Sean covers the latest on the battle for the House Speakership. Politically speaking, the Democrats are loving the chaos of the Republicans but enough is enough... it's time to put an end to the debate.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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| All right, thanks, Scott Shannon, and thanks to all of you. | |
| By the way, Happy New Year if you weren't with us yesterday. | |
| Love to hear from you. | |
| 800-941-Sean, if you want to be a part of our program, don't forget we started a new segment last night on Hannity. | |
| Probably for the first couple of days, we'll put on maybe callers that you recognize on this radio show. | |
| But for people that want to be on TV and have their big moment and grade me at the end of any show, we call it last call, and you just call this number, 800-941-Sean, and say, I want to grade Hannity tonight on TV and tell him he's awful. | |
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| The first couple of days, we need to get it up and going and started and let people know what's going on here. | |
| Let me start with, yes, I've watched all of the Adam Schiff show today. | |
| The thing that's frustrating to me is that I saw this coming in late November. | |
| I saw this coming in December. | |
| I wrote the people that I knew would be involved in this event that we're struggling through to get a speaker. | |
| And I tried to encourage them to get in a room, to check their egos at the door, check their phones at the door so they can't be recording people. | |
| You got to worry, everybody's recording everything today. | |
| And to try and work this thing out. | |
| And so far, we haven't made any progress. | |
| Five votes, pretty much the same amount of votes going to Kevin McCarthy, 202, 203, 204, whatever it happens to be. | |
| And I guess my frustration here is it's not great, but it's not big. | |
| It's not large, is that all of it was preventable and all of it was unnecessary. | |
| And knowing that this all was coming, I was urging people to resolve it privately. | |
| It's sort of like if you have a family problem, you don't want to bring your family problems into your work environment on any given day. | |
| There's certain things that are just for family only. | |
| And you deal with it behind closed doors and hopefully you resolve it. | |
| And eventually this is going to get resolved. | |
| And the reason I feel that way is the reason I know it's going to be that way is because the agenda is the agenda. | |
| That is not going to change. | |
| The investigations that we have all spoken about are going to go forward. | |
| It would be nice if it was sooner rather than later and we don't have to go through another 5, 15, 20 votes or whatever it's going to take to finally get a speaker of the house. | |
| I'm not taking it personally that there are people that have This angst or position against Kevin McCarthy. | |
| The only thing I'm urging them to look at is the agenda. | |
| Remember, anybody that's elected, they're supposed to be public servants. | |
| They promise people during elections that they're going to accomplish A, B, C, D, E, and F. | |
| They tell people where their positions are on important issues of the day, and then they get voted into office, and they are expected, if they're going to be good public servants, to follow through on the promises that they make. | |
| It's really that simple. | |
| And principles that guide their decision-making. | |
| That all comes into the process. | |
| And regardless of how this ends, and I can't predict that today, regardless of how that ends, it won't change the outcome of what Republicans are going to do. | |
| There's going to be Jim Jordan investigating on the Judiciary Committee whether or not our FBI has been politicized. | |
| I believe it has. | |
| I believe they put their thumb on the scale yet again in 2020 like they did in 2016. | |
| And I believe this time it was about, you know, they had had the Hunter Biden laptop since 2019. | |
| And then you have a guy whose college thesis in 2016 was all about Donald Trump colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election that never happened, has been totally debunked, leading an effort of the FBI to have weekly meetings with every big tech company to tell them that they're going to be victims. | |
| They're likely to be victims of disinformation campaigns from countries like Russia and China, et cetera, et cetera. | |
| And according to the site integrity head at the time at Twitter, this guy by the name of Mr. Roth, he said, yeah, they might be trying to peddle information about Hunter Biden, for example. | |
| Well, the FBI knew all about Hunter Biden, and they could have easily authenticated in, what, 30 days? | |
| Is that enough? | |
| 60 days? | |
| 90 days? | |
| They had this laptop in December of 2019. | |
| And then the New York Post publishes its story, and then none of these companies would allow that story to be disseminated. | |
| And in large part, I would argue, because the FBI also, they paid Twitter $3.5 million. | |
| I couldn't believe that when I read that on FoxNews.com. | |
| But they put the thumb on the scale by intimidating big tech into being on the lookout for something that they knew was likely to come out, but was not disinformation and they should have known was not disinformation. | |
| Just like in 2016, they used the dirty dossier they were warned not to use even by Bruce Orr in August of 2016. | |
| And they offered, then they had FBI agents fly out to meet Christopher Steele. | |
| They offered him a million dollars if he could authenticate the dirty Hillary Clinton bought and paid for Russian dossier. | |
| And he couldn't corroborate it. | |
| He never got his million dollars. | |
| But by the end of October, as Andrew McCabe, former deputy FBI director, said, without the dossier, they wouldn't have been able to get the FISA warrants. | |
| Well, they used it as the bulk of information, and they basically affirmed it to be true. | |
| You know, it says at the top of a FISA warrant, verified. | |
| It's unverifiable because it was debunked. | |
| And they did it even after they met Christopher Steele's source in early January of 2017. | |
| They still use the dirty dossier after the source for Christopher Steele confirmed that, in fact, none of the dossier was true. | |
| So we need this investigation. | |
| So the agenda is going to be the agenda. | |
| That investigation is going to take place. | |
| Also, whether or not the DOJ is being weaponized and whether or not they're protecting Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and the Biden syndicate and only going after conservatives, Republicans, et cetera. | |
| And I think that is going to be a very revealing investigation. | |
| As I believe Jim Comer's investigation into the Biden family syndicate is going to bear a lot of fruit because we now know that Joe Biden lied to the country when he said he never once spoke to Hunter, not one time, about his foreign business dealings. | |
| In fact, we have photographic evidence of Hunter, his foreign business partners, and pops Joe Biden. | |
| And we have meetings that have been chronicled as well between Hunter, Hunter's foreign business partners, and Joe Biden. | |
| Well, that's the opposite of what Joe Biden said. | |
| But it kind of makes sense when Joe Biden leveraged a billion dollars to get a prosecutor in Ukraine fired, who turns out was investigating his son, who was being paid millions with zero experience. | |
| So all these things are going to happen. | |
| Republicans are going to deal with no bail laws. | |
| They're going to deal with the issue of refunding the police. | |
| They're going to deal with the issue of wide open Biden borders. | |
| They're going to deal with issues of fiscal responsibility and the hiring of 87,000 IRS agents to give you the Hannity treatment. | |
| They're going to deal with all of these issues. | |
| So in the end, we're going to get there. | |
| In the end, I don't know any Republican that disagrees with the agenda. | |
| The hard part for me is, and I'm looking at this and I'm trying to understand here. | |
| If you don't like Kevin McCarthy and it's personal, okay, I can understand that. | |
| That happens a lot. | |
| But in terms of where Kevin McCarthy is, his agenda, he's boxed in. | |
| His agenda is the commitments for America that he put together and ran on that got the Republicans the House majority. | |
| He has already said publicly all the investigations, including the origins of COVID, the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, all of these things are going to be investigated. | |
| Now, if in fact he breaks his promise, you have something that is called a motion to vacate that he agreed to with a threshold of only five Republicans needed to trigger that motion to vacate. | |
| And then they can make the argument that they have a no confidence vote in Kevin McCarthy. | |
| So, you know, McCarthy, by the way, says he could still win the speaker's race. | |
| You know, we're now all headed to, what, vote, we're going to vote five or six. | |
| I don't know at this point. | |
| But anyway, so, you know, the only thing I can't tolerate is our Republicans saying that they would, in fact, be happy or would prefer Hakeem Jeffries over Kevin McCarthy. | |
| That's just something that can't even be, you know, comprehended on any level. | |
| And then you got Democrats. | |
| They're reveling in this. | |
| They're enjoying this. | |
| And frankly, they should. | |
| Politically speaking, if it was happening to them, I would be doing the same exact thing. | |
| And things like AOC suggesting bipartisan power sharing arrangements could break the speaker. | |
| Yeah, we don't want that. | |
| President Trump has now weighed in. | |
| He strongly backs McCarthy. | |
| I mean, the people supporting McCarthy are hardly left-wingers. | |
| Marjorie Taylor Greene is hardly a left-winger If you're looking for conservatives that are on board for Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan is hardly a left-winger. | |
| James Comer is hardly a left-winger. | |
| You know, if you look even at the Freedom Caucus, Freedom Caucus has been treated better by Kevin McCarthy by the last five speakers of the House combined, even before the Freedom Caucus was formed. | |
| It was about 40 members, more than half of the Freedom Caucus is supporting McCarthy. | |
| But again, it's not like Kevin McCarthy or anybody that gets that position is going to have any power or any ability to deviate at all whatsoever from what the agenda is. | |
| That is not going to change. | |
| That part I can tell you, and that's where I put my confidence. | |
| Now President Trump is weighed in. | |
| Don Jr. | |
| is weighed in. | |
| These are solid America First Make America Great Again Conservatives. | |
| I will say this: a lot of people are comparing McCarthy to Mitch McConnell and these Republicans in the Senate that went along with this insane omnibus bill. | |
| I don't see that comparison. | |
| But it doesn't, in the end, it doesn't matter. | |
| With a motion to vacate in place, with the agenda set, there won't be any deviation regardless of how this vote ends up. | |
| That's where you should put your confidence in. | |
| You can be frustrated at how long it's taking. | |
| You can be frustrated that people can't put their egos aside, but you got over 200 other Republicans that do support the guy. | |
| He has the overwhelming majority. | |
| Now, when I ask people, what do you want? | |
| They never seem to be able to give me an answer. | |
| At one point, they wanted the motion to vacate. | |
| Just a few days ago, Kevin McCarthy said, fine, I'll give you the motion to vacate. | |
| Are you happy now? | |
| Then the bar got raised again. | |
| I know because I was in touch with a lot of people prior to January 3rd, prior to yesterday. | |
| So, you know, we're going to see what happens. | |
| But the anti-McCarthy defectors, you're talking about 20 people here, and they're holding up a lot of progress we can be making. | |
| I think Republicans will have patience to a point, but at some point, they're going to want results. | |
| At some point, they're going to demand results, and I don't blame them. | |
| Not even a little bit. | |
| Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm. | |
| And I'm Carol Markowitz. | |
| We've been in political media for a long time. | |
| Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane. | |
| That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity. | |
| We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor. | |
| We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously. | |
| So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people. | |
| Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen. | |
| I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz. | |
| Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. | |
| Nationwide, we have millions of listeners. | |
| Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court. | |
| And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else. | |
| We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family. | |
| So down at Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts. | |
| Hey there, I'm Mary Catherine Hamm. | |
| And I'm Carol Markowitz. | |
| We've been in political media for a long time. | |
| Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane. | |
| That's why we started Normally, a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity. | |
| We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor. | |
| We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously. | |
| So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass, you're our kind of people. | |
| Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. | |
| I'm Ben Ferguson, and I'm Ted Cruz. | |
| Three times a week, we do our podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. | |
| Nationwide, we have millions of listeners. | |
| Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we break down the news and bring you behind the scenes inside the White House, inside the Senate, inside the United States Supreme Court. | |
| And we cover the stories that you're not getting anywhere else. | |
| We arm you with the facts to be able to know and advocate for the truth with your friends and family. | |
| So down with Verdict with Ted Cruz now, wherever you get your podcasts. | |
| There's a really good speech given today by Representative-elect Warren Davidson of Ohio. | |
| I don't know him, but I was pretty impressed with him today. | |
| And he was explaining what the Republicans agree on, which is what I've been focused on. | |
| Unlike the Democrats, nearly every Republican at least campaigns on some form of smaller, more accountable government. | |
| Once we get here, the bipartisan consensus keeps growing, a bigger, less accountable government. | |
| The American people know the status quo is broken, that we become less free, less safe, more burdened by debt. | |
| The American people are sick and tired of it and keep sending us reinforcements that today help make up our majority. | |
| But a majority is only a majority if we actually work together. | |
| I've been saying this to all these guys. | |
| You're going to succeed together or fail together. | |
| There's no in-between here. | |
| And he said, but we've got to work together. | |
| Now, lots of back home, people back home, they don't trust anyone in this town. | |
| And perhaps we should be wise to listen to them and some of the wisdom of Reagan. | |
| He talked about trust and verify. | |
| Trust is a fragile condition, easily broken. | |
| I've listened to my friends, 20 of whom oppose Kevin McCarthy. | |
| And the root issue is they don't trust Kevin. | |
| What can heal the divide? | |
| Right now, there are a lot of colleagues that don't trust the 20 or more fellow Republicans. | |
| And by the way, there was an applause line there. | |
| And then he said, right now, we remain divided, a divided majority. | |
| An actual majority of the Freedom Caucus members support Kevin McCarthy. | |
| This summer, a unified House Freedom Caucus started the negotiations with a proposal for new rules, a different way to govern that empowers committees and regular members. | |
| We propose that a set of tools could be structured to make trust more verifiable and allow recourse if that trust is ever broken. | |
| Following the election of Kevin McCarthy, engaged in that, he led the conference to adopt substantive reforms that will make us more effective. | |
| And let me list some of them. | |
| Then he pointed out Andrew Clyde's proposal to restore public access to the Capitol, Lauren Boebert's proposal to reduce the linkage between the NRC and the steering committee process. | |
| And he went through a whole list of people that aren't opposing, that are opposing Kevin McCarthy. | |
| And Kevin McCarthy adopted every one of their rules, everything that they were asking for. | |
| And then they got the big thing, which is the motion to vacate. | |
| You know, we're a big, diverse conference. | |
| The real question is, you know, about strategy. | |
| Can we accept progress? | |
| Can we work for a victory one first down at a time or only accept the high-risk, you know, trick plays? | |
| Can we set about the hard work of winning debates with our colleagues and be done with this process? | |
| Get your dose of independence and liberty every weekday right here on the Sean Hannity Show. | |
| All right, 25 to the top of the hour. | |
| Want to remind you, you probably have never heard of what's called home title theft, but it happens all the time. | |
| And anyway, these criminals are out there around the world. | |
| They're targeting American homeowners. | |
| And if you want to protect your home ownership, you want to look into what I have, which is home title lock. | |
| Look, here's how it works. | |
| Your home's title, in other words, the document proving you own your own home is easily found online. | |
| These thieves simply forge your signature on a legal document and claim that you sold your home to them. | |
| Then they take out loans on your home, then they disappear, and you usually don't find out until there's a late payment or you get a foreclosure notice. | |
| Now, homeowners' insurance and identity theft programs don't protect you where home title lock does. | |
| They have a website, home title lock, one word, hometitlelock.com slash Sean, so you can verify your home's title is still safely in your name and register your address for your free no obligation title report for your files, $100 value free, home titlelock.com. | |
| Anyway, so now, you know, we move into what I guess is now the sixth vote in all this, all of it staying the same at least till now. | |
| And we're just going to continue to follow the story as we now go forward with the same exact result, you know, for a sixth time. | |
| Do I think they're going to get there? | |
| I don't know. | |
| Yeah, I do. | |
| Do I think the agenda in any way is going to change? | |
| Nope. | |
| That's the thing that is frustrating. | |
| The agenda is locked in. | |
| And the agenda is a good agenda. | |
| The agenda can help this country. | |
| The investigations are necessary, desperately needed. | |
| The ability for Republicans to lay out a different vision for the country, that's desperately needed too. | |
| The weird thing is, is that pretty much all of the 222 House Republicans, they all agree on the agenda items. | |
| I don't know any that disagree. | |
| I don't know that there's a Mitt Romney in the ranks of House Republicans that would vote against the party on any issue from border safety and security to woke schools to no bail laws, defunding the police. | |
| They're all against that. | |
| Anyone that would be against energy independence, they're all on the same page when it comes to that. | |
| It's a matter of, you know, who's going to run the predetermined agenda. | |
| And that's why it's such a waste of time. | |
| We do have an update on the Buffalo Bills and DeMar Hamlin later on Jim Gray will join us. | |
| He's shown, quote, signs of improvement as he continues to recover from that cardiac arrest episode on Monday Night Football against the Cincinnati Bengals. | |
| Got to give a shout out to the great people of Cincinnati. | |
| The people in Cincinnati are wonderful people. | |
| They really, I've been out there so many times. | |
| Spent a lot of time. | |
| My good friend Bill Cunningham, what a great friend he is. | |
| Sean Hannity, you're a great American. | |
| God bless you. | |
| God bless America. | |
| I want a full report. | |
| One of the greatest talk show hosts of all time. | |
| Love him. | |
| Great guy. | |
| Fun guy. | |
| Loyal friend. | |
| I'm very grateful for his friendship. | |
| Anyway, DeMar, the people in Cincinnati, they showed up outside the hospital. | |
| These were Bengals fans showing up for the injured Buffalo Bill player. | |
| And what we saw on the field, you know, you think about, you know, there's a saying that there's no atheists in foxholes. | |
| You know, in that moment, seeing all of those players take to their knee in prayer was beyond inspiring. | |
| I've talked about not including politics and sports because it ruins the most unifying moment we have as a country. | |
| You have people of all races, all backgrounds, all religions, socioeconomic differences from here to there. | |
| And they're there with a shared passion for sport, a shared passion for a home team, high-fiving strangers, meeting new friends. | |
| I mean, it's just a great environment. | |
| The last thing you need is, well, we have enough politics. | |
| There's a place for politics. | |
| I make my living talking a lot about politics. | |
| But to be honest, it doesn't belong on the football field. | |
| People go to football games to avoid a lot of that. | |
| And it was beyond touching. | |
| You know, the coaches, they made the decision together. | |
| We can't play this game after this incident. | |
| The players were too upset. | |
| You know, I would argue that probably going into this weekend with teams playing each other, I guarantee you there's a different mindset. | |
| You know, there always were people that were really rough. | |
| And, you know, you kind of, you know, you're bulked up, you're jacked up, your adrenaline's pumping, and you're out to crush your opponent and win and use every bit of might and energy that you have. | |
| I just sense there's going to be a little bit different environment. | |
| You do your job, but you're not out there to kill the other guy. | |
| This was a complete freak accident. | |
| If you talk to any cardiologist, they're all saying the same thing. | |
| This hard hit right at his heart at the very odd second where the electrical impulse is going through the heart caused this to happen. | |
| A very rare condition. | |
| But I mean, they spent nine minutes on the field trying to revive this guy, performing CPR, and then administering the electrical paddles. | |
| They brought him out of cardiac arrest. | |
| They put him in an ambulance. | |
| And I think they made the right decision by calling the game. | |
| I don't think anybody was too interested in football at that time. | |
| A lot of people were looking at this saying, this is so sad and so unnecessary. | |
| Some other side notes on this battle for, we have AOC suggesting a bipartisan power sharing arrangement. | |
| Any Republican that goes along with anything that stupid or goes along with the idea that we'll just fight Hakeem Jeffries and remain in the minority, that's not going to be tolerated by anybody. | |
| That's not the answer. | |
| So, you know, what breaks the gridlock? | |
| I don't really know at this particular time. | |
| You know, the one thing that I can't get out of the people that are opposing McCarthy when I ask them, well, okay, who do you want to be Speaker? | |
| And some of them are saying, Byron Donalds. | |
| I like Byron Donalds. | |
| He's a good guy. | |
| And I think Byron Donalds is pretty little young in terms of being in Congress. | |
| I think he definitely belongs in leadership. | |
| You know, I looked at some numbers. | |
| We went back to 2020 and 2022, and some $86 million was given by money raised by McCarthy and company to Freedom Caucus people. | |
| And by the way, more than half the Freedom Caucus supports McCarthy. | |
| Now, the problem here is, what do you do when you have 20 people on one side and over 200 people on another side? | |
| How do you reconcile that difference? | |
| Well, we need a consensus candidate. | |
| And some people said, Jim Jordan, I have asked numerous times. | |
| Do you have any interest in that? | |
| No, none. | |
| He actually said, I believe God put me on this earth to do investigations because I'm good at it and that's what I want to do. | |
| And he wants to head up this investigation into the DOJ and the FBI. | |
| And he has every plan to get going. | |
| Now, this is day two of this now happening. | |
| And now on the sixth vote, at what point does a break occur? | |
| I don't know. | |
| I mean, historically speaking, we, you know, I can go over the history of all of this if you want. | |
| We went through a lot of this yesterday. | |
| And, you know, look, it's happened in the past. | |
| This is not the first time. | |
| We've talked about, for example, the last time the Speaker vote went to a second ballot was 1923. | |
| How ironic. | |
| It took, you know, 100 years ago. | |
| It took nine ballots three days before the House re-elected Speaker Frederick Gillette of Massachusetts. | |
| Now, they then kind of frittered away two weeks before electing Speaker Howard Cobb from Georgia in 1849, but that was efficient compared to the two months that the House squandered in late 1855 and 1856 before finally electing Speaker Nathaniel Banks on the 163rd ballot. | |
| Linda, could you imagine 163 of these? | |
| We're only on number six. | |
| That would not be interesting. | |
| That'd get pretty old pretty fast here. | |
| If I thought for a second that the agenda, if I thought for a second that McCarthy would not fulfill the agenda, I'd be a loud opponent. | |
| But he's so boxed in. | |
| He's so committed to, you know, he ran on, laid out, led with the commitments to America, which are a reflection of the America First, Make America Great Again agenda. | |
| It's all down there in paper with the signature on it. | |
| And on the investigations, they're all teed up and they're all ready to go. | |
| It's not like there's any, you know, any problems there either. | |
| I'm like, let's just get this over with at some point. | |
| At some point, the American people are going to, and Republicans are going to get disgusted about this. | |
| I'm not as panicked as I hear other people being panicked. | |
| I'm just not. | |
| It's going to have to play out. | |
| It will resolve itself over time. | |
| I'm not sure what else. | |
| I asked people, what do you want? | |
| What are you looking for? | |
| And for a long time, the answer was they want the motion to vacate. | |
| That's what I was being told by a number of people that are still part of the 19 or 20 people that are against McCarthy. | |
| Well, McCarthy gave that to them with a five-vote threshold just a couple of days ago. | |
| In other words, at any point during his speakership, if five Republicans feel he's not living up to his promises, they can have a motion to vacate and get a House vote on whether or not he should remain Speaker. | |
| In other words, pretty much a no-confidence vote. | |
| It's a pretty powerful give on McCarthy's part. | |
| If it's abused, it would be a disaster. | |
| The thing that they need to all understand here, they will either be successful together or they will be viewed as failures together. | |
| There's not any middle ground period. | |
| Anyway, our friend Chad Pergram is with us on the Fox News channel. | |
| He writes what's called the Hitchhiker's Guide to Everything All Swamp in Washington, D.C. He's been following this all day. | |
| We're now on, what, the sixth vote is going on right now? | |
| That's right. | |
| And even though we're pretty early, Sean, in the sixth vote, we know that there is going to be a seventh vote. | |
| The reason is that now eight members on the Republican side of the aisle have cast ballots for Byron Donalds. | |
| Kevin McCarthy can only lose four on each vote. | |
| And so this tells us with eight votes, Byron Donalds casting the eighth vote just a second ago for himself, interestingly enough. | |
| That tells you that they're going to have to go to a seventh vote. | |
| Now, do they do that tonight? | |
| Do they do that tomorrow? | |
| You know, we took three votes yesterday. | |
| This is the third vote today. | |
| Victoria Sparks, who is a Republican from Indiana, who is running for the Senate, considering running for the Senate in Indiana here, she has voted present on the past two votes. | |
| Now, she supported Kevin McCarthy before. | |
| The fact that she has now semi-defected and is voting present, not voting for Kevin McCarthy, that hurts Kevin McCarthy. | |
| So what that means is there's a universe of 21 Republicans who are not voting for McCarthy. | |
| The reason Spartz says that she is voting present at this point, not casting a ballot for anyone, is because she says it's obvious that nothing is going to budge here. | |
| She says we need to go into a closed-door Republican conference meeting and hash this out. | |
| But again, they've done that for a while now, and this hasn't gotten any better for Kevin McCarthy. | |
| What's interesting, two new dynamics in just the past hour or so, Sean. | |
| I have noticed the tensions on the House floor and in the hallway starting to increase. | |
| People are getting grouchy. | |
| They're sniping at one another. | |
| There's a lot of yelling back and forth across the aisle. | |
| That sometimes means not only are people getting tired of this, but sometimes that helps produce a solution. | |
| So we're just beginning to see the early stages of that. | |
| So maybe they need a good fist fight and then we'll be all done with this. | |
| Is that what you're saying, Jess? | |
| Well, we've done this before, verbal or otherwise. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| That was probably the most animated we've seen on the House floor. | |
| But at some point, you know, we've now had six roll call votes where Kevin McCarthy has not prevailed. | |
| And at what point do people say, look, you know, there are Newtonian physics here at work, Newtonian political physics, and they are not working in your favor, Kevin McCarthy. | |
| What is our exit strategy? | |
| He is not negotiating with anybody. | |
| You know, if you were trying to struggle to get a bill across the House floor, what you would do is you would, you know, you would call people down to the basement, call people into offices, you would horse trade. | |
| None of that is going on. | |
| That's what's so remarkable about this because, again, we really haven't changed in terms of the vote matrix with the exception of two votes since that first roll call vote on Tuesday afternoon. | |
| You know, you had Byron Donalds, who initially voted one way, then he jumped off. | |
| He's been nominated for speaker today. | |
| And now this new phenomenon of Sparta's voting present. | |
| Not much has changed since yesterday afternoon. | |
| The only thing that I think would change it, and I'll give you a little of the behind the scenes. | |
| I saw this coming in late November and early December. | |
| And I send text messages to people that I know, and I'm like, guys, you need to get into a room. | |
| You need to check your ego at the door, check your phone at the door, and you guys need to hammer out an agreement. | |
| But from my standpoint, tell me if you think that I'm wrong on this or right on this. | |
| To me, the agenda is pretty much already set. | |
| In other words, the investigations that Kevin McCarthy has supported would be supported by anybody. | |
| And that is Jim Jordan and Judiciary on the FBI and DOJ. | |
| That's Jim Comer on the president, President Biden and his son Hunter and the Biden family. | |
| An investigation into the origins of COVID, an investigation into the withdrawal in Afghanistan, maybe one or two more. | |
| But I don't see these Republicans disagreeing on energy independence, on border security, on lower taxes, on refunding the police, ending no bail laws. | |
| I mean, I would argue that all 222 would agree on that agenda, and that agenda seems to be set because that was the commitments with America. | |
| Am I wrong? | |
| Well, you know, I saw this too. | |
| You and I might have the same crush for ball. | |
| I remember talking to French Hill, a Republican congressman from Arkansas in September to get a story ready for this in October because I saw the same train coming down the tracks here. | |
| I talked to French Hill about this. | |
| I talked to Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, and I remember putting that in my reporting. | |
| They were like, oh, no, no, we think he has the votes. | |
| It's not going to be a problem because he's done all the homework out on the hustings here. | |
| And I did a couple of TV stories about this in the fall prior to the election and just after the election, spelling out what the problem might be for Kevin McCarthy. | |
| You know, the other thing is that you have a coalition of Republicans in the House of Representatives. | |
| And this is the group that drove Paul Ryan up a wall, drove John Boehner up a wall, that they basically said, you know, we're not going to vote for anything. | |
| And this is where you have this fracture inside the Republican conference right now, where the McCarthy supporters are saying, you know, we can't get these guys on board for anything. | |
| Now, wait till it comes to voting to fund the government. | |
| Well, I know a lot of concessions were made, including the motion to vacate, which McCarthy did not want to give in to, but he did a few days ago. | |
| I got a rumble. | |
| We'll get an update from you tonight, Chad Pergram from the Fox News channel. | |
| My friend, thank you. | |
| All right, want to remind you about Hillsdale College. | |
| Look, what do you think about 2023? | |
| How are you going to make it better than last year? | |
| Well, there's a challenge that they're putting out at Hillsdale, resolve to become a better educated American and look for every opportunity this new year to do so. | |
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