The struggle for Speaker of the House is now into its third day, and the drama has never been higher. Charlie welcomes someone very familiar with the process, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, to get his expert analysis. They discuss the last minute nominations, the many proposed (and failed) deals, and the audience’s #1 candidate for Speaker, which may surprise you.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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House Vote Drama Unpacked00:07:32
Hey, everybody.
Today in the Charlie Kirk show, the latest of the House floor drama, Newt Gingrich helps us unpack that.
Email us your thoughts, freedom at charliekirk.com.
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Right now, there are speeches in favor of Kevin McCarthy that are happening right now in the House vote.
So basically where it goes right now is there are 20 people, 20 Republicans that are withholding any support whatsoever for Kevin McCarthy.
Several of them are going to join our program.
We have Mike Gallagher again from Wisconsin, who is giving a speech in favor of Kevin McCarthy.
This is a great way to get me not in favor of your cause.
As Gallagher gave a speech yesterday, he said, look, there's a lot that we disagree with.
We want to be energy and upon all this, but we can all agree with the Democrats that we need to fight our enemies abroad.
And I was like, oh man, this is just another virtue signaling towards Ukraine.
It drives me nuts.
So I would have this guy to stop talking.
I would not have him as the lead act.
Not exactly helpful, but especially for those of us that, I don't know, want our own borders secure while we fund border security of Tunisia, Lebanon, Syria, and Pakistan.
All right.
So there are 20 Republicans that are saying, I am not going to give any support whatsoever to Kevin McCarthy.
It seems as if, though, the McCarthy team gave a very generous deal last evening.
A deal that would include representation on the rules committee, a deal that would include a prohibition from engaging in primaries.
I'm going to talk about that and what that actually concretely can mean if these deals are going to be followed through upon, if they are built on actual trust, if they're not just being said for the sake of trying to get a deal done so that one could become Speaker of the House.
These are all very, very big ifs.
One, two, three, four, five ifs.
There are also negotiations on house floor votes on the Texas border plan on getting a house floor vote on term limits.
If I were advising the McCarthy team, I would say just give those away.
Those mean nothing.
I mean, you should have you should have House floor votes on term limits anyway.
And so basically, here's what some of the concessions are, basically what they involve in.
So, or what are involved in some of the concessions.
Essentially, the sticking point was first on the motion to vacate.
Kevin McCarthy said, I don't want any motion to vacate.
Well, now they're probably going to get a one-a-single vote motion to vacate against the Speaker of the House.
Okay, so that's a concession.
Another concession is Kevin McCarthy's very powerful, well-funded super PAC that was involved in, by the way, let's take one race that it was very involved in that I was very fired up about that I didn't like was when Kevin McCarthy came in and spent millions of dollars against Caroline Levitt.
You guys remember Caroline Levitt?
Caroline Levitt, he came in against Mowers and in favor of Mowers and spent a bunch of money with Caroline Levitt.
Caroline Levitt won, but one of the reasons she was unable to be successful in the general is that there was so much money spent against her in that late primary.
One of the concessions that was made by Kevin McCarthy's super PAC was that they're no longer going to get involved in safe Republican primaries like they did with Caroline Levitt.
He also did the same thing with Anthony Sabatini, amongst many other people.
And so that, if that ends up materializing into reality, that is a major victory.
Now, again, there's a lot of ifs and trusts and one-offs and all of that.
So, but if that is legitimate, that's a huge win to say that McCarthy will not involve himself in safe Republican primaries.
There are also some concessions that McCarthy is making on allowing more Freedom Caucus members to serve on the very powerful House Rules Committee.
That is a fabulous victory.
In Newt Gingrich's time, in Newt Gingrich's time as Speaker, the most conservative members were not on the House Rules Committee.
And then finally, promising to vote on some bills like term limits and border security, that should happen no matter what.
That is, I have very little patience whatsoever for that not to occur.
Okay, I want to cut to this feed in just a second.
I'm curious who is going to nominate amongst the 20 if they are going to go through a roll call vote.
If any of them are going to vote present and or in favor of Kevin McCarthy, let's cut to C-SPAN here.
This is going to tell us a lot about the spirit and the momentum behind some of these negotiations.
Let's cut to C-SPAN.
Yesterday, my first vote for Speaker of the House was for Byron Donalds.
Today, I'm rising to nominate Byron Donalds for Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Byron is a dear friend, a solid conservative, but most importantly, a family man who loves dearly his wife Erica, his three children, has a proven track record as a businessman, public service in the Florida legislature, and now is a member of the United States Congress.
Now, here we are, and for the first time in history, there have been two black Americans placed into the nomination for Speaker of the House.
However, Madam Speaker, order.
Or Madam Clerk, order.
We do not seek to judge people by the color of their skin, but rather the content of their character.
Byron Donalds.
That's a little bit of a repeat of yesterday.
That goes to show that negotiations are ongoing.
So I don't mean to bury the lead.
Historic Speaker Nomination Moment00:15:51
I don't mean to leave you in suspense.
Kevin McCarthy is not going to win this speaker vote right now.
Is this number seven or eight?
I can't remember.
Is this number eight?
So the fact that Chip Roy is nominating Byron Donalds means that this particular carousel of voting is going to be unsuccessful for Kevin McCarthy.
Now, someone says here, Charlie, lots of swear words in this email.
Screw you.
You support Kevin McCarthy.
You're part of the problem.
Kevin McCarthy's a lying rhino SOB.
Stop supporting this scumbag, sincerely, Mike Francis.
Understand the energy.
I understand the vim and vigor there.
However, let's be accurate about what I support.
I support concessions to make the most conservative Congress in American history.
That's what I support.
I don't support a person.
I don't support an individual.
I instead support rules committee, steering committee.
I support staying out of primaries.
I support floor votes.
I support Jim Jordan as the head of judiciary.
That I support.
So let's just make sure my position is clear.
I support the movement, the progress, the success that is almost materializing in what could be the most conservative House of Representatives in American history.
I understand.
I'm not even going to say that the swear words of calling me a traitor and all that.
It's like, whatever.
You could have your own feelings.
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Our emails are blowing up, and I appreciate that.
Someone says, Charlie, the only concession I support is McCarthy stepping aside.
He's an enemy to America first and the candidates he opposed.
He put his power grasp ahead of our country.
No to McCarthy.
Someone says here, Charlie, I will never support Kevin McCarthy.
He will continue wasteful spending like any Democrat or Republican.
Gridlock over McCarthy 100%.
Shut it all down.
Okay.
Someone says, Charlie, it's time to convince Kevin McCarthy to quit.
It's time for the 20 to hold on to their opposition and they all can convince McCarthy that he does not have the votes.
Then we can move on and elect someone like Byron Donalds, a real conservative who we can trust.
Tom from Des Moines, Iowa.
Please continue emailing us, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Want to hear all perspectives here.
And boy, we're going to hear from Bobert.
We're going to hear from Gingrich.
We're going to hear from many others.
So here's the question: Is if your position as a grassroots activist and as someone who is an interested party, which by the way, your voice should be involved in this, it shouldn't just be a backroom deal disconnected like the U.S. Senate works.
By the way, don't you wish that we could have had something like this in the U.S. Senate?
You could say all you want about McCarthy, but McConnell, what McConnell has done to our country is so just exponentially worse.
They're not even on the same playing field.
McConnell put forward the omnibus.
McConnell has done such damage.
I'm not even defending McCarthy.
That is a fact.
But of course, the Senate does backroom deals.
It just so happens, the House being the people's house, this is now unfolding.
And in some ways, it's healthy.
In some ways, it's rather risky because coalition governments are now being discussed.
And so if your position is, hey, I don't want Kevin McCarthy under any circumstance, no matter what, know Kevin McCarthy.
My question is: is it about him because of a personal issue?
Is it because of a lack of trust issue?
Or is it potentially because of the framework that Congress has to operate in?
Let me read you a text message from a Freedom Caucus member.
Again, I was up till midnight.
Erica will tell you, is up till midnight talking to these people, which is 2 o'clock in D.C., just hearing them out, listening, trying to be a sounding board, also asking, I think, questions where I think they get a little too ahead of themselves.
Here is a Freedom Caucus member who's currently a no, so one of the 20.
Charlie, I have been in meetings all evening.
I'm going to be honest.
What has been offered to us is the best deal I have ever seen or could think of.
It's going to be hard not to take this, but honestly, trust is the issue.
So that is the question, right?
Is that, okay, concessions are one thing, and you're trying to broker a deal.
And so effectively, essentially, last night, there were a series of meetings because they were going to vote.
Democrats wanted a vote to happen because they think this just makes Republicans look terrible, and they're not totally incorrect.
And they wanted the vote carousel to continue.
There was a vote to adjourn, though, because that was basically a vote to, hey, let's negotiate.
Let's try to strike a deal.
Now, the position of many of you is we don't want a deal.
We don't care how many concessions there are.
We don't care how good things get.
We want to burn it all down.
That is the majority consensus belief of all of you.
And I can't fault you for that perspective because you have been lied to and deceived and betrayed.
Someone said the number one email we're getting right now is Donald Trump for Speaker of the House.
He wouldn't win and he doesn't want it because you think 20 Republicans not wanting Kevin McCarthy is decisive.
There's probably 120 Republicans that do not want it.
And that's another important thing: is that yes, the 20 Freedom Caucus members do have power right now.
They are the swing voters.
But if this continues to go without taking a good deal, do not be surprised if those 50 to 75 more rhinotypes start to get very angry that Congress is being just going in that direction, even though that is much more in our philosophically congruent of our worldview, and they start going and caucusing with Democrats.
That's not going to happen today, but there are conversations right now to help form a coalition government, effectively eliminating the Republican House majority.
And no, just to be clear, I do not think Donald Trump would win the Speaker of the House race.
I do not.
There are at least 100 very moderate Republicans that are saying they're only going to vote for McCarthy.
But that's why I said yesterday, Donald Trump should be there negotiating the deal.
I think it's a mistake for Donald Trump not to be in D.C. helping negotiate the deal.
He wants to be president in 2024.
Help get the impossible deal done.
I think it's a missed opportunity.
I really do.
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This is what I'm hearing from the members, you know, working the phones last night and hearing people out and hearing their position.
Because I personally do not, and this is just my perspective, and a lot of you disagree.
I do not think having a position that I'm going to refuse a deal under all circumstances, I don't think that's wise or prudent.
You must be open-minded, hear it out in life.
Okay, I heard the deal.
I'm not going to take it.
But don't be too dogmatic about it.
Your constituents wouldn't want you to be dogmatic about it.
But what I'm hearing from House Freedom Caucus members, again, I spoke to six or eight of them last night, I can't remember, and texted a lot, plenty of them, is we don't trust Kevin McCarthy.
Okay, let's go to Cut 45, Lauren Bobert making the argument of trust.
Play Cut 45.
MC promised.
Of course I do, but I do not trust Kevin McCarthy at this point to deliver on those promises, especially when I go into good faith negotiations with him and then he comes out and lies about what those conversations were.
So that's a short clip of a very explosive conversation that Lauren Bobert and Sean Hannity had last evening.
I promise you our conversation will not be as explosive as that.
That I promise you.
But we are going to try to get towards, I'm going to try to get some clarity for sure, is trust.
I keep on hearing that word, trust, trust, trust, trust.
And that's a big deal because if you don't trust somebody, then all of these offers, it's going to be difficult to receive them.
So what can possibly be done to rebuild that trust?
I don't know.
Maybe put some ink to the deal, not just make it verbal.
And, you know, someone just emailed us.
They said, Charlie, it seems like your heart is with the audience, but in some ways, you want an open-minded head to understand political reality and to entertain some of the concessions.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think that's correct.
Someone says here, Charlie, don't you watch War Room.
Trump is the one we need now for 100 days.
Yeah, I think that's an interesting idea, but Donald Trump doesn't want it.
And 100 Republicans, let's not say 100, let's say 50 rhinos would block it.
So that would not happen.
The state of the Republican Party is very, very fragile.
It is in a place of upheaval.
This is one of the reasons why we need to remove Rana as head of the RNC.
Okay, we have Newt Gingrich.
Speaker Gingrich, welcome back to the program.
Thank you for making time.
What do you make of the current vote carousel that's happening right now on the House of Representatives?
Well, I think, first of all, it's freedom in action.
It is something that's hard to explain to Putin or Xi Jinping or Kim Jong-un.
But in a free society, people get to argue these things out, and it's messy.
You know, we've done it 14 times before this.
We've had multiple votes for Speaker.
If McCarthy is going to get there, he'll have to make accommodation to get enough people to have a majority of those who vote.
If he can't do that, then the conference has to find somebody else who's more broadly acceptable.
And I think that's frankly a real challenge because I think that there's nobody else who can come close to McCarthy's reach of the whole conference.
So it's frustrating.
It's challenging.
I have been very critical of the approach of some of the people who are, in essence, trying to blackmail the conference because I think it's a very dangerous precedent.
You know, Lincoln in 1861 in his first inaugural said the problem with secession is once that's the principle, then everybody else gets to secede too, and you end up in chaos.
So it's the new principle that any five or six or seven members, whether they're moderates or they're California or they're Florida or whatever, you know, are people who represent the sugar beet growers, they get to hold up the entire process until they get what they want.
I think they've got to talk it out.
They've got to find some grounds to bring themselves together.
And hopefully 99% of the conference, I think there are three or four people who just hate Kevin, and they're not ever going to vote for him for a variety of personal reasons.
But I think everybody else has to put it together.
Boehner got elected with 216 votes.
Pelosi got elected with 216 votes.
Neither of them could get to 218.
And so several people voted present who were unwilling to vote for them.
So we'll see.
I've got a sense that overnight there was some progress, that people have made serious concessions on both sides.
And that I thought I was telling last night on the vote to adjourn that they had everybody except four members.
So they were up to 218 voting together as a team.
And if they can find a way to keep that going, either today or tomorrow or the next day, some point in the near future, we'll have a speaker and we'll get on with the business of the country.
So, Mr. Speaker, walk our audience through some of these concessions, or let's just say, deal offers that the McCarthy camp have put forward.
I'm a movement conservative.
You were at our event, and thank you for going there.
These are some potential huge victories for the grassroots.
And it would in some ways be foolish just to turn our back on them.
Am I reading that correctly?
Well, I think they're victories.
I think the going, you know, Jefferson wrote in the motion to vacate, so it has a very long history and has almost never been used.
And in retrospect, I think Boehner probably should have ignored, not been worried by it.
I mean, if somebody wants to move to vacate, you either have 218 votes or you don't.
And then they get back in the same problem.
If you don't have 218, who does?
So I think in that sense, Kevin went back to the original historic model.
He probably could have done it earlier.
But part of what happens in one of these things is you have to think about when are you going to make concessions?
Because if you concede everything early, they move the goalpost and they want seven more things.
I think the commitment to not get involved in primaries in open, safe Republican seats is very important to the club for growth.
I don't know that's strictly good politics, but that was a price to get the Club for Growth to say they could accept Kevin.
The fact is that the people who McCarthy supported in the primary is one, almost all of them won the general election, and that that's part of why they're now a majority, even if a very narrow one.
Term Limits and Relief Factor00:03:46
I think the commitment to get to a balanced budget is one that is actually in the commitment to America.
I think that Chiproy wants to make it a little stronger.
And look, as you know, Charlie, I was the speaker who balanced the federal budget for four straight years for the only time in your lifetime.
So I am totally committed to a balanced budget approach.
The other thing, they got a commitment to vote on term limits, which is fine.
We voted on term limits when I was speaker.
And they got one other commitment.
I can't remember what it is, but overall, I would say it is a somewhat more conservative position, but people shouldn't exaggerate.
I mean, the fact is, this was going to be a conservative Congress.
The Commitment to America is a very conservative document.
And you compare the Senate where McConnell's leading 13 Biden Republicans in vote after vote that is totally opposed to what we believe in.
And then McConnell's going off to Kentucky with Biden to celebrate a billion $700 bridge.
I think that McCarthy is the only anchor that we have right now.
And I don't see, you know, if he were to withdraw today, I don't see how they'd find somebody who gets 218.
Because the moderates who are also legitimately elected, they're not going to go along with a hard right position.
And yeah, that means we all get a little bit frustrated.
But that's, again, the nature of a free society.
Well, and I think the anger that the grassroots has, $1.7 trillion omnibus, McConnell, and all that, it's really playing out in this House vote, incorrectly or correctly.
And they see McConnell jetting Australia.
And I think that needs to be emphasized because I think that's exactly right.
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Mr. Speaker, finish that thought about populism and anger, which, by the way, I share some of that anger, a lot of it, actually.
Well, we all do.
Look, I do.
If you go back and look at my whole career, I was constantly pounding against the establishment, which I think is corrupt and sick.
All I was going to say is people legitimately should be very angry.
The more you learn about the FBI, the more you learn about these other efforts to censor us, the more you learn about the corruption of the Biden family, the more you learn about the schools that are trying to teach your children and grandchildren weird ideas and weird values while failing to teach them math and science and reading.
People ought to be angry.
And I have to tell you, as a lifelong Republican, I am very frustrated by the Senate.
Building Momentum for Americans00:03:35
I am very worried about the 2024 election.
I think there's a grave danger we're going to get into an always-Trump versus never Trump war and end up in a collapse like 1964 with Goldwater and Reagan and Rockefeller.
So I think that these are serious times.
And I think that you're right.
This particular fight in the House is a miniature example of what's happening all over the country and is going to have real consequences.
So, Mr. Speaker, I think this will end up hopefully reaching some conclusion at some point.
The promises to be made for oversight, Church and Pike type committee, Jim Jordan in charge of judiciary, these are significant things.
You were able to balance a budget in a town in an era where deficit spending was the norm for decades.
And just kind of in our couple minutes here, what wisdom would you share of how to get an impossible deal done in the halls of Congress?
What could you possibly share?
I would tell everybody get Tom Evans' little book on the education of Ronald Reagan, which is about Reagan's years of general electorate.
Understand exactly how Reagan governed, which was how we did the contract.
And it's what McCarthy's going to have to do.
You have to represent 70 or 80 or 90% of the American people.
I've been working on something everybody who's listening can go see, which is America's New MajorityProject.com.
And we have, since 2018, found issue after issue.
For example, 84% of the country believes parents ought to have the right to know exactly what's happening to their children in school.
84%.
Now, you take an issue like that, you can build the momentum where the other side has two choices.
They can fight you and get crushed in 24, or they can sign it.
And I think what Republicans have to do in the House, because they can't rely on the Senate for anything, and they have Biden opposed to them.
So they've got to build up such strong support at the grassroots that it coerces the senators, and Biden is given a choice of getting beaten in 6 and 24 or signing the bill, which is exactly what happened with Bill Clinton.
He had to sign welfare reform, or he couldn't get re-elected.
He had to be for a balanced budget, or he couldn't get reelected.
So you start with the surprise, surprise.
You start with the American people and you find out what they want.
You campaign for it.
When you run into some kind of Biden Republican, and that's what I would call them.
I wouldn't call them a rhino.
These are Biden Republicans.
These are people who vote with Schumer.
They help Biden get his record through.
And I think tying them to Biden is much more devastating than just talking about them as rhinos.
And I would be very tough about it.
You know, if you're if you're determined to be that kind of a Biden supporter, you should not be surprised if you end up with a primary fight.
I think that's very wise, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you for sharing that, and I hope that this gets sorted out.
Appreciate it.
Thank you so much.
Well, well, thanks, Charlie.
Talk to you soon.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email me your thoughts as always: freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.
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