finally official. kevin mccarthy is the new speaker of the house after 15 hard-fought ballots and some serious late night drama. and a good saturday morning to you, i m katie fang, let s begin today s show getting caught up on how we got here. it started with the 14th vote late last night mccarthy managed to flip more of the hard-line republicans needed to win the speakership. but came up short one matt gates voted present. that led to a tense conversation on the house floor between the two men, and our show of visible frustration from mccarthy. and watch this. republican congressman mike rogers approaches matt gates to see something and a colleague pulls him back by putting a hand on his face. the moment showing how much anger was boiling over on the floor after several days of voting. and then for a moment it looked like republicans are going to adjourn, and start voting again on monday. but at the last second, or it was out that they suddenly had the votes. and of that 1
and it appears, though obviously it is not done yet. that kevin mccarthy may in fact have the votes. steve, can you give us a bit of a history lesson here. compare this to any other time in modern history. any other time in modern history there is none because,, the last time the speaker s vote went past one ballot was 1823, but, we will come right back to this, but just to put in some perspective, what the history of this is, you are looking at here, this is every speakers race in history, that s gone past one ballot. we put this together earlier, only 11 ballots, this is the 15th ballot, so right here in history is where the speakers race ranks, this is the fifth longest speakers race in the history of the country, and you can see the four that were longer than this were all pre civil war, this is going to finish well shy of a record of 133 minutes, if it does indeed finish here, 15 ballots will be the fifth longest in american history, and again we haven t seen this go p
in a list that is about the top risks. the founder of that eurasia group. straight ahead, republican mark sanford, former south carolina congressman and governor and presidential candidate, helps us understand what s happening inside the gop following a bitter speaker bottle and what it means for the future of the american democracy. another hour of phil she begins right now. and good morning. it s out of the, january the 7th, ending up in the east, 6 am in the west. i m ali velshi. as the old saying goes, if i don t succeed, try, try 14 more times until you do. that s the attitude kevin mccarthy is bringing with him into the new year as he was finally declared the new speaker of the house after four days and 15 attempts. republicans appeared optimistic as the house reconvened at 10 pm last night for the 14th ballot. things quickly devolved as that vote appeared headed for failure, which led to a lot of scrambling and conversations on the republican side. tensions spilled o
at long last, kevin mccarthy is the new republican speaker of the house. but to say it didn t come easy, would be a massive understatement. mccarthy scratch out a victory in the early morning hours with just barely more than the absolute minimum support he needed. it took him 15 rounds of voting to get to the finish line. including a scuffle on the house floor on the anniversary of the january six insurrection. the contrast between the two parties has never been clearer. while republicans created new chaos at the capitol, president biden honored the men and women who protected the building and his its occupants from an angry mob just two years ago. and, while gop lawmakers bigger with one another, democratic representatives rallied around their leader, akeem jeffries. while the white house has confirmed that president biden reached out to congratulate mccarthy earlier today, the 118th congress is off to an unforgettable start. we are talking about what comes next, tonight, on
ceiling. a familiar topic, but the circumstances this time are quite different. on friday, janet yellin announced that the united states will hit its debt limit this coming thursday. the debt limit is the maximum amount, according to law, that the federal government can borrow to pay for its obligations, to pay for things start to spend money on. that includes, all of the really important functions of government, everything from air traffic control to medicare and social security payments, congress decides what that limit is. so, secretary yellen wrote to house speaker kevin mccarthy, warning him that it is, quote, critical that congress act in a timely manner, to increase or suspend the debt limit, and quote. she wanted to explain that, quote, filler to meet the governments obligations would cause irreparable harm to the u.s. economy, the livelihoods of all americans, and global financial stability. all of that is true. to be clear, the united states government to fight fal