the media kept touting each ballot as a crushing defeat for ken mccash think kevin mccarthy, although he was winning 95% of house republicans. that was especially true late friday night when after flipping most of his opponents to his side, mccarthy lost by one vote. you could see he was stunned as he walks away there, and one ally, mike rogers, made a beeline for matt gaetz who had taken a half step by voting present. not until the early morning our hours yesterday did mccarthy win. some of the talking heads predicted mccarthy would drop out. i suspect that when they come back after dinner that mccarthy is going to end up withdrawing. oh, i think his goose is very much cooked. i don t think we re going to see a speaker kevin mccarthy. howard: only in the final late night drama did journalists say, hey, shocker, mccarthy, who we all branded the biggest loser, might actually win this thing. of i m howard kurtz, and this is mediabuzz. howard: ahead, my exclusive int
lose, and it was more than a popcorn, popcorn and a few margarita moment for democrats to go, whoa, we thought we were fragmented and we wouldn t rein in our fringe elements. look at them, we re not the only ones. but the sad thing about this, headline or not, was for the american people. look, i m going to go in addition to what ben said. yes, they had an agenda, but in addition to that you have a couple of people, i m sorry, you have the lauren boeberts and the matt gaetzs who i feel are attention whores, and the cameras are on them. one of the things they got what they wanted which i think is going to be a disaster for the republican party, for the house and for the american people is that they have the ability to ouster kevin mccarr think mccarthy as speaker pretty much anytime. any legislation that, you know, they don t like that s put forth and they don t like the way it s going, you know, they can just say you re out of here. howard: right. and one last thing. to talk about
commentators said when it came down to it it, he put up that media post, it s time to vote for kevin, nothing happened. at the end he was making calls and involved, so it may be a little too quick to say the former president didn t have much influence? i really don t think he did have the influence. i m not just saying that because i m a democrat and he s a former republican president. i m saying that because, as ben rightly pointed out at the beginning of this segment, there were specific demands that these people wanted, and they got their demands, right? one. and two, they still did it well, not all of them, but the biggest voices in the crowd like matt gaetz and lauren boebert, they didn t vote for him, right? they did not put their support behind him, and they got what they wanted. i think it was more about the list of demands and showing people that a, you know, small minority in the party is powerful, they re loud, they re powerful and they can hold up this process. howard:
assignments. i think that was raw pollices, but in fairness didn t you also say that you were a follower of qanon conspiracy theories, and you were no longer influenced by the group? well, like a lot of people today, i had gotten sucked into things i saw on the internet. i never campaigned on those things. that was not something i believed in, that s not what i ran for congress on, so those are so far in the past howard: all right. you tweeted i guess in late december the, being conservative and anti-establishment, i used to criticize kevin mccarthy a lot. so if that s true, why did you end up on his side when some of your fellow keys in the freedom caucus can conservatives were saying gaits was saying he will not win this week, in the month, this year. thanks for that, he did say that. i came into congress and, you know, kevin and i, we had some public confrontations not