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Interview With Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO); Key Vote Expected on Speaker Kevin McCarthy's Political Future. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 03, 2023 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:00:50]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Kevin McCarthy's speakership is on the line.

This is CNN's special live coverage of an historic vote on Capitol Hill. I'm Jake Tapper.

This has not happened in more than 100 years, but facing a revolt from a small, but powerful group of Republican hard-liners, McCarthy says he will bring up the motion to vacate in the first series of votes today. That is just minutes away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): I truly believe, though, the institution of the House, at the end of the day, if you throw a speaker out that has 99 percent of their conference, that kept government open and paid the troops, I think we're in a really bad place for how we're going to run Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Speaker McCarthy says he thinks he will survive the vote and that he will not make a deal with Democrats to keep his job. But that might not even be an option anyway.

Here's the speaker earlier today. Democrats have been huddling today. Democrats are signaling they will not be coming to Speaker McCarthy's rescue.

Let's get right to the action Capitol Hill.

CNN's Manu Raju and Lauren Fox join me now.

Manu, I will start with you.

What are Republican lawmakers telling you about this vote?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there's a lot of frustration, a lot of concern and growing expectation that Kevin McCarthy will not be able to win these votes this afternoon, sending the House into chaos, into a state of paralysis, something that we have never seen in American history, successfully executing a vote to eject a speaker. The House cannot govern until they elect a new speaker. So, this

afternoon, in just a matter of moments, we expect a vote on the House floor to try to block the effort by Matt Gaetz to oust Kevin McCarthy from the speakership. At the moment, Kevin McCarthy is expected to lose that vote.

Then there will be an hour of floor debate, and then there will be the actual vote to eject Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House. He is expected at the moment to lose that vote as well, because there are more than five Republicans who plan to vote him out, that he can only afford to lose four on a party-line vote, and, at the moment, no Democrats coming to his rescue.

In talking to Republicans today, there is fury at Congressman Matt Gaetz and fears that this dysfunction could cost them the Republican majority in 2024.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DERRICK VAN ORDEN (R-WI): The only word I can describe for that is either -- he's either a fool or a liar.

QUESTION: You think Matt Gaetz is a chaos agent?

REP. MARCUS MOLINARO (R-NY): And I don't have tolerance for some pseudo-psycho-political fetish.

REP. ANDY BARR (R-KY): I'm telling you, it definitely puts the majority in jeopardy when you see disunity.

REP. STEVE WOMACK (R-AR): I think it's sending a terrible signal to the electorate in advance of the '24 election that this Republican majority cannot govern itself. And we need to change that.

RAJU: Do you worry that it could cost you the majority? Could it cost you the majority?

WOMACK: Could. Sure could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, I asked Speaker McCarthy about whether he's open to any sort of dealmaking with Democrats in order to get some Democratic support to stave off this rebellion among the small members of -- members in his conference who have the votes at the moment to push him out.

He indicated he is not open to any sort of power-sharing agreement, suggesting that this would be akin to surrender on conservative ideals. So, you can see Jake, where this is heading. Democrats are ready to sink him. Republicans are furious about Matt Gaetz. But, at the moment, Matt Gaetz is holding the power with a handful of members ready to send this House into something we have never seen before, the speaker being ejected.

And we will see what Kevin McCarthy does at that moment. Will he put himself up for speaker again? If he does that, we could be in for a long haul of many rounds and ballots until they elect a new speaker -- Jake.

TAPPER: And, Lauren, if you gave sodium pentathol to House Democrats, they would probably admit that they find Matt Gaetz more distasteful than they find Kevin McCarthy.

But they sure don't seem ready to save Kevin McCarthy either.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely.

That was certainly the decision coming out of the Democratic Caucus meeting. Democrat after Democrat after Democrat that we spoke with made clear that there just isn't trust for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, that even if he was willing to make a deal with them, which he has made clear he is not, the Democrats just don't trust that he would stick to any agreement that they made.

[13:05:02]

In fact, behind closed doors, I'm told that Hakeem Jeffries spoke briefly, the Democratic leader, at the top of that caucus meeting, but then he really said he wanted to listen to his members. And dozens of them spoke at the mics.

And I'm told it was a broad coalition of the conference, from progressive to swing state Democrats, who one after another said they just don't believe that Kevin McCarthy is the right person for this job, that they don't think that they can trust him, that they don't think they can work with him.

And a lot of them pointed to a budget agreement that was made with the president back in may that then Kevin McCarthy backtracked on, marking up a series of spending bills at far lower levels than what was agreed to. That was a determining factor.

Also a determining factor, the fact that on Saturday, despite the fact that, for weeks, Democrats had been wanting to negotiate on a way to keep the government open, McCarthy at the last minute put on the floor a 45-day short-term spending bill and didn't give Democrats much time to read it. In fact, Democrats had to use delay tactics in order to just find time to go through the bill to make sure there weren't any poison pills.

That didn't build trust, Democrats who were in that room told me. And that is part of the reason why, today, you can expect that they are going to vote with some of those hard-line Republicans potentially to end the speakership of Kevin McCarthy this afternoon.

TAPPER: All right, Lauren and Manu, thanks so much.

With us now to discuss, Republican Congressman Mark Alford of Missouri.

Congressman, thanks so much for joining us. You have called this vote to vacate, essentially, a vote to remove

McCarthy as speaker, you have called it a distraction. Do you expect Kevin McCarthy will survive this historic challenge to his leadership? I mean, if he doesn't have any Democratic votes and if he loses a handful of Republicans, I don't see how he survives.

REP. MARK ALFORD (R-MO): Well, Jake, you're absolutely right.

It's going to come down to probably four or five individuals who never liked Kevin McCarthy from the beginning, who fought him at our conference when I was a member-elect. And here for orientation, we were inside this conference.

And from the very beginning, they were on the attack. They wanted to present -- Nancy Pelosi did not have this in the House rules that there could be a motion to vacate. She did away with that. They came in. They wanted to have a motion to vacate. I proposed a majority of the majority. I advocated for that.

It got whittled down. And for Kevin McCarthy to get this leadership speaker role, he basically gave in to these people. And it only takes one -- one vote now, like Matt Gaetz did, to get before the U.S. House of Representatives and call for a vacate of the chair. And that's exactly what happened.

TAPPER: So, one of the things that's interesting is that we hear from these House Democrats, and they're not saying that they're not going to support Kevin McCarthy because they disagree with him. Obviously, they disagree with him.

What they're saying is, they can't trust him. And I have been in this town for decades now. And I know that Democrats have not liked the politics of Speaker Ryan. They didn't like the politics of Speaker Boehner.

But I think that they felt that they could trust them, they could they could deal with them, they could -- their word was their bond, in terms of how they governed. But they don't feel the same way about Kevin McCarthy. They don't trust him.

Is that your sense as well?

ALFORD: I don't know where that's coming from.

I haven't known Kevin McCarthy long. But as far as I know, I have no reason not to trust Kevin McCarthy. He has done nothing but show deference to the people who really are controlling our conference right now with their five votes. And they know that.

Even before he took the oath of office as speaker of the House, he was listening to people, not just what was coming out of their mouths, but trying to get down in their heart. We would be in conference and he would say, wait a minute. What are you really -- what are you really trying to say?

And every conference that we have, he has listened to people. We might not always get our way. But everyone has had their say. We have matriculated this ball down the field like a football game. And why, with all the wins that we have had, on border security, on parents rights, on energy dominance, to get America back on track, why in the world would you change quarterbacks in the middle of the game?

TAPPER: Well, that's just...

ALFORD: I think this is a fool's errand.

TAPPER: Go ahead. No, no, please, finish.

ALFORD: I think this is a fool's errand. I think it is sophomoric.

And I don't think it's going to work. Who are you going to get who can get 218 votes and hold this conference together, like Kevin McCarthy has? Name them. I don't know who can do it.

TAPPER: Yes.

I mean, I was just going to say that I think the point that you're making about how much Speaker McCarthy has deferred to these five or six men members is correct. I think he has been very differential to them and to the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the conference. I think that that is what the House Democrats would point out.

[13:10:06]

He's supposed to be speaker of the House, not just speaker of the Republican Conference. That's what that's what Democrats would say.

But I guess the big question I have is, how worried are you that this speakership fight is going to drag out, it's going to affect House Republicans' ability to govern...

ALFORD: Well, look...

TAPPER: ... to pass spending bills?

ALFORD: Jake...

TAPPER: Keep going. Go ahead.

ALFORD: ... this is the issue. I came here to get something done.

TAPPER: Right.

ALFORD: Our freshman brothers came here because we were this close to losing our nation. And we gave up everything we had in life to come here and serve the people of our district.

And now we're dealing with these shenanigans? They're on the House floor right now debating the rules for energy and water. We have passed four appropriation bills, eight to go. We have 45 days to get this done for the American people. And this is gamesmanship that is going to slow us down and prevent us from doing the work that our voters sent us here to do. It's unacceptable.

TAPPER: Do you worry that this fight will further demonstrate to voters that House Republicans have trouble governing?

Because, frankly, every time there is -- House Republicans take over, there's a government shutdown.

ALFORD: It does. It worries me.

Jake, we thought we were going to have this red wave, right? The red wave did not materialize. We ended up with a very slim majority. I don't know how Kevin has done this, herding cats and juggling plates in the air, trying to get every one on the same page and make them happy.

But Americans are seeing that we need a marriage counselor, basically, in our conference. And until we get this family settled and we get communication and trust back in the relationships, I'm afraid we might lose our majority.

We were sent here to do a job. And without that majority, we cannot get it done. And with the slim majority that we have had so far, Kevin McCarthy has been a miracle worker and able to push the ball forward. And I sure hope, by the end of the day, he is still our speaker.

TAPPER: Surely, there must be a marriage counselor among the 435 members of the House.

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: Somewhere in there, there must be someone who is a marriage counselor.

ALFORD: I don't think there's -- we have pharmacists and doctors and recovering TV reporters. I myself...

TAPPER: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: You used to have large animal veterinarians. There's got to be someone who's a marriage counselor.

Congressman Mark Alford, thank you so much.

ALFORD: I don't know. We need to get one up here quickly.

Jake, thank you so much.

TAPPER: As soon as possible, maybe next November.

Thanks so much, sir. Appreciate it.

ALFORD: All right.

TAPPER: We're waiting for the pivotal vote on the House floor.

Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House, at least as of this hour, attempting to kill the resolution that aims to remove him as speaker.

Stay with CNN's live special coverage. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:16:41]

TAPPER: A Republican mutiny is brewing in the House of Representatives.

We are just minutes away from a potentially historic vote to take the speaker's gavel out of Kevin McCarthy's hands, a move launched by far right Congressman Matt Gaetz, who announced it at "STATE OF THE UNION" on Sunday right in this building on this very floor.

No House speaker has ever been ousted through the passage of a resolution to remove them in American history, but that could change today, because a small cohort of GOP hard-liners created a huge math problem that might sink McCarthy.

We have our panel of experts here in studio.

And, Dana Bash, let me start with you.

One of the big problems that Kevin McCarthy has -- the first big problem is these five recalcitrant Republicans, Gaetz of Florida, Crane and Biggs of Arizona, Good of Virginia, and Burchett of Tennessee. Those are the big five, and he only has a margin of four.

But, also Democrats, he has a big problem with Democrats, because they do not trust him, they do not like him. And one of the problems, as you will report for us in one second, is this interview he gave while Matt Gaetz was on "STATE OF THE UNION" talking about how he was going to make this motion to vacate.

Speaker McCarthy was on CBS blaming, pretty insanely and counterfactually, the almost government shutdown on Democrats. Let's roll some of that tape.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCARTHY: I wasn't sure it was going to pass. You want to know why?

Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let it pass. They did dilatory...

MARGARET BRENNAN, HOST, "FACE THE NATION": Democrats were the ones who voted for this.

MCCARTHY: Did you -- did you watch -- did you watch it?

BRENNAN: ... in a large number of Republicans to keep the continuing resolution alive. MCCARTHY: Did you watch the floor yesterday?

BRENNAN: Oh, yes.

MCCARTHY: OK, then...

BRENNAN: Ninety Republicans voted against it. One Democrat voted against it.

MCCARTHY: OK, so let's walk -- let's walk through what actually happened.

First of all, the Democrats stood up and did dilatory actions, asked to adjourn. So, was that supporting to adjourn? Then they used the magic minute. They went as far as pulling the fire alarm not to try to get the bill to come up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So here's the thing. Democrats saved his bacon on Saturday. Democrats kept the government alive -- open on Saturday.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

So, my understanding is that that clip, perhaps others, was played at the beginning of the closed-door Democratic Caucus meeting this morning, making the point that you just made, saying, really? Is this the guy that we want to help bail out this guy who -- and this is just one example of why Democrats are absolutely furious with Kevin McCarthy.

It's not just run-of-the-mill partisanship. It's the fact that he went on television after they saved his bacon and helped, because Republicans weren't going to keep the government running, open. Democrats did. And the fact that he went on and said that was -- and that, I'm told, set the tone for the conversation in this closed-door meeting this morning.

And you saw Democrats, starting with the leader, Hakeem Jeffries, come out saying, the feeling is: We're -- they're on their own. If Republicans want to save Kevin McCarthy, he's going to have to find the votes inside the Republican Conference.

[13:20:00]

I should note that is one example. It's the most recent example. It is certainly not the whole story.

TAPPER: No, there's a long list.

BASH: The whole story is very long, including Ritchie Torres was just here on "INSIDE POLITICS" saying, the fact that...

TAPPER: Congressmen from New York, Democratic congressmen from New York. BASH: The congressman from New York, thank you, was talking about the fact that, by the way, they have what he called a kangaroo court trying to -- starting to impeach Joe Biden over things that they don't have evidence for. That's just another example.

TAPPER: And we're hearing from our team on the Hill that McCarthy allies are making last-minute pleas to House Democrats.

We should note that, while House Democrats were voting in greater numbers and greater proportion to keep the government open, it was not only bigger numbers of House Republicans voting to not keep the government open. It was Republican leaders, like the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Jim Jordan, that were voting against McCarthy's bill.

DOUG HEYE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes. Yes, absolutely.

The problem that McCarthy has faced is what we call -- and Dana's dealt with this a lot -- getting to 218. If you have the majority and you can get 218 votes on your own, Republican or Democrat, you don't need the minority.

Obviously, we're in a very different situation right now, because there's a very real risk that he won't be able to get to 218 Republicans standing up for him. It's why we're seeing multiple House Republican Conference meetings within the same week.

And when you do that, you're guaranteed to be in a bad position. During the 2013 shutdown, we opened a meeting with John Boehner reading the Serenity Prayer and Steve Southerland from Florida singing "Amazing " to his Republican colleagues. Not a good day. This is light years worse than that.

TAPPER: Right.

But, also, I mean, if you are relying on the minority to keep the government open and to do your bidding, it is probably wise to not then go on a Sunday show and crap all over them, especially if you need their votes in the coming days because your leadership's going to be challenged.

(CROSSTALK)

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: One would think that would be the approach, but, yet again, Kevin McCarthy continues not to act in good faith.

And so Democrats find themselves -- they want the House to function. They want the government to stay open. That's why they voted in favor of the bill last week. But, at some point, you have to say, enough is enough.

And if you can't get your own caucus together, which a speaker is supposed to be able to do, to get to 218, and then you go and bash me, what kind of friend is that? BASH: Can I just add one piece of context which I think is important

here? It seems as though a big reason why Kevin McCarthy went on "Face the Nation" is because Matt Gaetz was sitting with you earlier.

TAPPER: Right.

BASH: And so the reason he was out there is, he was trying to...

TAPPER: Project strength?

BASH: Project strength, but, also, he was very -- understandably very nervous about where his own conference was...

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Exactly.

BASH: ... which led him to trash the Democrats, which led him to not have the Democrats to bail him out.

CHALIAN: Right, led him to trash the Democrats to try to fortify his support within his conference.

BASH: Exactly.

CHALIAN: But notice what happened. Obviously, it didn't go very well, right?

BASH: Right.

CHALIAN: And so notice what happened immediately thereafter. He started making the institutional argument, right?

Instead of going on the attack on Democrats, what we have heard from Kevin McCarthy the last couple days has been this argument in favor of the institution and hoping that that would have some appeal.

I just want to say, Kevin McCarthy could have gone on Sunday and thrown roses at Democrats, and I'm not sure he'd be in a very different position.

I just -- in Democrats I have talked to, Kevin McCarthy, in the aftermath of January 6, when he first came out and seemed like he wanted to hold Donald Trump accountable for his actions, for his repeated lies about the 2020 election that led up to the insurrection, and then flipped on that within days to go down on bended knee to Mar- a-Lago and keep Donald Trump in the fold and keep his conference loyal to Donald Trump, that is something many Democrats I have spoken do not -- are not going to forget, A.

B, as Ritchie Torres told you, this notion that, just weeks ago, he launched this impeachment inquiry that the Republicans' own witnesses suggest that there's not enough evidence for to be at the impeachment process yet is another reason I have heard from Democrats that they have no interest in engaging in this conversation about Kevin McCarthy.

So, yes, I don't think Sunday helped matters, but I'm not sure we'd be in a different position.

KASIE HUNT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: So, I mean, I -- and, Dana, I know you have covered -- I have covered Kevin McCarthy for a lot of years before he was speaker, and I have talked to him in many different settings, in public, off the record, and other things.

And I think the thing that really defines him as a person is that he is very, very good at telling the person sitting across the table from him at that moment what they want to hear, right? And...

TAPPER: What do I need to do to get you in the seat of this car to leave this lot today?

HUNT: Yes. Right. Exactly. I will tell you whatever that is. I will sell it to you.

Whether you're a reporter and he's trying to come across as, in the Trump years, kind of the reasonable guy who really gets how crazy it all is, but you -- he understands. He's saying something else in public, sure, but that's because he's having a conversation in public with a different audience.

And I think that's what you're seeing happen here in real time. Until Sunday, his audience was the hard-liners. He was trying to tell them what they wanted to hear. And I think you saw a version of this on January 6 as well. I mean, he took in that information. I mean, I was at the Capitol Complex on January 6.

[13:25:04]

I had conversations with Kevin McCarthy in the immediate aftermath where he repeated some of the initial things he had said on the floor. And then, just days later, he turns around, realizes his audience is a different one, and he has to sing a different tune, and he starts doing that.

And, honestly, I think this worked really well for him before he was the guy with the gavel.

TAPPER: Yes.

HUNT: This was something that allowed him to get where he is.

But when you are the leader at the end of the day, you have to make some harder decisions than he's been forced to so far.

TAPPER: Let's go to Lauren Fox right now, who has some reporting on House Democrats who are going to have at least two votes in front of them. One will be on a motion to table, whether or not -- the resolution to remove McCarthy, whether they table that motion or not, and then, assuming that is not tabled, whether or not they will vote to vacate Kevin McCarthy.

What do you have for us?

FOX: Yes, Jake, I mean, this was long expected, right? After Democrats came out of their caucus meeting, it was very clear

that the trust for Kevin McCarthy was not there, but Democratic leaders making it official in this letter to their colleagues, saying -- quote -- "It is now the responsibility of the GOP members to end the House Republican civil war. Given their unwillingness to break from MAGA extremism in an authentic and comprehensive manner, House Democratic leadership will vote yes on the pending Republican motion to vacate the chair."

That means they are not helping Kevin McCarthy. And, time after time, member after member we spoke with earlier today made clear that was the consensus in the Democratic Caucus meeting, from Pramila Jayapal who came out and spoke with us, to others who are members of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which is a more moderate caucus of the Democratic Caucus.

It was very clear that they have a problem with Kevin McCarthy, and it isn't a problem that just happened today. It is not just Democrats saying, we don't like Kevin McCarthy and we think he's vulnerable in this moment. It is because they feel like this is a pattern of behavior from the speaker of the House that, despite the fact that they have come to the negotiating table with him on issues like the debt ceiling earlier this summer and spending levels earlier this year, that he did not stick to those deals.

And that's part of the reason they're not bailing him out now -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Lauren, thank you so much.

Everyone, stand by.

President Biden's top advisers are closely monitoring the fast-moving events unfolding on Capitol Hill. We're live at the White House next.

We're going to squeeze in a quick break. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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