thomas mann once said that a writer is someone for whom writing is really difficult. yeah, i've heard that. i've heard that. is that true? you? yes, yes. yes, it is. and this one was like this hurt. me like this book hurt. i it's this this. it really, really did. and i think it's not just that it's difficult, but that you accept the difficulty because it's difficult for everybody. but for some reason you just say, okay, this is going to hurt and you just let it, let hurt. like you're compelled to, to let hurt and try to figure out what what is. on the other side of that pain, you write about early in your career, you saw yourself at a certain level having a kind of focus that stood in abeyance is of the empirical. yeah. and then i wondered if the travels you write about in this book, south carolina, israel is a kind of a return to that's a great point. that's a that's a great point point. it's kind of actually a return sort of focused in many ways in some ways, you know, you know, it's some. you know, i grew up in a household reading was very, very important. right. a

mann. johnson. mnnnion. jeffries. massie. >> tom emmer. >> emmer. [indistinct conversation] >> bret: okay, so that is thomas massie, and he has voted for bob ever for speaker. so that is another person, you see that 1 there, that was predicted. you can't have another republican go the other way, otherwise we are going to another ballot at the end. remember there are five members have not responded yet. four g.o.p.es, biggs, cloud, . they could come at the end and vote, but if they don't it puts the magic number, the total number at 429 instead of 434 and that means the magic number would be 215 so there is a number of ways this can go just by process. and they could not vote and he could still win with a majority of 215. but it is a dangerous game when you start playing this because hakeem jeffries can also g get a 215. and that is where this is. >> and what happens of carson's shows up, the democrat and the four republicans don't show up, you could theoretically have 216 democrats, 215 republicans, which would be a very uncomfortable moment. >> sandra: is an algebraic equation. we keep so many were saying