challenge mccarthy for the speakership went after mccarthy hard for the comment. to suggest that there is any sort of political motivation is absolutely it s not fair to mr. gowdy, it s not fair to myself and most importantly it s not fair to those four families who lost the loved ones. i think he should withdraw that statement. i think he needs to express how wrong it was. it was never the intention, it s not what we re doing and i think statement is totally wrong. rich, i ve talked to a lot of republicans on the house who are furious at mccarthy because they feel as if they just handed hillary clinton a talking point for the october 22 testimony. let s set that aside. is mccarthy in trouble? yes, he is. in this sense. he has a strong lock on the house republican caucus. he probably has 190 votes. he needs more. he needs to get 218 on the floor to become speaker and it s not clear he s going to get there. so it s extremely unsettled and
been suffering and he was fighting. that s what they want. trump does not have presidential fever, he has attention fever and once the attention is off him he doesn t do smatterings, he told you. once the attention is off him, he s out of there. we ll talk more trump later in the show. let s turn into what s going on in the republican conference inside the house. kevin mccarthy is in hot water for comments he made about the benghazi committee. some might argue it is the classic michael kinsley gaffe, he accidentally told the truth. let s hear what he said first. everybody thought hillary clinton was unbeatable, right? but we put together a benghazi special committee, a select committee, what are her numbers today? her numbers are dropping. why? because she s untrustable. but no one would have known any of that had happened had we noting made that happen. and boy republicans didn t like it. jason chaffetz who announced he s officially going to challenge mccarthy for the
like it. jason chaffetz who announced he s officially going to challenge mccarthy for the speakership went after mccarthy hard for the comment. to suggest that there is any sort of political motivation is absolutely it s not fair to mr. gowdy, it s not fair to myself and most importantly it s not fair to those four families who lost the loved ones. i think he should withdraw that statement. i think he needs to express how wrong it was. it was never the intention, it s not what we re doing and i think the statement is totally wrong. rich, i ve talked to a lot of republicans on the house who are furious at mccarthy because they feel as if they just handed hillary clinton a talking point for the october 22 testimony. let s set that part aside a minute. is mccarthy in trouble? yes, he is. in this sense. he has a strong lock on the house republican caucus. he probably has 190 votes. he needs more. he needs to get 218 on the floor to actually become speaker and
it does sound like he s got plans to challenge mccarthy. we ll see tomorrow. he said he will make a formal decision on sunday. he s been trying to draft gowdy of south carolina into the race. there s an appetite post boehner to get a fresh face in there. i don t think he has the support within the conference, but to think a committee chairman is already challenging mccarthy setz some people behind the scenes and now publicly wonder is mccarthy ready to lead the party to be a public voice and figure who can bring it forward in an election year when politics are tricky. if he comes in as a weakened speaker, difficult to pull off, jeanne, is this a free pass for hillary clinton? it is a welcome mark for hillary clinton. but i have to say it is not just this incident about benghazi. his foreign policy address as well was full of missteps, kevin mccarthy. if i m in the gop in the house
but since cantor s worked alongside boehner quite strongly over the last two years, they re actually not friends, but allies and they ve worked together and i think he was sad. how gnarly is this race for house majority leader going to get within the caucus? you ve got kevin mccarthy, you ve got pete sessions, who s a texas republican, who s maybe throwing his hat in the ring, and jeb hensarling, who is a very hard-line tea party type is also, i understand, going to try to go for this as well? perhaps. so i sat down with pete sessions from dallas, texas, and he s definitely running. he does not like mccarthy. remember, back in 2010, pete sessions wanted to be whip. he thought mccarthy was an upstart. he thought he deserved more credit for the tea party wave, so they ve always had tensions. sessions is definitely going to challenge mccarthy. does sessions have the deep base? i don t think so. and i don t think jeb hensarling is actually looking to run. he still seemed undecided late