[inaudible] more on this in a moment, but let s get right to the very latest on capitol hill. cnn s monumental mona is there tonight, you have some new reporting i understand with negotiations. any movement, what is going on? not quite yet, laura. all the negotiations have wrapped up for the night, the people who are in some of these key meetings have left the building, and not a single person who voted against kevin mccarthy on the house floor has said they are going to change their votes just yet. now kevin mccarthy did make an offer to these members, there is some sort of agreement on paper and some of the holdouts were invited to look at that and review it over. they have been doing that all throughout the evening, coming in and out, coming out various moments and looking at it. but looking out of all these meetings, they have been very tightlipped. so they have not agreed just yet. kevin mccarthy is still projecting confidence, he is saying they are making progress
right? it also buys time for more negotiations to take place behind closed doors after kevin mccarthy suffered five more defeats today for a total now of 11. so, what s gonna happen in just a few hours? how will that change things, he hasn t seen the progress yet? plus, we have new news on the buffalo bills damar hamlin. he is awake and making remarkable progress just three days after he collapsed on the field in cardiac arrest during monday night football. the nfl has officially canceled that game, and cnn has newly-obtained audio from the moment hamlin collapsed. i don t like how you went down. a minute everybody on-call. bring everybody. we need a helicopter, everybody. we need all of this. we never went down here. more on this in a moment, let s get down to the latest from capitol hill. melanie zanona is there for us tonight. melanie, you ve got some new reporting on the negotiations. any movement, what s going on? not quite yet, laura. all the negotiations have
lost weight with this congress. and number three, it s not about trump, it s about them showing their base what they think their base wants to, here which is that they are against the establishment and they want to burn down the establishment. kevin mccarthy has become the ultimate establishment on the house side of the gop at this moment. but here is the flip side to all of this, you can argue why is mccarthy sticking around for constant humiliation, but he is not substantially lost votes over the course of the last three days. the overwhelming majority of his caucus has coalesced around him and is digging in now to support him, and i think the question that he is hoping is going to flip overnight and into tomorrow, which is to say if the overwhelming majority of the caucus is not abandoning him, why will these guys not come on board. the longer this goes on, it is less about mccarthy and he becomes a proxy for the establishment, and it becomes, well, if he backs down what is
the two faces out of the tube there. whoever s going to step in and try to run is going to be beholden of those same concessions, so what a lot of republicans are wondering right now is is there someone right now, in this moment, who could get to 18 without having to give away all of these concessions? so that is kind of the question that they are starting to come to republicans minds as kevin mccarthy s top failed to get the votes. melanie, thank you so much for your reporting. it is so borne of your insight and reporting tonight. i want to bring in congressman brad schneider, into the conversation. you heard from my colleague melania, about the importance of putting it on paper, but if it is just on paper and they are still saying now, are we just going to be here indefinitely? i think that is the 64,000 dollar question. we have had 11 votes already in every single one of those 11 votes, hakeem jeffries has received 212. every democrat is here and voting for akeem jeffries becaus
congresswoman from georgia, and she is now expanding her colleague congresswoman lauren boebert. listen to. this i think the american people, no matter how you vote, are sick and tired of drama and this is nothing but drama. we are on multiple days now with multiple candidates from this group and so i m not sure how laura boebert on one hand canned demand so much out of kevin mccarthy and then demand nothing out of somebody else and be willing to vote for them to the speaker. that is not serious, i do not think that is leadership and i really see it as more obstruction than as progress. drama. i think it would be a mistake to think that, even after this and even though they are on opposite ends on the mccarthy question for speaker, that they are somehow on different ends of the ideological spectrum. laura boebert and marjorie taylor greene are in the exact same part of the ideological spectrum within the republican party. their election buyers, staunch