Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

House Searches for New Speaker After Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) Ouster; Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) Suggests Trump Backed Speakership Vote; Trump Back in Court With New Gag Order in Place. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired October 04, 2023 - 10:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: If a House divided against itself cannot stand, what then of a House paralyzed and no speaker to speak of? The new reporting on where the House Republican majority is headed next.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Donald Trump slapped with a gag order in the New York fraud case, the attack that prompted the judge's action. What Trump is forbidden to talk about?

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Homecoming week horror, five people shot, students sheltering in place for hours.

I'm John Berman with Sara Sidner and Kate Bolduan. This is CNN News Central.

BOLDUAN: It was a House in chaos, and now a House in paralysis with no speaker of the House in place, no goodwill remaining at all among the various Republican factions. What is going to happen in the House of Representatives is more uncertain now than ever.

After the historic vote to oust Kevin McCarthy, the position of second in line to the presidency is now vacant. The House Republican majority is now in such turmoil that they have thrown in the towel for the week, sending members home until Tuesday next week.

The man who singlehandedly led this charge into the abyss, Matt Gaetz. Now, the only really unifying message amongst most Republicans there this morning is that he should be held accountable. But what does that look like?

Caught up in all of this, you remember, you probably don't need even reminding, taxpayer dollars, of course, and any concept of a functioning legislative branch.

CNN's Manu Raju is back at it on the Hill for us this morning. Manu, what's next? What's happening?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Right now, behind the scenes, there's a debate about how they can pick up the pieces here after yesterday's tumultuous and historic move to oust the speaker of the House for the first time in American history. But now the Republicans are trying to figure out who will lead them out of the abyss and who can help pick up the pieces and how they can actually legislate in this bitterly divided House Republican Conference in this narrowly divided House, all huge questions at the moment.

And right now, in talking to members, there's palpable tension, particularly among some of those allies, who, most of the Republican conference, which was aligned with speaker McCarthy, the former speaker, McCarthy, criticizing the members who held out, those eight Republicans who decided to side with Democrats, kick Kevin McCarthy out of the position here.

The question is can they agree on a candidate, a new candidate who will lead them. But in talking to members, there's a lot of bad will within the conference and a long way to go before they can get behind a consensus candidate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. AUSTIN SCOTT (R-GA): Those eight people are anarchists and they're chaos caucus members. And the fact of the matter is they get their power from the 212 Democrats voting with them all of the time. And so they have demands that nobody can meet.

REP. DAN CRENSHAW (R-TX): There are just too many people who are willing to lie to our own voters, and say, well, they didn't deliver, they refused to deliver. Well, explain the mechanism by which that delivery would have occurred given the political reality we live in. It's very dishonest.

RAJU: You set this House into paralysis.

REP. BOB GOOD (R-VA): -- we believe was the best for the country, and I will say there has been a blow dealt to the status quo.

I think this is a step in the right direction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So, there are still some questions about who exactly will run for the next speaker of the House. There are several people who have been making phone calls to sound out their colleagues to see whether or not they have the support to replace Speaker McCarthy.

Among those people in particular, Steve Scalise, who is the current number two, the House majority leader. He was once seen as a person who could possibly run here, as well as the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Jim Jordan, who told me yesterday that he is open to the possibility of running.

[10:05:07]

He didn't rule it out and he's signaled to his allies that he could be open to the possibility of running. Also Kevin Hern, who is a member of the Republican Study Committee, he is the largest conservative group in the House. He has been talking to colleagues as well. But others could also emerge, Patrick McHenry, who is now the interim speaker, he seems a possible candidate as well. And they have to figure out the other candidates down the line, the majority leader position, something that the current Republican whip, Tom Emmer, could potentially go for.

But the big question is who could actually get 218 votes in the House. That will all take place next week. First, the House Republican Conference will nominate someone to be the next speaker. That requires only a half of the House Republican conference. But then someone needs to be elected speaker, and that requires half of the whole House, 218 members.

And with Republicans who -- that means that their person will face the same issue that Kevin McCarthy did, can only afford to lose four Republican votes on any party line measure, which means the new speaker candidate, whoever that person may be, will have to assure that the hard liners are appeased and moderate members are appeased. But as you can hear from that clip we just played, there is just an enormous amount of frustration, tension within the room. Getting to consensus will be incredibly difficult for whoever the new speaker candidate is. Guys?

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. Ted Cruz walking past through there, maybe he's got an opinion on who the next House speaker should be. It's good to see you, Manu. Thank you so much. Sara?

SIDNER: Donald Trump, who encouraged the shutdown, now weighing in to all of this saying, why can't Republicans stop fighting with each other and fight the Democrats instead. The question is, does he have any sway in electing a new speaker?

We all remember that he helped Kevin McCarthy win the speakership earlier this year after 15 rounds of voting. Trump pushed McCarthy across the finish line, securing some final votes by calling lawmakers and publicly endorsing McCarthy.

But now, ten months later, McCarthy is out, thanks to fellow Republicans who are big Trump supporters, and Congressman Matt Gaetz is now suggesting that he had the backing of the former president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): My conversations with the former president leave me with great confidence that I'm doing the right thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SIDNER: CNN's Alayna Treene joins us now. Alayna, what are you hearing at this point? Will Donald Trump weigh in to all of this in a bigger way?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN REPORTER: Well, actually, Sara, we just got word that the former president, as he was arriving for his third straight day for his civil trial in New York City, he did mention briefly what is happening in Congress. He said that they have a lot of good people in the Republican Party, and kind of left it at that, a very vague statement. And that's in keeping with his posture over the last few days.

I've spoken to many of Donald Trump's advisers and allies over the past 24 hours, and they told me that he purposely did not want to get involved in the power struggle in Congress. They noted that, one, Donald Trump has a lot going on himself right now. He obviously is attending his civil trial but also focused on his 2024 race. But also the other fact is that he had people who endorse him and support him on both sides of the speaker fight.

Of course, Matt Gaetz, the Republican who led the effort to oust McCarthy, is a Donald Trump supporter. He endorsed him, and he's a surrogate for his campaign, but you also have a lot of people who backed Kevin McCarthy and did not want to see him removed from his speakership who also endorsed Donald Trump. And so, really, they told me that they didn't see a lot of political upside to Trump getting involved in this.

Now, I have one quote from a Trump ally that I think really encapsulates how the president is thinking about this. He told me he can't be sticking his neck out whenever there's a fight in the House, especially when he has people who endorse him on both sides. And so that's really where the former president stands on this.

But, as you mentioned, Sara, it's really a stark contrast from what Donald Trump did back in January. Of course, McCarthy was going through his 15 rounds of voting in order to secure his speakership and the gavel. And Donald Trump came in in the 11th hour and helped lobby lawmakers to support him. And, ultimately, Kevin McCarthy won. But yesterday, he did not go into that speaker fight with Donald Trump's support. And, obviously, we saw him ultimately get removed from office. Sara?

SIDNER: We will see what happens next with chaos, chaos, everywhere in Congress. Thank you so much, Alayna Treene. John?

BERMAN: All right. With us now is CNN Senior Political Analyst John Avlon and CNN Political Commentator S.E. Cupp.

S.E., I want to start on Trump for a second here, because I think we're even underselling what actually happened here. Kevin McCarthy tied himself up into a political pretzel. Kevin McCarthy, he based himself again and again and again for Donald Trump. And Donald Trump did nothing for him when Kevin McCarthy most needed it.

[10:10:01]

What does that tell you?

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the ironies abound. There are many. Donald Trump saying the Republicans should focus their fire on Democrats is really, really rich as well, considering Trump trademarked this, picking fights with Republicans inside his own party, famously primarying Republicans he didn't like or who dared to disagree with him. People like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney and Jeff Flake are no longer in Congress because Donald Trump picked fights with Republicans more often than he picked fights with Democrats.

The Republican Party, because of Trump, has become far more interested in identifying heretics than converts, and Matt Gaetz took that up like a champ, and drove Kevin McCarthy out. Republicans just ousted their own speaker, their own leader with no one else in the wings because Donald Trump sort of ushered in this wave of interparty purity tests and loyalty fights.

So, Donald Trump is not in a great position to weigh in on this fight and Kevin McCarthy should not have expected his loyalty to Trump to go both ways. That's never the case.

BERMAN: What do you think Kevin McCarthy is going to do next time Donald Trump calls? I mean, do you think Kevin McCarthy is going to go out there and campaign for Donald Trump now?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, after he reversed himself on January 6th, quite possibly, if Kevin McCarthy is even in the game of politics with any real influence.

Look, this is the problem, the old Churchill line, appeasement is feeding a crocodile and hoping it eats you last. Kevin McCarthy got eaten yesterday. And it's entirely predictable. Once he went up and kissed the ring at Mar-a-Lago after January 6th, this was all set in motion, because, as S.E. notes, it's always a one-way street.

And when he denounced yesterday, Kevin McCarthy said, you know, they can't call themselves conservatives, they're angry and chaotic. That's the Trump Republican Party, people.

BERMAN: Well, John, I wanted to ask you about this, because I admitted to you before we came on, I broke into your office this morning to try to find a copy of your book, Wing Nuts, written in --

AVLON: 2010.

BERMAN: 2010, okay.

So, the reason I was looking for it is to make the point what just happened wasn't a yesterday thing, it's not even a January, when Kevin McCarthy becomes speaker thing. This is a thing that has been building for a long time. Explain.

AVLON: Fundamentally. This is the key point to understand. This isn't about Kevin McCarthy. It predates Donald Trump. This has been a structural problem within the Republican Party for more than the Tea Party, right?

Think about it, John Boehner was basically pushed out of office by the far right with Mark Meadows threatening to leave the same kind of insurrection. Paul Ryan walked away saying the conservative outrage complex is too much to deal with. And now Kevin McCarthy has been consumed by the same thing.

It's not going to be different for the next speaker. This is what happens when you invite sort of populist fury into the tent and have the delusion that you can somehow corral the crazy into a constructive direction. You can't. Gollum will turn on its creator every time.

BERMAN: What you're looking at right now, just so people now, live pictures once again inside the courtroom here in New York City. This is the civil fraud trial against Donald Trump, where he has already been found liable. He's already lost what may be the biggest part of the case where a judge determined he did commit fraud along with his adult sons.

Day 3 of the trial now, each day before they begin hearing from witnesses, they have allowed in brief minute to take pictures inside. No one speaks, this is just for your viewing pleasure, I imagine, to get a sense of what it's like. Donald Trump not speaking there. And, by the way, a gag order over Trump now. He cannot say anything about people involved in this case, although not the judge or the prosecutors, the people who work in the court itself, a gag order in place. We will see how that goes.

There is the attorney general, Tish James, who brought this civil case and has won the parts of it that have been adjudicated so far. We're going to keep our eye on this trial.

Back to the situation at hand, and they're not completely divorced, I imagine. Obviously, Donald Trump in court right there, S.E., his political future very much tied to the future of the Republican Party, in general. So, what's going to happen next? Is it all going to get better now? Now that they ousted Kevin McCarthy for Republicans, how do their prospects look for the next few months?

CUPP: Well, let me tell you what happened in the minutes, if not hours, after McCarthy was ousted. Matt Gaetz was out there on Newsmax slamming the pro tempore speaker, Patrick McHenry. So, that's going great. And Patrick McHenry, the pro tempore speaker's first item of business was to email Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi and tell her to vacate her office. So, things are going great. All the problems have been solved and function has been restored.

BERMAN: I had Democratic member of Congress Annie Kuster on last hour.

[10:15:00]

And she was saying that she hopes what emerges from this is maybe some consensus. Maybe Republicans will decide to put a moderate candidate forward who can get the support of the caucus at large. I'm playing off of what S.E. was just saying there with some irony, I should say.

And, John, my response to her, because I'm a bit of a wise ass, was this is not an episode of the West Wing. I mean, is it reasonable to expect you're going to end up with something more moderate after Kevin McCarthy?

AVLON: It's not reasonable to expect it because that would be the triumph of hope over experience. That said, experience would also indicate that we could go a dozen, 15 rounds to find the next speaker. And at some point, Democrats might weigh in and say, look, get us a candidate that a handful of us in the Problem Solvers Caucus might be able to support, give us some concessions maybe on Ukraine, regular order, things like that.

The speaker of the House doesn't even need to be a member of the House. We are constrained by the reflexive tribal partisanship in our politics. It creates unrepresentative results. That's what Republicans are reaping right now. They're reaping what they've sown. There is a different way to do this. It's just hard to imagine that they could disenthrall themselves enough to do it.

BERMAN: S.E., any potential? Look, there is the West Wing John Avlon written episode where Democrats get behind a Republican that might be more their liking?

CUPP: I love Aaron Sorkin. And I wish West Wing were reality, but even he admits that was sort of a Pollyanna version of how politics goes, no more so today.

Listen, Republicans have not historically, and I mean recent history, been in positions to help themselves win. Republicans, as you know, lost the White House, the House and the Senate. Republicans keep beating themselves. Republicans just ousted their own speaker. Republicans are not in the business of helping themselves out and helping their voters helping governance solving problems. So, I wouldn't expect them to do themselves any favors in the coming days and weeks.

AVLON: Just quickly, on the split screen with Donald Trump and this chaos on Capitol Hill, here's the real takeaway. The only unforgivable within the Republican conference is apparently having the temerity to keep the government open and to have bipartisan votes to do it. Anything else apparently is game, including trying to overturn an election on the basis of a lie. That's a structural, fundamental problem.

BERMAN: John Avlon, S.E. Cupp, thanks to both of you very much. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, you just saw Donald Trump back in a Manhattan courtroom. That's where he is today. But this time, he's entering the courthouse with a gag order in place. What pushed the judge to lay down that warning and that threat?

Plus, police are searching for a suspect in a mass shooting today. Five people, including students shot on the campus of Morgan State University. We're going to take you live to the scene.

And another major labor strike is kicking off, 75,000 people have walked off the job in what is now the largest American health care strike in history.

We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:20:00]

BERMAN: All right. These pictures you're looking at behind me are from moments ago inside a courtroom here in New York City. This is Donald Trump's civil fraud trial, where a judge has already ruled against him in a major part of the case, ruling he is liable for fraud.

Now, this is a different Donald Trump than we have seen the last two days in court. What is different today is that there is a gag order in place. There are certain things that Donald Trump has been told that he cannot say or write about about certain people involved in the court, and we are waiting to see if he abides by these new rules.

CNN's Brynn Gingras is outside the courthouse this morning with the very latest. Brynn?

BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. As always, the former president, before he walked into the courtroom for the start of day three, he did make some comments. But as you just noted, he was a little more careful this time all because of the gag order that was issued by the judge here after that personal attack, the judge called it, from that Truth Social post that Donald Trump made yesterday. It was a picture of the judge's clerk, identifiable of who it was, in a picture with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer saying without any evidence that she is Schumer's girlfriend.

Well, that was really a bridge just too far for this judge. He issued this rebuke against not only the defense but everybody involved in this case to not issue anything publicly about anyone on his staff, whether it be, you know, in comments or on any social media, saying personal attacks of any member of my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I will not tolerate them. And he said there will be strict sanctions if those are broken.

Now, it's unclear exactly what he meant by that. He hasn't officially issued a full official order. However, we do know both parties did go back into the courtroom after everyone was told to leave at the end of the day yesterday, and so things clearly were discussed.

As for now, we have the defense's former accountant, rather on the stand getting cross-examined and, as we noted, the former president sitting there, and he's engaged. He has been engaged in the past three days of testimony watching this sort of unfold, as he is really trying to, as he says, protect his brand because a lot is at stake. It is in jeopardy, his brand, at the end of this three-month trial.

Yesterday, John, important to note, that he, for really the first time that we've heard from him, said he wants to testify. So, we'll have to wait and see when exactly that will happen, whether it be for the state's attorneys or whether it be for his own defense. John?

BERMAN: It is something he has claimed before in many of the various cases against him, and it usually doesn't quite happen the way he pledges it will, but we will wait and see.

[10:25:03]

Brynn Gingras, great to have you there, thank you very much. Sara?

SIDNER: With me now is CNN Legal Analyst and former Federal Prosecutor Jennifer Rodgers.

We'll start with this case, the gag order. The judge talked about sanctioning. What does that mean? What can he do if Donald Trump does not follow the order to stop attacking his staff?

JENNIFER RODGERS, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: I think the first step will be fines, right, which really will hit Trump where it hurts. And this judge has not been afraid to do that before. He fined Trump $110,000 for a discovery violation earlier in the litigation. So, I think that's where he'll begin.

In theory, if it goes in, he could find Trump in contempt, if there are repeated offenses. And even in a civil case, although it would be unusual, he could theoretically jail him until contempt cease. But I think most likely here is fines, escalating fines, every time there's a violation, until it stops.

SIDNER: All right. I want to move now to the election subversion case in Georgia, because we're learning that several defendants in that case have been approached by prosecutors to try and make a plea deal, and that's what sour sources are telling us.

This is a normal course of business for prosecutors trying to work out deals. What would this look like? How does this work?

RODGERS: So, absolutely, it's normal. They need to get a lot of defendants out of the case if they have any hope of doing just the early trial next month, and then one more trial, they need to get down to six to eight left. So, they're going to try to get out all those low-level people, some maybe with cooperation deals, if they think that their testimony may help, others just with a cheap plea, right, to get them out of the case and narrow it down.

They're also going to be focused very much on this trial that's happening next month. If they can get those two defendants pled out, all the better, then that pressure is off, or they might be looking to cooperate some of the people who have the best testimony against Sidney Powell and Ken Chesebro. But that's what they're doing, get people out.

SIDNER: Because there are 19 people. As we understand it, Donald Trump is not one of them they're trying to make a plea deal with. But any of the others, as you say, those who are potentially -- those who were at Coffee County, the folks that are not high-profile.

I do want to ask you what kind of things they need to be offering for someone. There's only I think one person who has said, yes, I'm taking the plea deal, and they're going forward. What needs to be offered?

RODGERS: So, they will offer probably what they offered, the one defendant who has pled out, which is a a non-RICO plea. They offered Scott Hall some misdemeanors, right? That's one way to get out from another RICO. Because once you're talking about a plead for RICO, the penalties are quite high and you look at jail time.

So, to try to get some of these lower level people out, I would look for more misdemeanor plea offers, something outside the RICO to get them out of the way.

SIDNER: All right. I want to move on to something that really strikes a chord here because it was something that popped out, The New York Times reporting that prosecution is looking into the drinking habits of Rudy Giuliani, and if we have that picture of The Times.

You know, you look at this, and I'm questioning why are prosecutors looking into this? Giuliani's drinking, long a fraught subject, has Trump prosecutors' attention. Why? What are they looking for in this particular incident?

RODGERS: Well, one issue is the intent, right? Anytime you're prosecuting someone, you have to prove that they intended to do what it is that you allege that they did. And you might say, if you are Rudy Giuliani, I was too incapacitated, right, to do what they're saying. I didn't understand what was happening when I interacted with these people and did all of these things. So, that's one issue that if there's a possibility of that being some sort of defense, prosecutors are going to want to look into it themselves to try to counter that narrative.

SIDNER: Is there also the issue of Donald Trump, if he knew that he was inebriated, if he knew that one of his members of his counsel was inebriated, that that could play a role here?

RODGERS: Well, I mean, I think anytime you have that issue, an issue of whether someone is doing something with their full faculties, you'll want to explore kind of all of the options. I think that the prosecutor's position is that he shouldn't have been relied on Rudy Giuliani, no matter what state he was in. He went out to look for the advice that he wanted instead of relying on his own advisers who were within White House and actually were the ones he should have been listening to.

But, sure, they'll want to play out kind of everywhere that takes them if they decide that someone actually truly was incapacitated and wasn't able to act (INAUDIBLE).

SIDNER: Every possible scenario they're trying to look at. Thank you so much, Jennifer Rodgers, I appreciate your analysis. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, what happens now in the House of Representatives? Republicans are without a leader and have really zero goodwill left amongst the various factions of their party. Can they move forward together or does there first need to be a reckoning of sorts, as some lawmakers are suggesting today?

Plus, the big announcement coming from the White House today, moving to cancel the debt for an additional 125,000 student loan borrowers. Who this will impact, and what Biden is set to say about it today.

We'll be back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:00]