In a video released to social media, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) reacted to the ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the Speaker role.
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00:00 Last night, the House of Representatives voted to vacate the speaker's chair and
00:04 basically boot Kev McCarthy out of the speakership.
00:07 So what happens next?
00:09 Donald Trump is offering to be speaker.
00:11 Is that even possible?
00:12 Let me see if I can break this down.
00:14 So Kev McCarthy, in order to get the speakership in the first place, cut a
00:19 deal with the most radical of his members, where even a single member
00:23 could bring a motion to vacate.
00:24 Now that doesn't mean that a single member could remove the speaker,
00:28 but he could force a vote and Matt Gaetz did.
00:31 Now, the reason that Gaetz called for this motion, you know, sort of varies
00:35 depending on when you listen to the guy, but basically there was a group of about
00:40 10 or 20 very hard right Republicans who felt that McCarthy was conceding too much
00:46 and more fundamentally that he just couldn't be trusted.
00:49 And in fact, I think most of the Republicans felt there wasn't
00:52 much trust in Kevin McCarthy.
00:53 Certainly Democrats did.
00:55 And there was no way that Democrats were going to come to the rescue
00:58 of Kevin McCarthy.
00:59 This is someone who made apologies for the January 6th insurrection.
01:03 You might remember him going down to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring just a
01:07 couple of weeks after that attack on the Capitol, but also this is someone
01:11 who reneged on the deal with President Biden over the debt ceiling.
01:14 This is someone who began an impeachment proceeding in order to placate the
01:18 right wing, even with no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the president.
01:22 So no trust in him by Democrats.
01:24 We were not about to save him.
01:26 Where do we go from here?
01:27 Well, you may have seen Trump has offered his services as speaker of the house.
01:32 Technically they could do that.
01:34 The speaker doesn't have to be a member of the House of Representatives.
01:37 Sounds crazy, but it's not a requirement.
01:39 There is no way they're going to pick Donald Trump.
01:42 And I say this because although I have to admit, I've been
01:46 proven wrong about this.
01:47 I don't think they're that crazy.
01:50 They're pretty crazy.
01:51 I still don't think they're crazy enough to make Donald Trump's speaker.
01:55 So what are they going to do?
01:56 Well, Patrick McHenry is the acting speaker pro tempore, and he is acting
02:01 speaker because he was on a secret list that Kevin McCarthy had.
02:04 Now he was number one on that list.
02:07 Basically, if I were to lose my seat, this is who I would
02:10 want to step in temporarily.
02:12 That doesn't mean he was Kevin McCarthy's choice to be speaker.
02:15 It probably means that Kevin McCarthy really trusted Patrick McHenry, because
02:21 if you're at the top of the replacement list, there's an incentive for you to
02:24 push out the guy who's in the speaker's chair, and you want someone very loyal
02:28 in that, so I think all we can say with confidence is that Patrick McHenry has
02:32 been very loyal to Kevin McCarthy.
02:34 They're debating in the Republican conference who to replace McCarthy with.
02:38 If they can't come up with someone right away, McHenry can serve in
02:42 that role fairly indefinitely.
02:45 But look, I hope they come up with someone that their members can trust,
02:49 and that even if we have vehement policy disagreements with, at least we can
02:55 trust that they will keep their word.
02:56 That shouldn't be too much to ask.
02:58 And what's more, it needs to be someone who can govern, someone who can run
03:01 the house so that we can begin to tackle some of these really important challenges
03:05 the country faces, like the high cost of housing, like the fentanyl crisis, like
03:10 the continuing plague of inflation.
03:12 We need at least someone who has the ability to govern.