sources are telling us that house republicans are on a conference call right now. they re trying to figure out what is the path forward to get a speaker in place. just within the last couple of minutes, we saw kevin mccarthy telling our team on the hill he thinks he will get to the magic number, 218, same game plan, he says. look at that right there. we have new reporting this morning into how he s trying to make this happen. he s been deploying five trusted allies to negotiate with these kind of republican so-called rebels here, trying to figure out what are the concessions that would be needed to peel off the votes for him to get there, even after they ve been negotiating for a matter of weeks now. listen to what one republican defector had to say this morning? it remains to be seen. i want a resolution. i want us to elect a speaker. another wrinkle this morning, you have former president donald trump giving kevin mccarthy his strongest endorsement yet, writing on socia
the ghost of ali present. exactly. the new reporting that we have from myself and others is that they re going to try or that there s a desire to do a motion to adjourn until tomorrow. it would benefit the mccarthy side, it would give them more time to negotiate, it would also save them another embarrassing round where either nothing has changed or they just lose, again, in their quest for speakers. democrats are likely to whip against this, but it s also not clear that all republicans would be on board, specifically this 20-member coalition that we keep talking about, the ones that are voting against mccarthy. some of them have even tweeted what happens at noon today? this is scott perry specifically, he said what happens at noon today? i don t know, but i m not backing down. so it s not necessarily assure thing that these members of the freedom caucus, will let mccarthy buy themselves more time. what will be the incentive
writing on social media, vote for kevin, close the deal. telling punch bowl news, he s taken calls from republican. he s trying to whip for mccarthy. but here s the thing, even with donald trump s backing, still not clear how he s going to move the needle. we ve heard from president biden just in the last hour weighing in on what s happening. being pretty blunt about it. listen. a little embarrassing, he says. we ve got a team of reporters here, ali vitali, steve kornacki, anna palmer. the people who are kicking us off this morning, ali, let me start with you. i had a conversation with
in the eyes of the american public as a party that is chaotic when they re in power. this is the first impression for the american public of what it looks like to have a republican house majority. americans don t care how slim the margins are or the procedural rule changes, necessarily. they care about, are things functioning? right now if you look at the house, they definitely are not. we have a graphic on scene of things that mccarthy could do to try to get some of these 20 members on board, the one-member threshold meaning it could take one member instead of five as has been proposed right now to call a vote to oust the speaker. it would weaken the future speaker s power. procedural negotiations, budget stuff, the release of january 6th files, creation of a church committee looking into the fbi and a concession of not being kevin mccarthy. that s something that some conference members want to see. i mean, it s a huge problem for mccarthy. and you can see it in ali s
one, it s not like they re negotiating with a group of 20 who are all aligned along the same reasons. this is 19 individual or 20 individual negotiations with a few people who will never be flipped because they just don t want to vote for mccarthy and mccarthy can t negotiate on that. but the rest of them can be or potentially they could be persuaded to vote present which would take down the number from 218 to something lower. too many of them vote present, and you tip into a territory where democrats just have more numbers. that s the scenario that mccarthy and others have been warning against. certainly it s something that mccarthy and his team are aware of as they re trying to do this very delicate dance of breaking this very gridlocked moment down. but that s one of the strategies that they re trying to employ here, making the concessions where we can, and doing it with the people who they think could be flipable, because, again, not all of them are.