Capitol Hill on Hold: Day 2 of Speaker Drama Continues

Today on Sekulow Capitol Hill on hold.

Day two of the speaker drama continues. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Hey, welcome to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. There's a bit of breaking news I want to get to right off the bat, and that is that Kevin McCarthy and his supporters, which still make up the majority but not enough to get him across the line to become a speaker, are going to try and take, it looks like, an adjournment vote so that they don't have a series of votes today that he would likely lose. There's no limit to how many votes you can take here, but of course you are running out in a sense a clock because you don't have a working House of Representatives with new members sworn in. They're currently in the House chamber as we speak.

Things are getting started. What will be interesting to know is if he'll even take that adjournment vote if they don't have enough votes to even do that, which he may not have. Certainly, Dad, if I was a Democrat, no way I would let them adjourn.

I would make them have to fight this out on the floor because it is extremely embarrassing for Republicans. It's very good for Democrats. Let's be clear on that. For two reasons. Number one, it shows chaos. So they're continuing the chaos theme. You put up chaos candidates, and now you're in chaos, so you can't govern. So the narrative that the Democrats are working with is Republicans can't even get their House in order, so to speak, and literally in order. They can't get the House in order to get a Speaker of the House put forward. Then there's all these scenarios that are being discussed, and there's one we're going to discuss a little bit later in the broadcast, and that is what if it's an outside of Congress nominee for Speaker. You don't have to be a member of Congress, and you get 212 Democrats and six Republicans. And all of a sudden that person's the Speaker of the House. So these are nightmare scenarios that every hour that goes by could be a problem.

And I think every time there's a vote or if there's an adjournment, that becomes more and more likely that something like you just called a nightmare scenario actually occurs because, again, the weirder things start happening, more bizarre. Right now people talk about, well, what about Steve Scalise or Elise Stefanik? I mean, but are there the votes there for that? And, of course, right now they're not actively campaigning against Kevin McCarthy. Are they going to be the one that flips these 20 Republicans?

And at what cost are these 20 Republicans? So yesterday, if you were listening to this show, these votes hadn't happened yet. Correct. But it was predicted that he would not get the votes. We had a round of votes, right? We had the first round of votes that went—not at that point, Will?

I'm sorry? Yeah, we didn't have those until after we went off air. That's right.

That's right. When we went off air. And then when we got the votes, it was clear that he didn't have the votes to make. And then as it went on— It got worse.

It got worse. We're taking your calls on all of this, and we're giving you all the likely scenarios, and some of the unlikely scenarios, but, again, anything can happen at this point. So we're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 800-684-3110. And we don't mind a variety of opinions. We're going to tell you what we think.

I think this thing needs to get moving. I think they needed—I mean, my view is Kevin McCarthy has 85 percent of the support—90, actually. I guess now I'm about 85—of the House Republicans. So if this was a regular vote and we didn't have—if they were 240 instead of 222, he would be the Speaker of the House. He's not.

Having said that, Jim Jordan, who is getting, you know, of the 20 votes, is getting a number of them, he said clearly he does not want this job. Listen. But is there any chance that you may be Speaker of the House?

No, watch yourself. No, I'm being clear. I want to chair a Judiciary Committee. I mean, you guys know I like this ability to cross-examine witnesses and get the truth for the country, so that's what I'm focused on.

Yeah, I mean, the Speaker is a totally different kind of job than what Jim Jordan—I mean, I'm not saying he was not qualified, he is, but it's a different job and skill set. You don't get to be the front-center on committees. You're running the votes.

And he also, to be clear, he made a floor speech endorsing Kevin McCarthy. We're taking your calls on this and we want to open those lines up now. 1-800-684-3110. 800-684-3110. I'm concerned, are you? This is, you know, where do you go from here?

I don't want to see a coalition government like England, but these scenarios are not as far-fetched as they were 24 hours ago. 1-800-684-3110. Back with more in a moment. 1-800-684-3110.

Where do you think this is going now? Three failed votes, and the votes only got worse for Kevin McCarthy yesterday. The first two, he had lost 19, and then he lost 20 by the third vote. So technically the Democrat was getting more votes.

Hakeem Jeffries was getting all the Democrats at 2-12. Now we do have a caller calling in. I want to go right to the phone.

It's 1-800-684-3110. Because we're very concerned here that the longer this goes, the more chaotic and bizarre the person who ends up Speaker of the House could be. Let's go to Ray in North Carolina online to Hey Ray. Yes sir, could you please explain why you keep on saying it's chaos for those 20 congressmen to not want McCarthy to be a speaker? I mean, they're more conservative than McCarthy. I'm more conservative than McCarthy. And that's the way they're expressing it, and what they feel is right.

It would be no different than when the left tries to silence the right, and you say, well, they're trying to silence the right. So I don't understand what you mean. Explain that, please. Sure.

Well, I can explain it real quickly. We don't have a working House of Representatives. It's embarrassing for Republicans because we knew that we had taken the House in November, and they hadn't worked this out, Ray. So if you had these 20 Republicans who were concerned already, and we already knew about that, they should have figured out what deals they needed to make. Maybe it wasn't going to be or shouldn't have been Kevin McCarthy. Maybe it should have been Steve Scalise from the get-go or somebody else. But they didn't do that.

So now on live television, they're looking absurd. And I'm not saying those 20 Republicans, by the way, are not voting their conscience, and they don't have the right to do that. They do, but here's another scenario. The Democrats get to vote on this, Ray, and if they combine—what do they need? They need six? So they need to find six moderate Republicans, and they could put whoever they—you know who they could put back in?

Liz Cheney. Sure. I mean, I thought about this scenario. We talked about this in our pre-meeting.

So here's what happens. You got 212 Democrats right off the bat. Do you have six Republicans that voted to impeach Donald Trump? Now, there were 10. I don't think six of them.

What was the final calculation? Really, four came back? Four came back. Can you find two other Republicans and join those four, and you end up with Liz Cheney as the Speaker of the House? You do not have to be a member of Congress to be the House Speaker. And the majority of the votes come from the Democrats. Correct.

So that's how you get to chaos. And when you have to adjourn votes, which is what they're trying to do now, McCarthy's trying to say, let's not do this on TV today, this vote after vote after vote. But the Democrats definitely want it on TV.

So the question is, right now it seems like we've got reporters coming and saying there's at least five Republicans who are not going to allow the adjournment, so if you combine that with the Democrats, it would be no adjournment. So we will—this is happening while we're on air today, so it's not like yesterday. But we'll continue to take your phone calls.

1-800-684-3110. Let me go to Thor in Utah on Line 3. Hey, Thor. Hi, guys. I'm in support of the ACLJ, and I think this is healthy.

Let it work its way through. First time in 100 years, but like they said on the national news desk this morning, it's a healthy thing, and let it continue. Healthy to the sense of if—you knew this was more of a Republican-led infight? Sure. But we just laid out the scenario of how very quickly you could lose control of the House of Representatives.

Republicans could lose control of the House of Representatives even though they have the majority of seats. So, Thor, let me ask you a question because, I mean, we appreciate the calls, and we are taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. So you're okay with it going for another couple of weeks or a couple of months? How long—what's the time limit where you say this is not so helpful?

I don't think it's going to go a couple of months, but I think a couple of weeks is healthy. I've worked on Capitol Hill before as a congressional intern, so I know how it works inside. Yeah, so let's say it goes a couple of weeks, and let's say at the end of that couple of weeks there's still not an agreement because 85% or 80% are still supporting Kevin McCarthy, and Scalise and Jordan say they don't want it. The nightmare scenario we came up with, which is 212 Democratic votes solid, would they go with Liz Cheney?

100%. That would be a huge win for them. So then you've got to peel off six Republicans, four of which voted to impeach Donald Trump. Would they go with Liz Cheney? They'd say, sure, we're going for a Republican. They got re-elected even though they voted to impeach Trump. So now you're too shy.

So, Thor, my concern is at that point you are—you know what I'm concerned about because I've been practicing law for 40 years? You always want a Plan B on the exit ramp, and I understand—the debate would have been great in November, okay? But they all waited until the cameras were on because nobody was covering them in November. They were covering the results of the midterm, and that's the problem here.

So the nightmare scenario was there. Yeah, I think this is the issue is that it's chaotic. It looks chaotic on television, and it makes Republicans as a whole to the American people—which, by the way, we learned through the polls in the last election cycle that they didn't like the chaos feeling. Right. This gives that same kind of— That's what the Democrats are saying. So this is—we had the chaos candidates that lost.

Let's be clear. They lost. The chaos candidates lost. And then the chaos candidates lose, but now the House is chaos because the Republicans can't get their leadership house in order. That's the real issue here. The House cannot get their leadership together. And like I'm saying, this was a great debate in November.

By the way, the Republicans thought they were going to have the House back six months ago, but that's not what they did here. So anyways, that's where you have it. Let's take more calls. We are taking your calls at 800-684-3110. Let's go to Michael in Texas on Line 4. Hey, Michael. Good afternoon.

I appreciate you taking my call. I have a plea, really, instead of a question, that we need your great show to give explicit instructions to the voters who are being represented by a Republican representative who are not voting for McCarthy. They only have a two-year term. They will not be reelected.

They cannot screw this up. If they screw this up for the Republican Party and our agenda, then their political career should be on the line. And these voters need to be able to send that message loud and clear in short order. I'd say the trouble is, some of these are the more popular conservative members of Congress.

I mean, Andy Biggs, the Lauren Boebert, these are people that have big national profiles. And again, so I think this, all of this should have been happening behind closed doors, not in front of cameras, for the last six weeks. And when Kevin McCarthy couldn't get there, which supposedly was happening, by the way, couldn't get there, he probably should have stepped aside. But he didn't. And the other leadership didn't say you need to step aside. And Scalise didn't push him aside. And Jordan didn't either.

And I wouldn't say Jordan. I think that's, again, he really does not want this job. He wants judiciary. All right, we're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. Do we have time for one more before the break? I think we can get a call. Yeah, we can grab one more call. Let's go to, we'll go to John in Nebraska on Line 6. Hey, John.

Hello. My question is, amongst all this tennis chaos and gaming going on, could it be a possibility what they're trying to do is to, if they pull somebody from outside of Congress, pull Trump in? And I know that there's, there already is talks trying to impeach Biden.

Could that be something that they're trying to work towards? You're not impeaching Joe Biden when you don't even have the House of Representatives in session. So that's number one.

Number two, I don't see any circumstance upon which there would be 200 votes, 218 votes, for Donald Trump to be the next Speaker of the House, unless the Democrats think they want to, like, hurt the Republicans more by letting that happen, maybe, in their warped thinking. I don't see it. I just don't see it. But I think there are other scenarios, like the Lynne Cheney scenario, I don't think is far-fetched. Yeah, or Adam Kissinger.

Think about these names. So, you know, what's going on right now is McCarthy has been nominated for a fourth ballot. They're all standing up, and so the adjournment's not happening. Nope. It's not happening, and they're back in session. Did they even take that vote? But the Liz Cheney thing, I mean, it's not as far-fetched as you think it is.

No. They've got 212 Democrats that are going to go lockstep. And if they feel, listen, if they feel like it's between Liz Cheney and Steve Scalise, they'd rather have Liz Cheney. The Democrats? Yeah, of course.

Not just because of the vote on Trump, just because she's more moderate. Yes. I mean, no question. Could you imagine what would happen on your oversight? Nothing. So everybody's talking about when the House gets in. By the way, every day that's going by, our producers said this earlier, the Senate, they're going to investigate conservatives. The Democrats are doing nothing.

You realize that every day that goes by, nothing's happening. And that's, you know, they're now nominating McCarthy for the fourth speaker ballot to go forward here. So it's not just the Liz Cheney scenario.

I could give you ten other scenarios, too. But we're going to take your calls at 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. Phone lines. We've got actually a line open.

Well, it will open. 1-800-684-3110. Folks, we appreciate, by the way, your support of the American Center for Law and Justice in 2022. We had a great year, especially with the economy the way it was. We're very thankful to you and to the Lord for a successful year.

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1-800-684-3110. What will the vote total be on this fourth vote for Speaker of the House? We'll be right back.

Let me update you in real time what's going on right now. So Ken McCarthy has been nominated for the fourth time to be on the ballot as Speaker. So there were not enough votes to have an adjournment. He wanted to cancel today's votes.

What was the reason for that? I think not to have a bunch of embarrassing losses and to have another day of trying to build a coalition together so you don't get to one of those bad scenarios. Now we haven't yet seen who else may get nominated. Likely it will be Jeffries again.

So the same two. Then the question will be, and it will be interesting to see if this happens while we're on the air, does McCarthy lose more votes? Does he gain more votes? Is it moving in his direction?

He needs a momentum shift. Because if it keeps moving away, like if he loses five more votes, I think you have to think about someone else at that point. And that's nothing against Kevin McCarthy. That's just reality. And then the question is, of course, if it's somebody else, are these 20 or 25 dissenters going to go with the somebody else?

And Harry, you direct our policy. I say this is projecting chaos again because we're back in. Congress is technically in session. They can't get a speaker picked, let alone committee chairs, let alone oversight committee hearings.

None of that's happened. And meanwhile, across the way, in the Senate, they're ready to start pulling up the January 6th committee stuff again because now the Democrats actually control the committees. So this is the chaos aspect of this.

Absolutely. And we should note that Republicans continue their relatively famous pattern of embracing self-inflicted wounds. Again and again, they continue to go down this pathway. Who could forget, for instance, the 18 Republican senators siding with Joe Biden over the passage of the omnibus bill? Now Republicans cannot agree on the next speaker of the House. And as you pointed out earlier, Jay, the more they wrangle unnecessarily, the more the odds increase that Liz Cheney could become the next speaker of the House.

That's a disaster because it would prevent necessary investigations that Jim Jordan is prepared to launch on behalf of the American people. We've got a lot of calls coming in and we're going to be taking them, so we're going to try to open lines up at 1-800-684-3110. Want to do it in the order they called?

Yeah, I think we got to start doing that. Wendy in California on line one. Hey, Wendy. Hi, Jay.

Thank you for all you do. I have a question. Obviously, Jim Jordan is for McCarthy. The others keep nominating him. If he recuses himself or does not accept the nomination, then does that not open up the 20 votes? Well, it opens up the entire vote. And so whether he accepts the nomination or not, when you don't meet the threshold number, and that threshold number is 218, if you don't meet the threshold number, there is no speaker of the House because the Democrats are in lockstep at 212. Yeah, so it's not like one of those where those votes then automatically move to someone else because Jim Jordan doesn't want to take it, so they automatically go to Kevin McCarthy. They can remain in opposition.

I mean, we're seeing Chip Roy right now. He's been on our broadcast a number of times. He's going to give the opposition speech.

He is giving the opposition speech. So, Harry, here's the dynamic. I mean, and the question is how long does this go on before it's doing real? I mean, just a day and a half, okay, two weeks, a month, and you don't have Congress with committees, a House of Representatives with committees? I think it's problematic. It's very problematic, and I think the Republicans have hurt themselves already. They should have worked their differences out two months ago.

Many of those differences were already publicly known, and so I think you can put some of the blame on Kevin McCarthy for not working things out, but equally true, you can place blame on his Republican opponents. One of the things that Republicans have to get through their relatively thick heads is the fact that they need to work on behalf of the American people. They need to demonstrate competence against an administration, the Biden administration, that is totally incompetent. It's incompetent with respect to the southern border.

Its incompetence is also demonstrated with respect to the DOJ's investigation of parents who appear at school boards, and the DOJ apparently has targeted parents as domestic terrorists. And so many needed investigations are being hampered, including, for instance, trying to get to the bottom of the COVID-19 pandemic and hold the Chinese accountable, and also find out what Dr. Fauci knew and when did he know it, and what other evidence they can amass with respect to involvement by American citizens in expanding the range of this pandemic. But the problem is, nothing happens right now.

Zero. And we're monitoring this while we're live on the air, and everybody's clapping and everybody's applauding. Meanwhile... That's because Chip Roy nominated, this time, Byron Donalds, who is an African-American Republican member of Congress from Florida. And he's using this to say, this is the first time in history we've had two African-Americans nominated to be Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and now Byron Donalds. But when they went to Byron Donalds, he kind of shook his head and said something like, no, sir. I think, I don't know if he was saying... That's where this is chaos. The person that he's putting up, he doesn't get the authority to say, if you put it up, at least I'll be silent. He's saying, you know, we're trying to... I couldn't tell if he was saying, no, sir, like, don't be doing this. Yeah, don't be putting my name forward.

Well, it's not good for him if the... Or if he was just commenting on something he was saying. Let's go right back to the phones. 800-684-3110. Yeah, stay in order.

Celeste in California on line two. Hi, Jay. Hey, you're on the air.

Hey, thank you. Listen, this situation demonstrates that Kevin McCarthy is not a leader. He had over two months, but he thought that he was going to have a super majority.

Yeah, I think that's... So he would not need to negotiate with these Congressmen. And because of his arrogance and lack of humility, he let this come to this. I think the lack of the super majority... When I say super majority, Celeste, you're talking about the Republicans thought they were going to be like plus 20, plus 30, right? Exactly. Yeah, well, you're right about that. And it wasn't that.

You're like, plus barely. I mean, to be honest. And that showed... Yes, and I think that showed a weakness. Now, he would say it was the candidates. You would say it's the candidates, maybe, and the party.

I don't know. I'm not going to cast aspersions on anybody right now. I will say this.

We've got to deal with the fact that we have. Go ahead, Jordan. So Byron was that flip vote. Okay. Because he was backed by McCarthy. So he was on the third vote yesterday. He voted against McCarthy.

Okay. So they're starting to... And this is where the peel out... I mean, that's why this vote right now that's going on is going to be so indicative of where this is going. And this nomination is interesting.

So I think he does support this nomination now that I'm watching this more carefully. I'm just trying to read... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me ask this quick here. We've got less than a minute left here.

Atmospherically, this looks very bad. Absolutely. Yeah. So the Republicans have placed themselves in a precarious position. First, they didn't win enough seats. Yep.

And secondly, they failed to work out their differences behind closed doors. You're right. And so where are the adults?

And apparently there are not very many Republican adults out there. I think that's right. All right, folks. We're taking a break. We're second half hour of the broadcast coming up. If you only get a half hour, just go over to ACLJ.org or over to Rumble or Sirius XM or YouTube or Facebook and you can get the full hour of the broadcast. We've got a lot more ahead on this. We're taking your calls at 800-684-3110. Again, a huge thank you for those of you that supported the ACLJ in 2022, and we encourage you to support the ACLJ in 2023, which is easy to do at ACLJ.org. Follow Jordan and me and Logan at JSekulow, at JordanSekulow, at LoganSekulow, at ACLJ. That's on Facebook, Twitter, Truth Social, of course Rumble as well. We encourage you to sign up at any of our social media platforms to get updated. We'll be back with more, including your calls at 800-684-3110 right after this. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow.

And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. So we are on the fourth vote now, second day for the U.S. Speaker of the House. There are three nominees, two Republicans, one Democrat. Democrats and Republicans get to vote. Of course, Republicans have a majority.

So who do you have? Of course, Kevin McCarthy. You've got then Hakeem Jeffries is the only Democrat. He'll likely receive, like he has been, all the Democrat votes to 12. And then today, Byron Donald, who is a Republican from Florida, African American from Florida, was elected last term, is a very conservative member. He flipped on McCarthy on the third vote yesterday.

So he was the one that took it to 19 to 20. The question is, does he get more votes today than Jim Jordan, who did not want the nomination? Seems like Byron Donald does. But the question is, how much worse does Kevin McCarthy do, or how much better?

We'll see. Let's go right to the phones, and we've got a very interesting call on Line 1. Mike from New York. And Mike, I know you when you were the pastor of Lamb's Chapel. Yes. Hi, Jay. Hi, how are you? Good.

We met a few years ago, and so I had a quick question. Lamb's Chapel was a case we argued at the Supreme Court in the United States in the early 1990s. It was a landmark case, 9 to 0 in our favor, that opened up school facilities.

If they're available for community groups on the weekend, they can't deny churches access. And it was a great success. But Mike, go ahead. There may be people that don't remember the case, so I just want to let them know.

I just want to put a little caveat on that. Just about a month ago, we hosted the Santa Mariches Sports Banquet in our building. We had 200 people from the community. That's great. And I thought to myself, boy, what a turnaround from years ago, huh? You're now the host. I think that's great. Perfect, actually. All right, well, go ahead, Mike.

Just a quick question, and I appreciate your scenarios that you've been mentioning. What do you think the chances would be that Lee Zeldin could be a possibility? I think Lee Zeldin is great.

I mean, I'm a huge Lee Zeldin fan. We worked with him during when he was in Congress, worked with him during impeachment, worked with him on the Israel issues. I think you could thank Lee Zeldin for getting five seats in New York that we didn't have before, which is the reason why the Republicans have the House of Representatives. I mean, it's so bizarre, Mike, that we got the House because of five seats in New York that we picked up that we didn't have before and five seats in California, which means you don't write these states off, because without those ten seats, guess what? Republicans would not be in the majority. What's interesting is that we have not yet seen Republicans try to pull from the outside yet. So that would be, again, not the Democrats either, obviously, but the Republicans who have the majority have not yet done that.

But constitutionally, you do not have to be a member of the House of Representatives to be the speaker. Certainly, I think if this continues, again, all options and people like Lee Zeldin on the conservative side of things could potentially be an option, though they'd probably have to start working it. I don't know. I don't have any indication. I'd have to do some more background checking to see if there's any conversations like that going on, because we haven't gotten to, like, a Steve Scalise yet.

I mean, right now the votes are just starting to come in, so I don't want to report those. We'll do that as we get more information. We're taking your calls at 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. Coming up, we've got Rick Renell joining us.

What's interesting is he's been around this fight for a long time, so we'll get his take on this. We'll take your calls during that segment as well. So again, 1-800-684-3110. We did open up a couple of lines by taking some calls in this last segment.

So again, 800-684-3110. The problem with all this is we're in day two of chaos. That's what I call it. There's somebody saying, why is it chaos? It's chaos because it's not organized. It's chaos because we don't have oversight committees empaneled and we don't have a chairman of the judiciary committee. It's chaos because we don't have committees meeting. And because Republicans don't have a clear leader. Correct.

They do not. This is the highest position that Republicans can have. It's number three in the line of succession for President. It's the highest position a Republican can have right now in the United States as things stand. And we couldn't get it organized enough, and Republicans couldn't get it organized before.

Bigger than being a governor, speaker of the house, third in line to be President. This is the supposed to be unifying figure for the Republican Party, and there isn't a clear person. And even if it ends up being Kevin McCarthy, which would be by the skin of his teeth, and as the votes are coming in right now, I'm trying to do the math in my head, but we'll keep doing the math.

1-800-684-3110. Be back with Rick Grenell. Welcome back to Secular. We're joined now by Rick Grenell as our senior advisor for foreign policy and national security to weigh in on what is currently happening on the House floor. Rick, you know, foreign policy, national security, or national chaos as the Republicans shockingly don't have their act together getting a speaker of the house. What's your sense of this? I want to play a bite, but let me actually play this, Rick, as a setup.

Let me play this bite by Jim Jordan, because I think the thing we better all remember in all of this is what Jim Jordan said here. Take a listen. The differences we may have, the differences between Joyce and Jordan or Biggs and Bacon, they pale in comparison to the differences between us and the left, which now unfortunately controls the other party. So we had better come together, and I think Kevin McCarthy is the right guy to lead us. Okay, so a couple things to unpack there.

One is he's right. The differences between the Republicans that are infighting right now and the 20 of them is not that much, but the difference between the Republican Party's ideology and policy is markedly different than the Democratic Party, the Democrat Party, including the hostage to the left, which is what the moderates, if there are any left in the Democrat Party, are really becoming. What's your sense of where we are? I mean, it's horrible TV for Republicans. This, you know, lack of organization. You think that, you know, you figure you've been talking about this for six months, you're going to get the House, then you get the House and you can't seat anybody because you can't get a speaker. But what's your sense?

I mean, I'm not panicking about the situation. I think this is what Republicans do. We like to have debates.

We don't just fall in line. And yes, it's a serious situation, but I think it's going to work itself out. We've got a lot of superstars that could be the speaker. I think Kevin has done a good job over the last six months, eight months to really raise a lot of money for individuals and really worked hard to help fund campaigns.

But I also think that this is a question of trust. And there has been for a very long time members that have felt like they couldn't trust Kevin. And we now know that the grassroots has lost its patience with Republicans. So I'm of the mindset that Washington has to listen to the grassroots. They have to not go to D.C. and just do their own thing. So I hope that our listeners are raising their voice, calling the representative. Maybe it's a new representative, but letting their voice be heard as to who they want to lead. I do like the idea.

I'll finish with this, Jay. I do like the idea that Matt Gaetz has put forward to say, you know, we need to not just vote for a speaker and then come back in two years, that there needs to be some sort of consequences if we don't like the direction. And so they do now have that. And I think that was a big win. Yeah, I'm talking about the five together could bring it to the floor. And that is a big deal.

The triggering mechanism for dissatisfaction has been reduced, which is better for accountability. Let's go to the phones. Rick will want to weigh in on these calls, too. Let's go ahead. Yeah, let's go to Robin in New Hampshire on line three. Hey, Robin. Hi.

Thank you for all you do. I guess my question is, does the Republican Party, after all the work that they've done to actually get the House, do they not recognize that if they let this go, they're not going to get anything done? I think they know that.

I think, look, I mean, I think the answer to that is yes. But the response would be, you know, in two days, what's the big deal? In two weeks, this would be a lot bigger deal. And in two months, it would be unfathomable that this could be happening.

But go ahead, Rick. I think it would be good to hear what you – listen, I'm concerned every day that goes by because I know what they're doing in the Senate. They're going to start investigating Republicans. And the Democrats are going to do that because now they've got control of the Senate. And what are the Republicans doing? We don't even have a committee formed yet in the House. Yeah, it's day two. It's day two, so I'm not that concerned about it. I'll tell you one thing that really set me off is yesterday I heard all the mainstream media saying, oh, but they have to settle this because the congressmen-elect are waiting to be sworn in and their families are waiting for the photo and they've traveled all the way to Washington.

That's the price of living in a constitutional republic. Yeah, I thought that. I'm not really that concerned about a family photo at this point. I'm more concerned about our country. I think you're right, Jay.

It's day two. Let's see what happens in two weeks. Yeah, I mean, I just wish – my wish was they could adjourn and get this settled behind closed doors. It's not – playing out on TV is not good for Republicans. Because of all the votes, the failed votes, and somebody – let's say Kim McCarthy does end up with it, but he's failed seven times to get there.

I mean, he's already – whoever it is is already going to be weaker than any speaker before. We know that. That's correct.

So, I mean, I think that's part of the problem here. All right. 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to – next up is Lorna. We're taking your calls.

800-684-3110. Lorna? Hey, you guys. Love you. Thanks. Love your work.

Appreciate it. Well, I'm from Texas, and one of the things I've heard was one of the things they're negotiating is the border security. And I've heard that McCarthy is not saying that he is going to make that a priority. Well, that's obviously real important to us. Sure. So is that right? Is that correct?

I've heard that. I mean, I can't imagine a scenario where Kevin, who's been very strong on the border discussions, Rick, would say it's not priority one. I mean, you know, look, it's not just – and I'm not calling it illegal immigration anymore. I am calling it unlawful entrance, because that's what these people are doing. They're unlawfully entering the United States.

I don't think we should besmirch people that do immigration with legal versus illegal, because there is a legal immigration system in the United States, but the unlawful entrants are bringing in unlawful things like fentanyl that are destroying an entire generation. So I can't imagine a situation, Rick, where Kevin McCarthy, if he was speaker or any of them were speaker, are not going to want to address that. Look, I'm from California.

Kevin's from California. I can tell you unequivocally he cares very deeply about the border, and he's looking to make sure that that's a priority. I think where this came from is when Lauren Bobart was on Fox, and she did some sort of interview, she implied – and I don't think that she was as clear, and somebody maybe should ask her what she meant by the border issue or the border money not being a priority, because I can tell you I know it's a border – the border is a definite priority for Kevin McCarthy.

Yeah, it looks like a fourth – he's not – yeah, it looks like a fourth – while we're on the air. While we're on the air right now, it looks like the House fourth vote, McCarthy's failed again to get to that magic. Because the number of people that are voting for the alternative candidate is already at eight, so you're not going to get to 218. I think Jordan had a really good idea to take this behind closed doors.

I agree with that. The problem is if you're a Democratic strategist, there's no way you're going to vote for that, and they'd have to vote to adjourn. And why would you vote to adjourn when this is playing out in living color and every – and nobody says living color anymore like it was in the 1960s on color TV. But here's the thing, Jay, is Kevin could actually just call a Republican meeting, and they could just meet as Republicans and hammer this out and try to figure out, you know, do some fake polls. Yeah, they could adjourn and they take a vote. I mean, procedurally, I think they could take a vote. You leave, but I guess every Republican left, but it didn't have to be every single one of them. That's the whole problem with our limited majority.

You can't have anybody out sick. I mean, that is a real problem here. All right, we're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110.

That's 800-684-3110. Rick, so, you know, as this progresses, we assume there's going to be a speaker at some point here. What do you think Project One is, Priority One? Look, I think that we have got to start showing the Democrats that we have a fight and that we know how to do serious investigations. We have to start uncovering, subpoenaing. I don't buy this whole thing like, oh, we got to be nice and try to, you know, work in the middle. I mean, that's not how we win. I mean, we can be nice down the street at the Senate. They're not going to be so nice. You're right, because the Democrats are now in control of the Senate. We can be nice in our personal lives.

You can be nice to your neighbor. But this is politics. This is serious business. And I think we've got to show them a taste of their own medicine. Look, they've been de-banking us. They've been de-platforming us. We have to fight back and hold these people accountable. I want to see every social media company and every bank executive hauled in front of the House of Representatives and asked tough questions under oath. Why are you de-banking Republicans? Why are you going after and canceling Republicans? There's a whole list of things that we have to do at the same time, work seven days a week while we're there, and let's defund the border, you know, until we get our way. Why can't we just stop this huge amount of spending and say we are not spending another penny. We're going to shut this government down until you secure the border. That's a national security issue.

It sure is. I mean, look, here's the problem. We can't even get a Speaker of the House right now. Rick, we appreciate it. Folks, we're taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110.

Rick, we appreciate you being with us, Jordan. Yeah, no, I think we all have the same ideas, which is we want these Republicans to play tough, but we've got to get past this hurdle. Yeah. And what we all wish is that this could happen behind closed doors, because then I don't mind this. That's part of politics, fighting amongst yourselves. But it's happening all in public. Not good. It just makes you look like, again, Republicans can't agree on who they even want to be, the Speaker. It's not like, again, it looks chaotic.

The atmospherics of this are terrible, just to be blunt. All right, folks, we're taking your phone calls. Last segment coming up, 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. We want to hear what you have to say about this. Your support of the ACLJ was critical in 2022.

It is going to be critical again in 2023. I want to thank you for your support this past year and encourage you to continue to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Make sure you're following us on Facebook, on YouTube, and, of course, on Rumble, which is we really appreciate what our friends at Rumble are doing for us by promoting the broadcast.

That's a great way to stay engaged with us. Back with more in a moment. So right now we can report the fourth vote, and we don't know how many more will occur today. Yesterday there were three.

Those were after the show. Today we're on the first vote of today, which is the fourth vote for Speaker, and already Kevin McCarthy is lost. He cannot get to that magical number. The other Republican who was nominated is already at 12, and that's Byron Donaldson this time. This is his second term, would be his second term in Congress. He was the one who flipped on the third vote yesterday because he just thought he had given Kevin McCarthy two yes votes. And it wasn't happening.

Time to move on. Then he got nominated himself. Now he's not going to get enough votes either to win, but it will be interesting to see what happens next. Does it get past 20?

Does it get less than 20? Are we going to have a fifth? Are we going to have an adjournment? I think there's going to be an adjournment attempt next.

We're going to take your calls at 800-684-3110. I want to go to Colonel West Smith first, and that is leadership issue here, or lack of it. Yeah, on the part not just of Kevin McCarthy, but on multiple people. Kevin McCarthy, as far as the leader goes, should have been better prepared.

He had months to prepare and to have his caucus in line. On the other hand, the members of the caucus also are, I think, failing the American people as far as leadership goes. They are leaders also, and what you had, you had 217 Republicans who in their own caucus meeting, basically it was like a primary. They nominated Kevin McCarthy as their candidate for Speaker of the House. Now you go to a general election, and these started out with five, there's like 20 now, Republicans who say we're not going to vote for him. It's like you had your primary, your candidate was nominated, but now that the general election is here, you're going to vote with the opposite party. It makes no sense. So it's a leadership critique, Jay, not only of Kevin McCarthy, and it is that, to be fair and honest.

But it's also a critique on the people that are basically, there's so much arrogance and pettiness, and they are failing as leaders. I mean, there are people that said, there are members of Congress, I don't want to name them by name, that said, well, I'm angry at them because he didn't call me back for three weeks after I won. I mean, come on.

I mean, we're not going to do it. Let's take a call. Stephanie's calling from Texas on Line 6. Stephanie, welcome to the broadcaster on the air. Thank you, sir.

I appreciate all you do. I was listening yesterday and I took it to heart. I called several of the congressmen that were on the list, the committee. I'm not a big McCarthy fan. I understand what everybody says, but I'm like you, I think we have to get about the business of the government. And we look really bad to the world, to our own Republicans.

When we can't come to consensus and agree, or at least put a good face on it. The Democrats are over there saying, well, look at us, we have 212. And they look good. They can get the votes. If they push people, they could probably get the votes. And then we'd have someone in there that we don't want in there. So I think they've lost sight of the people who put them in places that they're in. We have a voice. I learned as a parent of a special needs young adult, you have to speak up and the time is now. Listen, I agree with what you're saying.

And I appreciate you calling in. The difficulty is that we're now in around like four of this and it makes it just like George said, and playing out of live on TV is just not helpful. Do we have that quote? There was a very interesting statement by one of the congressmen about the situation.

I think it's worth playing because it really does put it in perspective. Because as Wes said, it's a lack of leadership of Kevin. It's a lack of leadership of these 20.

Take a listen. The challenge, according to members with whom I'm speaking is these 20 are not speaking with one voice in terms of their needs or wants or asks. They may be speaking with one voice and that they all voted for Jim Jordan on the second and third ballots, but they don't have a singular silver bullet solution that he can offer. So this may have to be a series of piecemeal concessions. And that's where things get complicated because it's far from clear he has a litany of options. What's more, once you start yielding to a few of these members, what do the others ask for? Their trajectory from here is far from clear and them all leaving for the night doesn't seem to make things any simpler. So as you said, these 20 are all what's something different. They're not united in the sense of if you make this one change, it's not an orderly opposition.

It's not like here's the layout and here's what it's going to be. And they're holding their fellow colleagues in Congress hostage, basically. But this is a hostage situation.

Unless we get what we want, we will not budge. I mean, it's day two, so no one's panicking here, but you know, I'm like every day that goes by, I know what they're doing down the hallway and this isn't good. Let's go to the next call. Mary Ellen's calling from Illinois, line two. Hi, Mary Ellen. Hi.

Happy New Year. Thank you for your view, but I'm sitting here listening and I'm thinking, what has McCarthy said? I can't even think of anything that he has said that I can tell you he stands for.

True, he didn't get enough votes. It's like, why? And it's like, I remember the omnibus bill, the craziness of that, the pork and everything. How are we going to drain the swamp? Or read the bill in 48 hours.

I mean, they're putting a proposal that says give us at least 72 hours on this, which you would think would be easy, but nothing's easy right now, Julian. Yeah, I mean, listen, he's a conservative. I think that there's people that have questions about who he backed and the candidates he backed. And you could certainly say, did he perform the job that he should have performed with the House selection because we got such a slim majority. He certainly thought he was going to have a lot more members of Congress in Washington that were going to vote for him and back him that didn't make it to Washington, D.C. that lost their election. So again, I'm not going to attack Kevin McCarthy as someone who's not conservative.

Yeah, I don't think that's fair. I think that there's a new group in Washington and we're talking about a handful of people here. Twenty. I know. I'm going to try to grab a couple more. Really quickly, Jackie, Arizona on line four. Jackie, I want to keep it tight because we're running out of time, but I want you to speak. Okay. This will be really quick.

Thanks for everything you do. I have to respectfully disagree with you on whether it should be shown or not. I've never seen this happen. And Chip Roy this morning said that he's most of the time they're speaking to nobody.

Nobody comes in when they're talking. So he was encouraged that everybody was there and everybody could talk. And I think it's fantastic. Jackie, I understand that. And I think it's good that people are paying attention. It's just it's if you're the other party, you're loving this. Trust me, you are raising money in boatloads right now because it shows Republican chaos. I understand. I like Chip.

He's been on this broadcast a lot. But the fact is this is raising money for the other team. Yeah. And the chief power of the Speaker of the House, the speaker decides what goes to the floor for a vote and what does not. These Republicans say they have agenda items. They want to do the work of the people. They're not allowing the work of the people to get done.

So, Jordan, you've been doing this a long time now. And you're talking with our government affairs team. I'm trying to figure out what issue other than just I don't like him. Is it that Kevin McCarthy won't allow on the floor for these 20 Republicans? Because on the ideological spectrum, I just don't. He's very conservative. I can't figure out what it is exactly that they're saying, oh, he won't let us have a vote on this.

Because like we said, that's the job. He can't guarantee your vote's going to pass. But what is he standing against in their mind?

Or is it just we don't want Kevin McCarthy because he's been in Congress longer than most of us? I think it's a lot of that. Yeah. I mean, it goes back to what you were saying. Because I don't hear a lot of issue basically. If you've got organized opposition, it's one thing. But chaotic opposition is just more chaos. Yeah. It makes no sense. They know what they're against.

That's Kevin McCarthy. We don't really have a clear idea of what they're for. Do we know what Byron Donaldson's up at right now? As we close the broadcast out?

We have 14. We'll see how it goes. All right. We're going to have more on this tomorrow, I suspect. We're not going to have a speaker today, I don't think. We'll find out, folks. Again, we appreciate your support for the ACLJ in 2022 and encourage you to do the same in 2023 at ACLJ.org. And follow us at JSekulow, at JordanSekulow, at LoganSekulow, and at ACLJ. Have a great day. We will talk to you as this unfolds tomorrow.