different divide direction. andy biggs would be an outstanding speaker. as i stand here right now, kevin mccarthy does not have 218 votes to become speaker. i don t think he has hit 200. and my panel is back with me. eugene, what are the consequences of this mccarthy mcconnell thing? what it seems to show is that maybe there s not a lot of trust from mcconnell to mccarthy, that he d be able to negotiate this by himself, and i think there s obvious tension there. that s going to continue. mcconnell, mitch mcconnell has the trust of the senators in the republican senators, they have his back, they trust him to negotiate a lot of these things. mccarthy does not have that, whatsoever. we see that over and over again in the way that they are outwardly talking about voting against him. even when they voted in
how the tech companies deal with information flow, that s one issue. this other issue, though, and i don t think candidly that many people in the republican party are being silent about this. trump is obviously the core issue on this one. right. but everybody from mcconnell to mccarthy down to other rank and file republicans here in washington were pretty uncomfortable with it and did speak out, and i think understood just how big of a problem it was for trump to have done that lunch or that dinner and really for him to have tried to promote kanye west as some, you know, paragon of virtue because he had been canceled or he s the new face of the whatever, free speech. no, he is not. in fairness, that s where we are now. things like this have been bubbling along for months and months and months. for people now to say, oh, that s too far, i think a lot of people in the democratic and republican party would privately say, it went too far a long time ago. you know, we are out of tim