speaker mccarthy and republican conference chair elise stefanik to rally support for him among rank and file republicans. today speaker mccarthy said the call was not a strategy session but simply a call because he speaks to trump on a regular basis. mccarthy also told reporters he doesn t think prosecutors can criminally charge trump because the former president did nothing wrong. it is unclear if speaker mccarthy remembers saying trump bears responsibility for what happened on january 6th. joining me now jen psaki, white house press secretary and host of inside with jen psaki. such a delight to see you. welcome to washington, alex. thank you, my friend. i ve got to ask there s so many reasons tuesday be alarmed by what is happening in the republican party. on a scale of 1 to 10 how much does it concern you trump seems to be calling in favors to republicans in congress and they seem to thus far be doing his
policy and senator tuberville doesn t like it. okay, i understand it. there are lots of policies i don t like, but his response has been now for months to stop the promotion and assignment of the top officers in the military, all of whom have to be approved by the senate in order to take their posts. the consequence is we now have more than 250 people who are are blocked. we will soon, if this keeps up, have no head of the joint chiefs of staff. we don t have the commander of the seventh fleet, of the fifth fleet, cyber command, the u.s. marines for the first time in its history has no permanent person in charge. and you can go all the way through. these are people who have served their country honorably. and what former defense
that we have news of a potential third indictment. republicans criticize the department of justice or say nothing. do you get the sense in the hallways this is actually affecting them? there may be some sense of chagrin. they ve got nothing to say. the play book it does not talk about the substance of the allegation but to talk about either the leakers or the government body or the institution but not really address the substance. do you think that is a strategy they can pursue for the entirety of let s say for example the election? yes, i do think it s a strategy they can pursue the entire time. they have so much practice at it, and they are so good at it. they just have constructed an alternative reality where it s not about what really happened on january 6th. what they experienced, what we experienced, it s really about,
i mean, do you see a work around here in the charges that mr. spligt s office has chosen, barb? you know, when it comes to conspiracy to defraud the united states, i think you re going to have to show he knew that the charges was the false claim the election was stolen. i don t know they re going to be able to work around that. with obstruction of an official proceeding i don t think you have to know you actually lost the election there. anything you do to obstruct that proceeding is sufficient, and maybe even the civil rights claim, the deprivation of rights, it s enough that you tried to subvert the process. and so maybe that is the work around, that if they fail to prove donald trump actually knew he lost the election, there may be a way for a jury to reach a verdict of guilty on those other two counts without even finding that s the case. it happens all the tame in obstruction of justice charges. a person might say but i m innocent so i told the person to lie for me. the fact you
secretaries as well as our current defense secretary on the former both democratic have said this is undermining national security. this is undercutting military readiness, and what the officers themselves say it s not just about us, it s all those mid-level ranks and junior ranks partly who look at this and say political football, i don t want to stay around this. wow. so this costs us, and it costs us every day it goes on. well, and it s a republican holding up the u.s. military, affecting its readiness on an issue that, by the way is absolutely terrible politics for republicans in terms of their extreme stance on reproductive freedoms. yes. and yet where are those republicans? who s speaking out and saying he s got to put a stop to this? and now tie it back to democracy. we voted in the senate armed