television show and, boy, what a time, brendan. it s good to see you. thanks for being here. great to be with you, alex. honestly, brendan, as you do the research into this group of 20 effectively holding the house of representatives hostage, it makes the tea party insurgents of the john boehner era think like a think tank with well developed policy foundations. what is your opinion of this group of people in terms of what they actually want and how republican leadership can possibly negotiate with them? yeah, that was a great setup. look, this politics for these people has become entertainment and become sport. as you said, it is all about getting on tv and being famous. that s the problem for kevin mccarthy. he has now found himself in a game of a staring contest, a contest of wills with people who love being on stage right now. they love the fact that we are talking about them.
insurgents of the john boehner era looked like a think tank, with well developed policy foundations. what is your opinion of this group of people, in terms of what they actually want, and how republican leadership can possibly negotiate with them? yeah, great setup. look, the politics for these people has become entertainment. it s become sport. as you say, it s all about getting on tv, being famous. and that s the problem for kevin mccarthy, he s found himself in a game of a staring contest. the contest of wills, with people who love being onstage right now. they love that the fact that we re talking about. them they exist for this in the house freedom caucus, with the center of all this is operating they like to talk about how they organize around conservative principles. or maybe the rules of the house operate. but they re really, they exist to make themselves
than 4. with each and every voted, he s lost that many and more. it could be as low as 19 and as high as 20. no matter how you slice it, he s coming up zero. chad pergram on capitol hill with more on this and where this goes now. chad? this is a staring contest with kevin mccarthy and his opponents. things have not gotten better. 20 republicans continue to vote against kevin mccarthy and that is blocking him from becoming speaker. even support from former president trump backing mccarthy for speaker failed to boost mccarthy. some supporters of president trump are breaking with mr. trump. having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off, i think it needs to be reversed. the president needs to tell kevin mccarthy that sir, you do not have the votes and it s time
he did not move the meter overnight and the statement by former president trump did not do anything in favor of kevin mccarthy. president trump does not have the same political wattage, he does not carry as much weight in the republican conference on capitol hill as he used to. but, we ll see in a few minutes if that number goes above 20 or below 20. and watch how many total members are voting. 434, that was the magic number yesterday. there were 434 votes. you start to get attrition when you go into vote after vote after vote. if that number falls, it changes the math. it changes the algebraic equation, if people absent from the mccarthy side and against mccarthy or on the democratic side of the aisle. the other thing i should note here is that you know, there was talk the past couple days if this gets into a staring contest and what we are really in is the biggest game of chicken with the
facing not just kevin mccarthy right now but will at some points face hakeem jeffries. i talked about the staring contest. there s actually a staring contest going on on the democratic side, too. is anybody going to break if they get to a coalition government or if they have a coalition speaker. nobody has been willing to break so far. 212 every single time. so who is going to break there? would it be somebody like marcy captor? there was some suggestions a few weeks ago that ro khanna, a democrat from california, might be willing to break and vote for a republican if it was the right coalition. nobody be is there just yet. right now the democrats are more than happy to sit on their hands and let the republicans duke this out. at what point does this hit a breaking point? i talked about those tensions in the chamber. i talked about the increased heckling back and forth. some raised voices in the house chamber. tempers are starting to flare. at some point that dam will