GOP rejects empowering interim House speaker as Jordan says he’s still running for the job

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• Geoff Bennett:

  The leadership crisis in the House of Representatives today even became more chaotic.

  Republicans, unable to agree on a speaker of the House, also rejected a plan for a temporary solution, to give the acting speaker more powers.

  Our Lisa Desjardins was outside the heated meeting today and joins us now.

  So, Lisa, Republicans can't agree on a speaker and they can't agree on what to do next. Help us understand what's happening.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Even by the tumultuous standards of the past couple of weeks, today was especially chaotic, Geoff.

  It began with Jim Jordan, the speaker nominee for the Republicans, presenting a plan to try and buy himself time. He proposed giving the pro tem speaker more power to conduct business on the floor. But that met a brick wall inside the conference. And sooner — soon after that, Mr. Jordan came out to tell us what he thought would happen next.

• Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH):

  I'm still running for speaker and I plan to go to the floor and get the votes and win this race. But I want to go talk with a few of my colleagues. Particularly, I want to talk with the 20 individuals who voted against me, so that we can move forward and begin to work for the American people.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  And that's what's happening right now, Geoff.

  Jordan has been speaking to those holdouts, so far, none of them changing their mind at all. But let's briefly talk about that plan that he floated and which failed today, which could have gotten things operating again.

  The idea is to give the speaker pro tem of the House, Patrick McHenry, more power to conduct business. That would require a House vote, but it did meet with that very intense divide. So, now with no real plan for who could be a permanent speaker and no plan for who could hold those powers temporarily, Geoff, to use a Star Wars reference, it feels like we're entering the outer rim here.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Well, to your point, it's hard to believe we're entering a fourth week of this.

  Help us understand why Republicans are unable to move forward, especially when they have a temporary solution available to them.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  I know this seems to defy a lot of logic and rationality for many of our viewers, so I spent a lot of time thinking about it.

  You have a conference that really has been built upon questioning institutions. Now it is questioning this institution itself. Now, at the same time, you have a group of people who themselves are not unified, who have had deep divides within the party, which really they have been trying to hold to a minimum publicly, but which privately have only grown.

  All of that added up today as members walked out of this meeting with signs of very clear and growing frustration.

• Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC):

  I think we need a speaker. And I'm tired of putzing around with this.

• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA):

  Our conference has a responsibility to the American people, to our districts to work together and unify, and this conference is absolutely broken.

• Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN):

  There's nothing I have ever wanted more in this Congress than for Jim Jordan to be the speaker of the House. He is the fighter that we need for our country. And what they're doing right now is walking the Republicans off the plank.

  We don't deserve the majority if we go along with a plan to give the Democrats control over the House of Representatives. It's a giant betrayal to our Republican voters.

• Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI):

  If we go to the floor for another vote, if Jim doesn't show progress or backslides, then it's time to go back to the drawing board. There's any, I think, number of people who are interested who would be good, but we have to ultimately choose a speaker. We're just — we have got so many things we have got to do, and we just can't get down to business.

• Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX):

  So, we're here. We're in the middle of an ugly process. It's not enjoyable, but we need to muddle through it. We need to get through it as a team.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  For House Republicans, the problem, though, is, there is no leader for that team. There is a leadership vacuum here.

  And I don't know if you could pick up on that in the sound, but it was especially evident today that emotions are running high. And there's a real emotional contagion here, resentment between Republicans that is adding fuel to this fire.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Meantime, Lisa, you have got some Republicans who voted against Jim Jordan who say they have been receiving threatening phone calls, in some cases death threats.

  How is that affecting the dynamic on the Hill?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  This is quite serious. And it has, in fact, hurt Mr. Jordan, because there's a sense that his allies, whether they are here in Congress or there are viewers, voters who are putting threats in, apparently, that they're not playing fair and that they're playing dangerous games here.

  I spoke to a couple of the members who have been receiving those threats.

• Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-VA):

  Yes, that was a large part of what we did today, was to express our concern with the threats that so many of us have received from within our own party. That's the part that's most disheartening.

  We all have the same — we share the same conservative values and principles. So, to get those threats, to be intimidated by members of our own party are really frustrating, especially for people like me.

• Rep. Nicholas Lalota (R-NY):

  It probably makes me more resolved, I think. I think that folks who express themselves to have courage, to have guts, those sort of threats probably embolden us even more.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  So, you see, this is part of why the opposition is standing their ground. They are telling me, if they give in to these threats right now, change their votes, support Mr. Jordan, that they feel their entire career, then they will be beholden to this kind of tactic.

  One other note, one Republican member told the conference today that he had to see that a sheriff would be posted at his daughter's school, because these threats seem to be so serious. So there are many dynamics here, some dangerous for the country, some dangerous for individuals.

  Republicans want to way forward, but they clearly cannot find it.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Lisa Desjardins, great reporting, as always. Thanks so much.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  You're welcome.