footsie with his far right colleagues. now because mccarthy is quarreling with that same group today does not mean he is resembling a moderate. it does not change the fact that right now in humiliating public fashion, kevin mccarthy is clawing and scraping his way he hopes to the speakership, trying desperately to halt what looks like at this hour, at lee, a runaway train. it s where we begin today with some of our favorite reporters and friends. nbc news senior correspondent, garrett hague, covering the action. and former stpho claire mccaskill is here, and claire and david are both msnbc contributors. ferret, what is happening now? right now we are seeing the third vote get ready to take place here, and this one will have kevin mccarthy introduced by steve scalise and placed in nomination by steve scalise, and for the second time in a row, you have people that could be foes to mccarthy, placing his name in nomination. the last round we saw with jim jordan, and far mor
who the hell knows. i guess steve scalise would be up next. moderates have issues with him. it could in jim jordan, although moderates would have issues with him. it could be some compromised candidate. we don t know yet. i think this is going to, i m getting some senses of grumpiness from republicans who want to recess and return at some point either tonight or tomorrow morning, but i don t know who. scalise has eshed. jordan will have issues. i don t think it s going to be a unity candidate with democrats, although i think we re in uncharted territory and it could be anybody. it could be nobody for several days. jake sherman, i know how busy you are today. thank you for making time to talk to us. if you feel you have something interesting, just wave your arms or shoot us a text.
what is that threshold? we haven t discussed it. because we are 100% behind jeffries. and if there are members of the republican party who would like to vote for jeffries, we would be happy to have him as the speaker. but that s, you know, what you re seeing from the democrat side is real unity. unity of purpose. unity of vision. unity of leadership. and so i don t know what the threshold is for the republicans. i don t know what their plan is. it s not as if today was a surprise to anybody. and to go to the floor and really have no idea whether you re going to have the votes or not is very unusual. but you know, we ll sit this out as long as they want and continue to vote for congressman jeffries and we ll just watch what they do. it s a real shame right now. dan, claire mccaskill has a question for you. dan, first of all, you ll
republicans among themselves can t get to 218 votes, so democrats decide are there 50 or 75 of our members that would give their vote to some type of unity candidate speaker? that could be a great moment for the country and we are not there yet, but those are three likely scenarios. this is a live image of the floor. this is a member named chip roy, and he s nominating jim jordan. how plausible is that? not at all. the next speaker of the house of representatives, it will not be a freedom speaker. the margins are too thin. that candidate would face the same challenges that kevin mccarthy does, and you can only lose four votes, and there are never jim jordans and other ones. jim jordan, what happened in the last hour, when the 19 never
ready to step in a way that gave the members of the caucus confidence and provided this sense of unity. it is remarkable how well nancy pelosi and her other leadership team pulled off this transition and what class she showed today sitting as a back bencher and applauding for her successor as leader of the democrats in the house. and over on the senate side, you had patty murray, the first woman in history to be pro tem. so you have jeffries and murray both makes history today and the democrats really showing off their unity and ability to govern and obviously the longer this chaos continues, the stronger their hand becomes for the last two years the biden term. alexi, if you wanted to further the narrative that cost mitch mcconnell the majority for second time in two years, and