so they ve made their problems worse as a result of getting such a small majority which resulted from looking too extreme. good luck. so what does this portend for the future of the republican party? is there a risk that it can split into two factions, always trump versus never trumpers, especially looking ahead to the general election? they are more factionized than usual. republicans are usually the more unified party, the managerial party, is much more deeply divided than the democratic party, which used to be associated with the word disarray. now democrat are in array. republicans are in disarray. what about trump s influence? well, he was calling around on the floor last night as we saw and at least one republican congressm man waved the phone away, wouldn t even speak to
and provide some balance to the president s policies. so how did kevin mccarthy manage to survive the opposition within his own party? cnn washington correspondent sunderland joins us. it was ugly. what are some of the concessions mccarthy had to make to get those votes? good morning to you. yes, major concessions had to be made by kevin mccarthy to score this major victory in the end of this very historic battle on the house floor. we saw it unfold over many days and certainly many hours last night into the wee hours of this morning where finally kevin mccarthy notched the 216 votes that he needed to win the speaker s gavel, and he got there by in the end flipping those conservative republicans that had voted against him, those key holdouts. they switched their vote to vote present, and that in essence lowered the threshold that kevin
congratulatory belly rub. between speeches, members were shooting off their mouths and their fingers, gesticulating madly. it left viewers trying to lip-read. and when aoc chatted with archenemy republicans and inspired to nonsensical bad lipreading. my dream pied piper had toilet paper. yes. reporter: democrats groaned when matt gaetz voted for a certain ex-president for speaker of the house. donald trump. reporter: even hardcore republicans couldn t keep a straight face. and check out the face of the newly elected congressman who got caught in a web of lies about himself, george santos. santos. reporter: he didn t recognize his own name during one roll call. santos. reporter: george who? one commentator wrote the poorhouse clerk is dangerously
founded. yeah. it s incredible that such a small minority within a party can hold the majority hostage on, you know, a slew of things. and we ll see how that plays out in the coming two years. regarding mccarthy s concessions, there was a whole slew of them. one of them makes it easier to oust him as speaker. it just takes one person to call for a vote to do so. what are the implications of his concessions? he got the title but not the powers we normally associate with the speaker. i think he s going to have to get permission to have each breakfast, and they ll argue about what items should be in his breakfast each morning. i m exaggerating of course, but this is really unprecedented. parent of it is the small margin. and remember, why do republicans have such a small margin in the house? because they projected an extreme image, even senator mcconnell agrees with that.
what mccarthy pledged to do is ensure that there are truly 72 hours for lawmakers to review bills. and then of course he also pledged to put more of the farm right members, the members of the freedom caucus, on the key house rules committee. listen to mccarthy after the vote. now what happened was it became a tie, and i really think matt had talked to me before, matt wanted to get everybody there. so, look, through all of this people s emotions go up and down. at the end of the night, matt got everybody there from the point that nobody voted against the other way. it actually helped unite people. reporter: you can see mccarthy there basically trying to put a positive spin on what really became this historic episode, this historic event, and saying this essentially was good for the democratic process. many republicans will say it was good, it wasn t a coronation, that they had this very bitter