sources are telling us that house republicans are on a conference call right now. they re trying to figure out what is the path forward to get a speaker in place. just within the last couple of minutes, we saw kevin mccarthy telling our team on the hill he thinks he will get to the magic number, 218, same game plan, he says. look at that right there. we have new reporting this morning into how he s trying to make this happen. he s been deploying five trusted allies to negotiate with these kind of republican so-called rebels here, trying to figure out what are the concessions that would be needed to peel off the votes for him to get there, even after they ve been negotiating for a matter of weeks now. listen to what one republican defector had to say this morning? it remains to be seen. i want a resolution. i want us to elect a speaker. another wrinkle this morning, you have former president donald trump giving kevin mccarthy his strongest endorsement yet, writing on socia
in the eyes of the american public as a party that is chaotic when they re in power. this is the first impression for the american public of what it looks like to have a republican house majority. americans don t care how slim the margins are or the procedural rule changes, necessarily. they care about, are things functioning? right now if you look at the house, they definitely are not. we have a graphic on scene of things that mccarthy could do to try to get some of these 20 members on board, the one-member threshold meaning it could take one member instead of five as has been proposed right now to call a vote to oust the speaker. it would weaken the future speaker s power. procedural negotiations, budget stuff, the release of january 6th files, creation of a church committee looking into the fbi and a concession of not being kevin mccarthy. that s something that some conference members want to see. i mean, it s a huge problem for mccarthy. and you can see it in ali s