no? these are mostly the democrats saying no. saying, let s keep on going with this stuff. in the opinion of the chair, the noes have it. madam clerk asked for the yeas and nays. the yeas and nays are requested. those favoring the vote by yeas and nays will rise. a sufficient number have ribbon risen. the yeas and nays in order. now they are doing now they are doing this is crazy, ali. this is crazy. why on earth is happening? how is every knee of this productive? clearly kevin mccarthy thought he had the votes. tonight right. matt gaetz and lauren boebert would not have gone on fox news, in the manner that
infuriated many of them. hence why all the emotion from the democratic side of the aisle because going into the vote they said they had it. it s my understanding that matt gates has assured his republican colleagues that he is going to vote for kevin mccarthy. and that is why this incessant run to the floor with the red cards red cards the changing of the vote. that is why that happen. so there will be another vote tonight. and matt gaetz is claiming he will vote for mccarthy. let s bring ali vitali back. in do you have some new reporting? hey, at least we re getting a sense of maybe what just happened in part. we will build on this. but, look, the reason why people were caught flat-footed is because the understanding among mccarthy s core group is that lauren boebert was supposed to be a yes vote here. ultimately, we watch. she voted present. gaetz was the backup plan. that s why we were not hearing a lot of consternation or any
matt gates lauren boebert voting present. and then met gaetz voting present. lorraine boebert s vote which came, early cause alphabetically she s early in the roll call. it gave everyone on the mccarthy side hope that this would end in his favor. matt gates casting that last present vote dashed that hope. but just keep in mind. and steve, i want to be clear on this. what determines when the gavel s vote closed now that the tellers and the clerk are sort of verifying each vote this is usually a process takes 15 or 20 minutes before they actually announced. the formal vote totals. i think clearly mccarthy was aware of that and hence he went over to talk to matt gates because, again, the stakes are that simple. 434 votes cast. two of them are present. that means really, officially, 432 votes are cast. and that makes the magic number
we saw moving in towards matt gates. stephanie and i were just looking at that and someone put their arm around him. over his face! and you can see, just a few rows ahead. there s a number member of congress with their children. someone s holding the children back. my goodness. one wonders though, after 14 votes the level of anger it gets to where it is right now. and this is what we re now looking at. kevin mccarthy who has had a smile on his face the whole time looking like it s gonna be okay, he is not look like this the entire time. except of course earlier tonight when they first won of kevin mccarthy s closest allies gave the free speech and said for people who said this is chaos or this is a clown show, they re absolutely wrong. we are looking at this week s democracy in action. if that is democracy in action, a grown man having to be held back from physically lunging at another grim man, that s no kind of democracy i m familiar with. this is a remarkable. situation
and i want to see where the shot pulls up to kevin mccarthy s walk towards that group was talking to lauren boebert and matt gaetz. he s asking gaetz something. gaetz body language is the vote is not gaveled yet. there s a chance for summer to change their votes. kevin mccarthy now directly engaging with matt gaetz who knew that his present vote would mean that kevin mccarthy does not get the 217 he needs to win on the 14th ballot and become speaker of the house. at least on this ballot. republicans were fairly confident that this would be the one in which this would conclude. they would then swear in the members of the house. they would then cast the rules, and then the house the representative for the session would begin. that has not happen. look at this, there s finger-pointing going on. matt gates is pointing at mccarthy. a crowd is gathering around them. mccarthy obviously trying to implore gates at this point to do something.