let me be the first to tell you that there is finally a new speaker of the house, and the 118 congress has officially been convened. it took four days, and 15 tries, but in the early hours of this morning, the california congressman, kevin mccarthy, was finally elected the new speaker, putting him third in line for the presidency of the united states. it was a tough road getting there, especially last night, when tensions between republican members themselves, almost reached a breaking point. from the house reconvened at 10 pm last night, republicans appeared hopeful that they had votes to elect mccarthy on the 14th ballot, but when that seem headed for baylor, mccarthy s allied huddled around the florida congressman, matt gates, to get him to vote for mccarthy. instead, gates voted present, which is not good enough to win mccarthy in speakership. after the roll call, mccarthy himself approached gates, the two exchanged words amid a group of other lawmakers. mccarthy was the
what s the tension level amongst the republican conference if you have been able to gauge it since last night. it s high, and one of the potential explanations for that, what we just saw on the screen, and i don t know that this is exactly why it happened, but one of the reasons why i was given after unfolded was there was talk, and we reported this last night on the air with you, that matt gates was interested in negotiating out a subcommittee chairmanship for himself on the house armed services committee that rodgers is the likely chair of. mccarthy had told rank and file members that he is not giving gavels away during his negotiating process to try to get to speaker. there s a lot of seniority questions, there s a lot of questions about how people get gavels, mccarthy assured rank and file that he wasn t something he s using as a cartoon table. i think the fact that this he gaetz was trying to finagle one, really upset some members on the floor. those were the text messages that