miller your chief of staff -- electing Jim Jordan to lead the Republicans through this."

Jong-Fast began:

It's like they didn't see that election right. It's like they did not see the blue tsunami where voters said, like, "We don't like this." And so MAGA has decided to double down. ... what were voters saying, right? They were saying they wanted something different, right? You have a President whose polling is pretty much catastrophic, right? You have a party that has lost by more than Watergate numbers, and you have pretty much a Republican party that's like, you know, we're just going to go more MAGA.

Tur called it a "hardline move" as she turned to contributor Alex Wagner. The MS NOW host posed: "... what does this show you about the agenda for the Republican party over the next two years, how they're going to try to prosecute their case going into '28?"

Wagner began her response:

Well, I think it says, I mean, first of all, there are going to be no House Republicans left in swing districts. The party is becoming increasingly shriveled, angry, and irrelevant in terms of national politics. Trump has hollowed out any kind of ideological base and made it just a party of grievance and rage. It's really hard to explain one thing the Republican party is for other than fighting.

Turning to frequent guest and disgruntled former Republican Rick Wilson, Tur posed: "It appears to me that the Republicans are desperately hoping that if they yell loud enough and if they're as extreme as they can be -- the Republicans are -- the Democrats are going to, you know, just revert to what they were during Donald Trump's first term."

Wilson asserted that Republicans would exaggerated extremism by Democrats and then took a person shot at Congressman Jordan:

I think it's going to be an interesting contrast because you have so many new, young, charismatic members in the Democratic caucus, and you've got Jim Jordan, who has the charisma of like a mildewed dishtowel. ... he is not the guy you want out front and center in this day and age where you've got to be quick on your feet. On social media, you've got to be, you know, you've got to be forward on video. He is not that guy. He is the ranty little shrew in these committee hearings where he's jumping up and down, you know, before he goes back to his tree to make cookies at the end of the day. He's not the guy you need in the frame right now if you're the Republican party.

Tur had notably incorrectly identified Wilson as a "Republican strategist" earlier in the segment even though he left the Republican party years ago.

Transcript follows:

MS NOW's The Moment with Katy Tur

November 10, 2026

2:28 p.m. Eastern

KATY TUR: It feels, Molly, like making Stephen Miller your chief of staff -- electing Jim Jordan to lead the Republicans through this.

MOLLY JONG-FAST, MS NOW CONTRIBUTOR: It's like they didn't see that election right. It's like they did not see the blue tsunami where voters said, like, "We don't like this." And so MAGA has decided to double down. I mean, the good news for Democrats is going to be a lot to run against. But it is just -- it's so -- it's sort of like, if you think about it, what were voters saying, right? They were saying they wanted something different, right? You have a President whose polling is pretty much catastrophic, right? You have a party that has lost by more than Watergate numbers, and you have pretty much a Republican party that's like, you know, we're just going to go more MAGA.

TUR: Yeah, it's definitely a hardline move, Alex, and a move that you take if you want to continue being confrontational with the Democrats. If you're thinking that there's going to be investigations, you take the guy that will yell over everybody during a House hearing, which we saw a lot during Donald Trump's first term when Democrats were investigating him. Jim Jordan was Donald Trump's loudest voice, his biggest attack dog in the House, and somebody who was relentless in those hearing rooms. Does this show you -- or what does this show you about the agenda for the Republican party over the next two years, how they're going to try to prosecute their case going into '28?

ALEX WAGNER, MS NOW CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think it says, I mean, first of all, there are going to be no House Republicans left in swing districts. The party is becoming increasingly shriveled, angry, and irrelevant in terms of national politics. Trump has hollowed out any kind of ideological base and made it just a party of grievance and rage. It's really hard to explain one thing the Republican party is for other than fighting.

And so they're left with the guy who fights the most. I mean, that's what this appointment tells me. They think, I guess, nationally, that there's going to be a flood like the big red wave of Democratic Socialists is going to flood Congress. And I think that's a gross miscalculation. I mean, I think Democrats, you know, that's not to say that there's not going to be accountability, but the idea that the Democrats are going to reveal themselves to be some kind of flag-burning fringe party once they take control of both chambers is a fallacy.

And for the Republican party to pretend like that's the coming dynamic, and they need someone who can stanch the red tide of Democratic Socialism is just, like, wildly out there. But, again, like they don't have anything left. Like they don't -- they don't have a party to run on. They just have a sort of ambivalent anger or sort of an abstract anger that powers the movement at this point, which is increasingly shrunken.

TUR: And on that note, it feels like, much like the Stephen Miller appointment, this is an attempt to provoke Democrats. I mean, their strongest ground to get Donald Trump reelected was to paint the Democrats as overreaching, as targeting Donald Trump, as only caring about investigating him, not caring about the American public voters, as everyone is saying here. Alex, you just said it a moment ago -- voters want lawmakers to deliver for them. They're looking for change. They're looking for their costs to go down. They're looking for their health care to get less expensive, etc.

Democrats have said that that's -- that's what they're going to focus on on day one. You heard it from Hakeem Jeffries just yesterday. He wants to focus on health care. That's like the first thing they're going to do when they get into Congress. When he was asked, "How are you going to balance that and investigations?" Rick. It appears to me that the Republicans are desperately hoping that if they yell loud enough and if they're as extreme as they can be -- the Republicans are -- the Democrats are going to, you know, just revert to what they were during Donald Trump's first term.

RICK WILSON, LINCOLN PROJECT: Look, I think this election taught a lot of people a lot of lessons, but it did not teach Jim Jordan and the Republican caucus anything at all. They are hoping for, you know, they're hoping for newly elected Democratic members to come out and declare they're going to seize the means of production and send all your kids away to -- to communist work camps. It's insane. And Jordan will try to paint this picture to get the Republican base revved back up that they're always under threat from -- from full communism whenever the Democrats propose, like, a health care bill or whatever it is.

This is playing to the base of the base of the base. Alex is exactly right. The Republican party has become so shrunken and so small, and Molly's right that they haven't learned the lesson that this election was about accountability, it was about corruption, it was about the economy, it was about ending this war, it was about ending these tariffs and restoring the country. The Democrats have 25 pathways they can go down simultaneously doing accountability, which they have to do, but also doing the economic stuff.

And I think it's going to be -- I think it's going to be an interesting contrast because you have so many new, young, charismatic members in the Democratic caucus, and you've got Jim Jordan, who has the charisma of like a mildewed dishtowel. He is -- he is not the guy you want out front and center in this day and age where you've got to be quick on your feet. On social media, you've got to be, you know, you've got to be forward on video. He is not that guy. He is the ranty little shrew in these committee hearings where he's jumping up and down, you know, before he goes back to his tree to make cookies at the end of the day. He's not the guy you need in the frame right now if you're the Republican party.