Now turning to political developments today, Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson will remain as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

And a close ballot round one.

And after a last minute vote switch by two members, Johnson could only afford to lose one vote and the almost evenly divided House.

Initially, three Republicans voted against him, making it appear he had lost the first round of voting.

But two of those three changed their votes and voted for Johnson before the vote was made official.

Johnson then won with 218 votes.

So in the end, there was only one vote against Johnson, and that was Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a longtime Johnson critic.

Kentucky's fifth District congressman and the dean of the House, Hal Rogers, administered the oath to Johnson after today's election.

Time now to go inside Kentucky politics and talk a little about what's happening in Congress today as well.

And we've got our good friend Trey Grayson with us, who is with Frost Brown.

Todd, of course, he's a former Kentucky secretary of state.

And you often see him right here on CD.

Happy New Year to you, Terry.

Happy New Year, Renee.

I miss Bob.

I know the New Year.

No Bob, New Year.

No, Bob.

And we'll rectify that in a couple of weeks.

But we had some connectivity issues with Bob Babbitt's today.

So you're flying so low, but I think you can handle it just fine.

The time that we talked around 245 to 50 today, the Speaker ship had been sewn up.

But I want to go back before that point and talk about the transition and the U.S. Senate.

And with McConnell's nameplate being removed from the majority office and now putting up Senator Thune's name play, I mean, that's significant in so many ways.

It's a visual that we're sharing with our audience right now, but it signifies the end of a leadership reign that McConnell has enjoyed for many, many years.

I think it's 18 years since he became the Republican leader.

Not all of that in the majority, some in the majority, some of the minority, but always the Republican leader and that picture is really poignant is it's an end of an era.

We haven't had a leader.

And that's not something we're talking about nationally to serve that long in this party's leadership.

We have the state have certainly benefited from his leadership.

He's still there.

He's got at least two more years left in this term.

He hasn't said he's not running again and he's going to pivot to being committee chairman.

I actually wrote an email today describing him as Chairman McConnell.

So that was kind of weird rather than Leader McConnell.

Right.

But that's that's the new title for the next couple of years.

Yeah, but he'll still be very influential, don't you think, in that leadership circle?

Certainly he'll be someone that his ear will be back to, I would assume, by Senator Thune as he learns the ropes and what's all required and even how to negotiate as well and be as tactical as McConnell has been in that role for 18 years.

Absolutely.

Thune was part of his prior leadership team.

They do have a close relationship.

While well, McConnell didn't endorse Thune or Cornyn, and he clearly supported the two of them.

The two primary candidates over Rick Scott, the third candidate.

And in this committee chair that I referenced, it's the Rules Committee, election administration, campaign finance comes into that committee.

And he's also going to chair an appropriations subcommittee subcommittee on national security.

So he's going to be a big player over the next couple of years in some important areas.

And he will be that veteran.

We've seen Speaker Pelosi, former Speaker Pelosi, play that elder statesman role in the House for members of her party.

And I suspect that many senators will lean upon our Mitch McConnell for advice during these next two years.

And speaking of the House, just shortly before we started our record around 245 Eastern Time today, Mike Johnson had secured the speakership in the first round, we should say, not the 15.

It took them the last time.

And we also know that the fourth Congressional District, Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky was still a hold out.

Right.

What's the beef between Massie and Johnson here?

And will that hurt Massie later on?

So so Matthew, as we know, is not afraid to vote no and not afraid to be the only Republican or Democrat voting no on a particular bill when it violates his principles.

And the main thing it seems to be the case going on here is he thinks that the speaker in the last Congress relied upon Democratic votes.

Too often.

In fact, he even said that I support the Trump agenda.

I just don't think Johnson's the one who can do it because it keeps relying upon Democrats to get things done.

And when you need Democrats, you get a different kind of vote.

Some Massie was the only one who ended up not stopping his vote.

There were a couple of others who initially voted no who came back, changed their vote.

So technically it was on the first vote, although it was a long vote because there were a lot of holdouts.

And then some folks came back and then finally everybody.

But Massie switched to the second part of your question.

I don't really see this doing anything more to Thomas Massie, his political prospects than, you know, his entire tenure.

I mean, he's not been afraid to stick his neck out.

He's not been afraid to cross Donald Trump.

He didn't support Trump.

He supported DeSantis in the primary.

Trump actually went after him in some of his past primaries, and Massie wins comfortably.

So he's got a good foothold.

He's got a lot of supporters in the fourth District.

He's my congressman now.

And actually, since high school break, I found this whole picture of the two of us.

This is nerd alert on the Kentucky Indiana academic all star team.

We both represented Kentucky in a competition against Indiana and I need to send them that picture.

And it probably doesn't have it anymore.

But the young Thomas Massie, the young Trey Grayson, fully nerd it out.

And by the way, we killed Indiana.

You them.

Well, that's good to know.

I was going to ask, but the outcome wise and we want that picture when I have you back on the third Friday of the month.

We want to see that.

So we're going to have people wait for that.

Like you got to wait for this.

We're going to get it.

Let's talk about we lost our 39th president, Jimmy Carter, this week on Sunday.

And there has been a lot of expressions, not just about his humanitarian efforts post his presidency, but also kind of rewriting the significance of his term, his one term as president.

What are your thoughts?

He was somebody it was interesting.

He lost reelection.

That was unusual in the 20th century.

It had been since Herbert Hoover that a president had lost reelection when he left office, A lot of the Democrats wanted to keep their distance from him.

He lost pretty handily to run.

And Ronald Reagan ended up going on to serve two terms, you know, inflation and the Iran hostages.

That was it was a tough time in office.

But as time has passed, you're right.

He did a couple of things.

One, he left office at a young age, never ran again.

So he helped to reinvent what is the post-presidency look like.

We all you know, nobody had really heard of Habitat for Humanity until he got involved in it.

And now it's one of the foremost charitable organizations with regards to housing in the country.

He continued to stay involved in international affairs.

One of his top achievements as president was the camp at Camp David Accords, where he was able to bring together the leadership of Egypt and Israel to bring recognition so that Egypt would become the first Arab state to recognize Israel.

That was a big accomplishment.

We still struggle with issues in the Middle East and relationships.

Several countries still don't recognize Israel, and that was the first time that that had happened.

And I would also say on a personal level, he did a lot in election administration.

After the 2000 presidential election, he and former President Ford put together a commission to develop recommendations, and that became the Help America Vote Act, which actually now chairman and former leader McConnell was the Republican lead sponsor of that bill.

And he did it again after the 2004 election.

Even recently, the Carter Center still remains involved in election issues.

And I did a project with them.

So there's a lot of different things that he's done in people.

We go to Sunday school.

He shook hands every tell me if I don't delta.

He was known for being a good guy.

And while he may have been a, you know, the presidency lost, I mean, the ultimate report card is did you get reelected?

So maybe the presidency didn't go that well.

But he was certainly a human, a great human and a strong humanitarian with a lot of ties to Kentucky as a southern governor.

That's right.

And we've talked about that a lot over this past week.

Well, it's always good to catch up with you, Trey Grayson, whether you're riding solo or you're with Bob.

Bob Babbage.

But we'll get you two together soon and then we'll talk about the 2025 Kentucky General Assembly.

And there'll be a lot probably to talk about the next time we connect.

Thank you so much tonight.

It's always good to see you.

It's always good to see you and I.