Transcripts For FOXNEWSW The Story With Martha MacCallum 202

FOXNEWSW The Story With Martha MacCallum January 3, 2023

0 >> john: doing the same thing and team 56 repeated over again, we could be here and march doing the same thing. we will see if there is anyway kevin mccarthy could convince the naysayers to come over to his side put i think there is two or three that will never switch. >> sandra: jim jordan made his best effort pitch the house for a moment ago. thank you for joining us, everyone in our coverage will continue. >> martha: thank you. continuing coverage here. i'm martha maccallum live in our nation's capitol covering this drama that we did expect and now unfolding in a fascinating way on the house floor. the new republican majority there is in a historic battle as a handful try to block kevin mccarthy from the speaker's gavel which he has wanted a long time and worked very hard to get in the mid-terms. bret baier is standing by on set with me here. first, we want to go to chad pergram over on the hill. hi, chad. >> hi, martha. what we know right now, they're well in to this second ballot for speaker, the second one this afternoon. we know they're going to have to go to a third ballot because it's clear that kevin mccarthy for any other candidate has the votes to become speaker of the house here. right now as we're tracking this, jim jordan, republican from ohio, he was nominated by matt gaetz, somebody that was not actually seeking the speakership. he used to be a rival with kevin mccarthy a few years ago. he's gotten on board. he has gotten 15 votes. i always say it's about the math. during the first vote there were 19 republicans that cast ballots for somebody else besides kevin mccarthy by name. voting for somebody by sur name is very important in this process. so if that number for jim jordan goes up from what we had before or any other candidate, anybody else besides kevin mccarthy, that is going to be significant. what we know already even though they're only about 2/3s of the way through the vote, they're going to have to go to a third ball lot. here's what will happen probably in the next 30 minutes. we expect a stasis on the house floor. what will happen is they will go through with the teller clerks, they will count the ballots and make sure everybody agrees on what the breakdown is. by rule, the house is supposed to vote yet again. what we have not seen yet in this process is a potential vote or call for a recess. we've had that happen before. you have to go way back to 1923, with 1840s where we had multiple vehicles for a speaker. after a while, they said we need to talk this out, nominate somebody else. is there a consensus candidate out there. we have not seen that. what we could see again are renominations of what we saw during the first two votes. and then go back at it to a third time. this could go on ad nauseam. this is turf we have not seen in the house of representatives in a long time. the thing to watch for, whether that is today, tomorrow or in the coming days is if kevin mccarthy never moves the needle. how long does he stick with this. at what point do some of his supporters say, look, it's obvious that you're never going to have the votes. he didn't have the votes as i pointed out before this afternoon, after john boehner left and mccarthy with drew very unexpectedly from the speaker's race and paul ryan said he didn't want to be speaker became the speaker a couple of weeks later. maybe kevin mccarthy never had the votes now, he didn't have the votes back in 2015. this might be a fight that republicans were waiting to have that is gone on for seven years. just never played out in public. so we have to see how long kevin mccarthy is willing to deal with this. the people with the easiest job in town right now are the democrats. hakeem jeffries, the new incoming democratic leader, he outpaced kevin mccarthy the last time. democrats said that that was an example of unity in their party here. and if this gets too flakey, let's say this goes on for a couple of days, if republicans don't have enough of their members in the house chamber or who vote for somebody by name, you could wind up with a crazy scenario and we talked about this on the air a couple weeks ago where hakeem jeffries could become be speaker of the house that is very unlikely. you don't know after you go into this vote after vote after vote. we'll probably be at this awhile today, maybe tomorrow, maybe later this week. right now this is an inauspicious start for house republicaning coming in to control with their majority. >> martha: chad, thank you very much. we'll be back with you throughout the hour. aishah hasnie watching all of this play out. hi, aishah. >> hi, martha. this is a chaotic scene. in fact, i want to read off text message i just got from a gop staffer describing what people are feeling on the house floor right now. she says i have no idea what is going to happen next. this is making us look like idiots to the american people. as chad mentioned, this could go on and on and on. some staffers are saying that they expect this to go on in to the weekend, which we hope is not happening. i want to talk about the folks voting against mccarthy. the anti-mccarthy votes that we're seeing pop up, people like dan bishop, andy bigs. these are all freedom caucus members. what is interesting to me, martha, is that there were signs that we were heading into this standoff for months. even before the mid-terms back in the primaries that there were signs that we were watching the house freedom caucus membership really building these relationships, working hard to grow their influence with members that hadn't been elected yet. people like congress woman luna from florida. they were helping these potential members to campaign. they were endorsing them, helping them fun raise to grow their influence. today you're seeing that play out where a member-elect like anna luna has voted twice not for mccarthy but for jim jordan. now you have members that haven't been sworn in yet that are potentially putting themselves at odds with their potential speaker of the house. it could be a lot like once there's a speaker elected, could be a lot like what we saw in the last two years with the democrats where you had house progressives that were sometimes holding up party bills, pressuring speaker pelosi to get what they wanted. we could see that potentially happen with this same caucus. whatever happens, whoever winds up being speaker whenever that winds up happening, martha, it's going to be a tough job for anyone. >> aishah, thank you very much. this is fascinating what we're watching unfold. bret baier is here with me action we watch these votes come in. all 19 votes are for jim jordan at this point having moved here. let's bring in from california darrell issa. sir, thanks for being here. are we seeing a shift underway here? what is your take? >> we're seeing a shift away from andy biggs who had been the one that got 31 votes in conference some time ago. year seeing a very strange anomaly even by historic standards. jim jordan placed kevin mccarthy in nomination this second time. made it clear he was voting for him. jim jordan is the founder of the freedom caucus and probably one of the most recognized staunch conservatives and yet as the incoming chairman of judiciary, former chairman, ranking member of oversight, he's made a decision to support kevin, scalise, johnson, the entire team. 19 haven't yet done that. you know, quite frankly, it is going to be a long day. at the end of the day, the real question is if the person that has 19 votes doesn't want the job and endorsing the person that has the rest of them, where do you go? so unless those 19 members can find a didn't candidate, they have no where to go. >> it's possible that that number could grow. they're still counting at this point. you know, look into your crystal ball a little bit for us. you've been there a long time. is there a potential path for kevin mccarty to 218? >> there is. part of the path is all the hard work he did to not to appease but to bring together a rules package that everyone of those that are still voting the other way pretty much got what they wanted even more than some moderates were willing to give. kevin gave. so now the question is, what more do they want? they have to ask for something and they have to do it publicly in front of the conference at some point today. what is it they want. if all they want is somebody other than kevin, let's be candidate. steve scalise is supporting kevin. jim jordan is supporting kevin. as a matter of fact, every member of the leadership team including every ranking member now becoming a chairman is supporting kevin. so we are in a situation in which the 19 have to explain what they want. right now they haven't done a very good job of explaining it to the conference, which is why there's quite a bit of angst in the conference. i'll say this. until we had this vote, people didn't have people to talk to. we now have 19 people to talk to. after we come out of what i suspect will be a conference break, i think that number will shrink, not grow. >> so you think after this vote is fully tallied, are they going to go to a third vote or do some arm wrestling behind the scenes? >> my hope is they take a break. if they don't do this, they go to a third. it remains 19, that will signal that you have to take the break and have the discussion. you have to give the 19 a chance to sit in a room with the basically 200 and have a discussion. the fact is that everyone on both sides of this issue agrees that we need to elect a republican speaker and that speaker has to bring us together with a narrow, narrow majority to do the work that the american people hired us to do. that last part is important. we have to find somebody that can bring us together. if there's somebody better than kevin, they haven't named that person yet. somebody that would take the moderates, the middle of the road conservatives and freedom caucus and bring us together. >> martha: congressman issa, thanks very much. i want to bring in josh kraushaar. we saw jim jordan stand up and tell everybody they should vote for kevin mccarthy. the next thing we saw, the person that got more votes was not kevin mccarthy, it was jim jordan. >> right. this is going to be a long night, maybe a long week. the 19 republicans that refuse to vote for kevin mccarthy on the first ballot have remained anti-mccarthy votes and now all of them are voting for jim jordan on the second ball lot. if kevin mccarthy was going to be in good shape, you'd expect him to money a handful of those 19 -- they were looking to send a message and wanted to show their opposition to the certain rules or to make a point, maybe some of them would come towards mccarthy on the second ballot. 100% of them are sticking against mccarthy. there's no end in sight. to darrell issa's point, there's no consensus candidate that's been voted on. i would look closely at steve scalise. if kevin mccarthy has no path to get to that magic number of 218 votes, steve scalise fits the category. someone that is acceptable to the establishment, acceptable to the pro mccarthy republicans and he might have a better chance of getting votes from the holdouts if we get to that point. >> martha: josh, can you explain that to folks at home? why would it that would find steve scalise more palatable that worked through the mid-terms to get this majority? >> martha, it's not about ideology. this is not an idealogical fight. marjorie greene is one of kevin's biggest supporters in the caucus. it's about trust. one of the striking things that i saw, two of the republicans that kevin mccarthy helped elect to congress in these battleground districts, eli crane in arizona and anna luna in florida, they voted against kevin mccarthy. so to me it's not about ideology and it's not about politics. there's a lack of trust among some of these holdouts. we knew matt gaetz wasn't going to votes for kevin mccarthy. the fact that you have 19 republicans, a bigger number than was expected compared to a few days ago, that is a real red flag. it leads to the point that it's not so much about -- it's not about ideology, it's not about where you stand on the issues. there's a trust gap with certain members and kevin mccarthy. >> martha: stick around. we'll be in for the long haul here. let's bring in bret baier who joins me now. good to have you with us. great to be with you here in d.c. on a crazy day happening behind us in capitol hill. what is your take right now? >> my take is that jim jordan's speech did not work for kevin mccarthy. it worked for jim jordan and consolidated the andy biggs votes. we're coming to the end of the roll call. if he doesn't gain one, it stays at 19 opposed to kevin mccarthy. once again, hakeem jefferys will get more votes than kevin mccarthy, the democrat getting more votes than the republican even though voters voted republicans in office. this is messy. a number of people up there on the hill are saying it's a blank show. they're saying it should last for a long time. to josh's point and congressman issa's point, there's all kinds of names floating around. steve scalise is reporting kevin mccarthy. jim jordan, does he want to be speaker? he wanted to be chair of the judiciary committee to do these investigations. if somebody says you could be speaker of the house, second in line to the presidency, i don't know. does that change? does he get the votes? does this lead to more votes heading his way? the mccarthy clan says they're in for the long haul. no matter how votes -- how many votes this takes, how many ball lots this takes. democrats are out with ads and tweets saying kevin mccarthy ran his campaign for speaker on the promise of making history. by going to a second ballot and a third for the first time in 100 years, he's delivering. they're loving this moment. they want it to continue all day long, all days long. portray chaos. >> martha: we talked about this earlier. kevin mccarthy focused all of his energy in the mid-terms on going all across the country, helping to get these candidates across the finish line. he may regret that he used the words red tsunami at this point because it didn't happen. that has been a painful reality for him. he understood that unless he had a huge number, he was going to run into the problem that he's in right now. >> he was telling us that back action we got to election day, as the predictions were all of these numbers that they were going to pick up. if he didn't, it was going to be tough with a slim majority, this is the toughest. if you can't get these ball lots to go your way, imagine legislating. imagine getting to herd the cats around some controversial piece of legislation. it will be tough. we could be in for a long haul here. i think they're going to take a break. they're going to try the twist some arms but may not work. this may be end of kevin mccarthy's speakership. >> martha: we'll be watching for any tea leaves out of that break. wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall when you watch someone like jim jordan, what does he do in that room? where is he leaning? steve scalise, all of these people who may be friends and supportive, but will smell some blood in the water around this issue. it's fascinating. let's get -- i'm told the vote is complete now. chad pergram is with us with the final tally here. hi, chad. >> hi there. this is the unofficial tally. they have gone through the entire alphabet. kevin mccarthy does not have the votes to prevail here. we'll have a third vote for speaker whether that is in the next few minutes or sometime later tonight or tomorrow. it's possible that they could go into a recess here. what is significant is that the vote here -- kevin mccarthy had 203 votes, jeffries had 213 votes and jim jordan who isn't seeking the position, he got 19. 19 is the grand total of votes that went for somebody else during the first round. here's some of the people. andy biggs voted for jim jordan. bishop of north carolina, an due clyde, bob goode of virginia, one of the most ardent supporters of kevin mccarthy. now we know the universe, 19. that was consistent on the first vote. it is consistent on the second vote. now, we'll see what the actual tally here is. this usually takes 10 or 15 minutes for the house reading clerk to tally everything up, make sure that they have the votes in order and then they announce the official results from this and we'll see if they go to a next vote. we could have other names put in the order here. brett asked a question off the air as to whether or not jim jordan or anybody could potentially withdraw their name from consideration. i've seen other names put in to consideration with speaker votes. colon powell before, jeff sessions, the former republican senator from alabama and attorney general. he's gotten votes. john lewis, the late democratic congressman from georgia. i asked one source that is very good on this information saying a withdrawal of somebody, saying you can't consider my name, that that would be unprecedented. we continue in this cryogenic freeze here on capitol hill. this might go later tonight or later this week. again, at what point will kevin mccarthy and his supporters say we're not wearing them down? we will know each time we have a roll call vote to see if there's any movement in that magic universe of 19 opponents if that number goes up or democrats get involved. that's not happened yet. that's what to look for on the next round of votes. back to you. >> martha: indeed there were votes for andy biggs, jim banks, jim jordan, lee zeldin and byron donalds in the first round. now they have coalesced for jim jordan in the 19 votes. chad, thanks very much. dana perino is on the phone with us. there she is in person. hi, dana. what to you think about this? >> gosh. it's wonderful to experience history. if you're the republican party today and you're -- let's say you're average joe republican out there in the country, you're watching this saying what? what is the idealogical difference between kevin mccarthy and the others, right? they don't know these names. they don't know -- maybe there's bad blood that has happened between a few of them. kevin mccarthy has 95% of the support of the caucus and then there's a small group, very small group, relatively speaking -- like the equivalent of the squad on the left-hand side of the column. they are digging in and they want to make life miserable for kevin mccarthy. i would imagine he's feeling that way right now. i think the fact that there's been no votes changed back to kevin mccarthy in the second ballot about about to go to a third, i don't know what happens from here. i noticed that brett mentioned about taking a break. possibly so. at this point, i don't know what else he can do. to me it a little less about let's unite and hold the biden administration accountable and make sure that the biden white house has a check on it, which is what the american people wanted when they were able to vote in november and said they wanted a republican majority in the house. this doesn't get you to any of the oversight, doesn't get you to backing off of some of the spending. doesn't get you where they want to be or where the average republican voter thought that they would be. by the end of this week, maybe this is over and done with. maybe we have a speaker, kevin mccarthy or somebody else. i don't know. i think the fact that there's all of this drama in washington d.c. around the republicans today has got to be a source of major disappointment especially for the people that worked hard and volunteered on campaigns. this isn't what they thought would happen. >> martha: and you have a couple of people who were supported very closely. eli crane and ann luna by kevin mccarthy. he raised $238 million, an enormous amount of money to back these candidates. now some of them are voting against him for

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