Reid. republican leader kevin mccarthy faces a vote for speaker of the house next tuesday with a razor thin republican majority and the very real prospect of an open fight over the gavel. it s a predicament underscored by the saga of incoming republican congressman george santos of new york who again tried to explain away lies about his biography in an interview with fox news. do you have no shame in the people who now you re asking to trust you to be their voice for them, their families, and their kids in washington? tulsi, i can say the same thing about the democrats and the party. the better question is does kevin mccarthy have any shame or will he just continue to ignore the admitted fraud about to join his ranks in his desperate pursuit of the speakers gavel? he s admitted to numerous false claims likely because santos has
Coming up to the reid out. explain why mccarthy has been oh, so silent on santos. well, primarily because santos has been vocal about his support for mccarthy and mccarthy is not in a position where he can afford to lose any votes. he s not at a place right now where he has enough support from his own party to secure his speakership. i just want to point out nbc news has reached out to the national republican congressional committee, leader kevin mccarthy, whip steve scalise, conference chair for their reactions to santo admitting embellishments i call them lies and we ve not receive any responses, so just want to put that out there. matthew, what does it say about the republican party that this is where it is right now? that there s a person who s
Involved, and i want to focus in on matt gaetz because we now know from former white house aides he testified matt gaetz asked for a pardon over sex trafficking the sex trafficking investigation as you see there. question, how do you know congressman gaetz asked for a pardon. mcenty, he told me. they didn t do anything wrong but they re going to try and make his life hell and, you know, if the president could give him a pardon, that would be great. i don t know, in order to get a pardon don t you you have to say that you re guilty. you have to say you re guilty. talk about matt gaetz and why he figures so prominently in all this chaos? well, as was just mentioned while mccarthy may not have a clear agenda, matt gaetz does, and he s very consistent with where the base of the gop is. he s not speaking for himself regardless of how ambitious he may seem, but he has ideas about
Get some southerners mixed with midwesterners and put things together. now you ve got the insurrectionists, you ve got the white nationalists. you ve got the qanon folks, you ve got the anti-semites, and you ve got whatever george santos is. that s your coalition, and you have to keep them together. it s showing itself because the first vote is going to be on the speaker of the house, but if and when kevin mccarthy is elected, he s going to have no ability to get the second vote through or the third vote through because it s this same coalition of craziness that he has to put together, and that has been building the extremism was built upon election after election when the most extreme candidate won, and this was sort of the inevitable result of that. and matthew, speaking of we re looking at on tuesday the prospect of the first time since the 1800s if memory serves that