process. it is a fascinating, fascinating scenario. back to you in a moment. bret talked about a long night. if kevin mccarthy does become the speaker elect or he will come of course, be sworn in immediately and then the remainder of the house members will also be sworn in immediately i m trace gallagher. this is fox news that night. we are watching right now the 15 th ballot, the 15th round of voting. we started out with the 14th round earlier. kevin mccarthy during that round got 217. it is 217 votes. or 16 votes but he did not get over the hump. so now they are voting again they voted to maintain this session and now they are voting again and the big news coming out of the cell bars that they. changed his vote from
weeks ago that the house was in all the way together by the 13 th of january and that certain committee staff had not been paid so that s an issue. here s another problem that the were starting to encounter. they are not full members. they were getting calls in thei offices for constituents with caseworkers, immigration issues problems with the irs, problems with other federal agencies, they couldn t address any of that because they are not members but so think about the backlog of work that is piled u over the last week and they couldn t address that he of those issues if this were go on for another week. it s fascinating. 175-165. the magic number is 215 because there are a if you take the present in ther and you do the number, the magi number is 429 and you need better than half of that so two out of 15 would be the number.
centrist members were just goin to vote no because they are so mad about how this has gone on and that is going to create a whole other fight because you can t do the business of the house of representatives withou the rules package in place. but you had this fascinating even the body language, you loo at the body language and you watch people walk up to matt gaetz you see people walking up till lauren boebert and it is kind of amazing. when kevin mccarthy walked in i talked to matt gaetz for a while, matt gaetz whispered in his ear and kept mccarthy walked up and he was red and he had this red piece of paper and he walked up and voted to make sure that they can keep on voting. the vote is extended as long as somebody is in the well of the house and wanting to vote s if you get below that threshold and already voted but it is below two minutes, you ve got to . up the card and do it by hand and so that vote will stay open to perpetuity until it has been exhausted. the democrats were