Morning Joe - Morning Joe 1/4/23

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

McCarthy enters Day Two of uncertainty as House resumes speaker votes

If my friends in the Freedom Caucus, Matt Gaetz and others, will not take the win when they have it, they're proving to the country that they don't care about doing the right thing for America. They're proving to the country that they're just destructionists. And that's not what we need to do as a party. That's why Republicans fail. And I'm really tired of it. Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene with those words. That reminds me of the scenes out of Ghostbusters when Bill Murray bursts into the mayor's office. Yeah,

her party standing in the way of Kevin McCarthy's bid for House Speaker. Dogs living with cats, like everything backwards. The House adjourned last night without a speaker after McCarthy failed to win enough support in an historic three rounds of voting. It went on and on and on. This hasn't happened. And he couldn't get the vote. Since the ice age or since dinosaurs. It's been a long time since this has happened. Meanwhile, the Democrats were bragging about their unity. Because people have like usually you have these fights behind closed doors and you walk out and wow. Wow. Yeah. You know, you're supposed Nancy Pelosi would never allow this to happen.

Never. Just don't go out there and get humiliated three times in a row. I mean, what a contrast. Nancy Pelosi never went to the House floor. People don row. I mean, what a contrast. Nancy Pelosi never went to the House floor. People would always say, well, what's going to happen? When I went to the House floor, you knew if Nancy put it on the House floor, it was going to pass. You just knew it because she did all the work before. We hear from a lot of people, Willie, that Kevin McCarthy had a month to lock this stuff up and he didn't do it. He didn't know how to close the deal. And

so he was humiliated yesterday. And I've got to say, you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene fed up saying she's had enough. You had Kevin McCarthy attacking members of his own caucus yesterday. You have the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the GOP chaos caucus. House Republicans say they want to drain the swamp and save America, but they can't even get through day one without a display of dysfunction. It's just it's just chaos. The New York Post, another Murdoch newspaper, and of course, the official newspaper of Morning Joe, the record just getting attacked from all sides. Yeah, actually, for good reason. New York tabloids with their here's the post, first of record, just getting attacked from all sides. Yeah, actually, for good reason.

New York tabloids with their here's the post, first of all, just talking to the people who are holding up the vote, telling them to grow up, move on and let's go after Biden is the message here. And the Daily News taking a step further, calling this the GOP show starring the liar George Santos and the loser Kevin McCarthy. But as we sit here this morning, there is no House of Representatives. Think about that. Not only is there not a speaker, there's no House of Representatives because they couldn't be sworn in. And I'm sure you guys, too, yesterday and last night, as the day went on and Kevin McCarthy lost for a third time,

the confidence you heard from people around McCarthy that it's going to be ugly, but we'll get him there is starting to dissipate. And they don't know how this ends because those members who voted against him have made clear that they will never vote for him. Well, and that's I was I was talking to some people yesterday who were calling me up a couple of interviews, people asking me what I thought was going to be happening. And I just said, well, when I was in that position and it was Newt Gingrich that we decided we were going to get out in 1997, nothing was going to change our mind. Nothing was going to get in our way. If you were a never Newt or you were a never Kevin, that means never. and you look at the madness and the lunacy that this this party has taken. I mean, you actually had somebody yesterday nominating and supposedly being the

voice of reason, Kevin McCarthy, the speaker. You had somebody doing that, that tried to overturn the election. Jim Jordan was the very guy who, when he tried to help Liz Cheney get out of the chamber, she yanked her arm away and said, don't touch me. You're the one responsible for this. And these are the people that are running the Congress, are trying to run the Congress. And so suddenly these voices of reason are actually anything but. And this is just, again, the continue devolution of of the House GOP. We'll talk more about this. But basically what they were voting for when it came to Kevin McCarthy, he had negotiated himself down to nothing. They were voting for nothing because if he became elected speaker, he might have been speaker for one minute, five minutes, depending on what people wanted. And then there was George Santos, the one vote he needed that they didn't say anything about.

He sat alone in the chamber and announced on social media that he was sworn in yesterday. Wow. I don't know how he did that. Along with Joe, Willie and me, we have former U.S. senator now in NBC News and MSNBC political analyst Claire McCaskill up early for us. Thank you, Claire. Author and NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss, the host of Way Too Early, White House bureau chief at Politico, Jonathan Lemire, the co-founder of Axios, Mike Allen, and on Capitol Hill, congressional investigations reporter for The Washington Post, Jackie Alimany is with us. Senator Claire McCaskill, thank you so much for being with us this morning. I heard some of your comments yesterday and was really struck by them.

I want to quote a quote from you, a Washington Post op ed by Matt Bayh. He said the GOP is now essentially a gang of wolves huffing and puffing at any Democratic pillar or foundation they see, including their own. It turns out that once you start tearing down houses, destruction becomes your only reason for existence. McCarthy must understand this now. And that's it. I've been saying for years, this isn't about ideology. None of this is about ideology. If it were about ideology, then both Liz Cheney and I with 95 percent lifetime ACU ratings would be conservatives in good standing with the Republican Party. This is a cult. And this is about tearing down. It is just

it's it's not about small government. It's about no government. It's about tearing down, as Matt Bice says, any foundational pillars of the United States government. And this is where it ends up. Yeah, the Republican Party has been hijacked. The caucus has been hijacked by 10 percent of its members. 90 percent want to go forward and 10 percent don't. And McCarthy has two huge problems. One, he's got more than five members that only want one thing, and that's his head on a platter. That's all they want. They don't want anything else other than to take him down. The second big problem he has is that he hasn't figured it out. What is he going to do? He's going to vote time after time and just be humiliated?

Oh, my God. to do. He's going to vote time after time and just be humiliated. It's like the class does. Read the room, Claire. He needs to read the room. It's just unbelievable to me. I mean, I just don't get it. He is not respected or feared or liked or trusted by a number of members of his caucus. And that number is large enough to deny him the speakership. It's not going to happen. I really don't believe it is. I'll come back on and say I was stupid and dumb if he pulls this off. But I don't think it's going to happen. So I think a part of our discussion this morning needs to be who's it going to be if it's not him. Well, let's ask Jackie Alimany that.

There's also the question, Jackie, of course, that this has been a long time coming. What makes this even more pathetic is that Kevin McCarthy has spent two years courting the very members. That trip down to Mar-a-Lago a couple weeks after January 6th was to get himself back in good standing, not just with Donald Trump, but with that group of Republicans who support him so cultishly and the voters who voted for Donald Trump. And now here he is, having done all of that, having looked the other way with all the things those people have done and said to hopefully win their support someday. They denied him, having given up everything he had to offer in these negotiations and

said, all right, you can have this if you vote for me. They said, great, and then didn't vote for him. So the question is, how does he get there? He's actually losing votes now as we go along. Yeah, Willie, and it hasn't just been two years that he's been trying to court these votes. It's really been since 2015 when he first tried to run for speaker

and then eventually ceded. And that is part of the problem of why there are, as Pete Sessions said, 16 out of 19 members who are not going to budge on McCarthy until the cows come home because they feel like this is someone who wants the speaker above all, that he's non-ideological. He's more concerned with politics and that, as Matt Gaetz has said, he's basically sold his soul for this job. This group of House Freedom Caucus members and lawmakers who refuse to support McCarthy have made a list of concessions. But what some members are telling us is that these concessions are unrealistic and that they are things that the House Freedom Caucus has asked for just so that McCarthy could turn them down so that they could ultimately say, you know, we try to negotiate with you. Overnight, McCarthy talked to reporters and said that

some of these concessions, again, were unrealistic and that he was going to try again today and that there is no consensus candidate. It's him or nobody. At the end of the day, Jim Jordan probably does not have enough votes to get this over the finish line. There are moderates who don't want him, don't want to support him, believe that it's going to further fracture the caucus. But at the same time, there are these same lawmakers feel like this process is making the party that's supposed to be sort of entering their heyday in the majority for the first time in quite some time. And that's the party's losing prestige. So we'll see what happens today. But it seems more than likely to be a rerun of what happened yesterday, although McCarthy is feeling pretty confident about it.

If you look at the comments he made to us last night. I'm not sure that confidence is well advised. This is, of course, a man who already moved into the Speaker's office and measured the drapes. Mike Allen, it was a long, humiliating day yesterday for Kevin McCarthy. We're not sure today's going to be any better. And yesterday, he seemingly lost perhaps some support from Donald Trump. Let's take a step back here. It wasn't just that McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago to get Trump back into the GOP's good graces. He apologized to Trump for speaking harsh the GOP's good graces.

He apologized to Trump for speaking harshly to him on January 6th. And he has prostrated himself to Trump for a long time to try to get his support. Trump offered it mostly, but then seemed to waver yesterday. I'm told it's in part because he doesn't want to be seen as backing another loser because he was so scorched by backing people who lost in the midterms. He blamed forms. He blamed for that. He doesn't want to be associated with another defeat. But at the same time, the people who are who are opposing McCarthy are all diehard Trump supporters. Is there any role he can play right now? What factor could he have? No, what you're pointing to is why behind

the scenes, Republicans tell us they don't know why anybody wants to be leader or how anybody can be leader. We have a headline up on Axios right now, the ungovernable GOP. And look at why. The navigating Trump, like nobody tried harder than Kevin McCarthy and now doesn't seem to be reciprocated. And to be a Republican leader in this era, Jonathan, look at all the languages you have to speak. You have to speak MAGA.

You have to be able to speak the language of the establishment to raise money. You have to be able to speak the sort of pugilistic language of the old sort of Fox approach, the punchiness of today's podcast. Almost nobody can do it. Mitch McConnell holds on to power, but is widely despised by the rank and file of his own party. So the one person that seems to be cracking this code so far, Ron DeSantis, who yesterday was sworn in for a second term, he sees that by winning, by having fundraising dominance, by being able to pick the right cultural battles, you can win. But can it be done outside Florida? It sure hasn't been yet. Yeah. And Michael Beschloss, I want to get it just a minute. I want to get to the historic nature of what happened yesterday. I followed I followed what you were saying yesterday and found it absolutely

fascinating. But but first, let's I want to circle back really quickly to this Matt by column in The Washington Post where he talks about the evolution of the Republican Party. And it really got me thinking. And I just scratching down some notes right or right now about Ronald Reagan. He he we and Matt, I said, I'm not one of these left of center anti Reagan types. You could agree with him or disagree with him. But he had a full a governing philosophy and he believed that America had a central role in global affairs. But so Reagan reverses 40 years of welfare state expansionism. I think even his harshest critics could agree to that. And again, he pushed back on the Soviets. He had an ideology. Then you had Newt, who brought Reaganism to the legislative branch, but he also

brought some of the gestures that we see now. And I know you'll remember this. Others on the panel may not. But right before we took power in 1994, Newt Gingrich, one of the last things he said before the election was that a South Carolina woman who drowned her children drove a car into a lake. She did it. And it was the fault of the Democratic Party and Democratic policies. That was the sort of thing that we were constantly having to deal with with Newton. One of the reasons you ran him out of town. Then the Tea Party, they went from small government to anti-government and went from positive actions to just gestures. And if you don't believe that, just look where they've gone over the past six, seven, eight years. Again, it's all gestures. And if you don't believe that, just look where they've gone over the past six,

seven, eight years. Again, it's all gestures. And now, of course, post-Trump, you have the chaos that's been happening on the floor. This has been a meltdown of 40, 50 years in the making. And my God, it seems to be an ungovernable party now. I think you're right. And the party that you were a member of, Joe, was a party, as I need not tell you, that prided itself on the fact that it was able to manage. I mean, Nixon, for instance, in 1968, after the Democratic convention, that smash up in Chicago, said a party that cannot unite itself cannot unite America. Well, no one's going to unite America, sadly, in this moment in 2023.

But at least yesterday, we got our first look at the Republicans as a governing majority in the House. And it was a food fight. You had Marjorie Taylor Greene denouncing McCarthy and McCarthy denouncing her and others and all sorts of things said in public that, just as you said, would never have been said under Nancy Pelosi. And it looked almost like, you know, on the late night show, sometimes they show a video of some parliament in another country where they get into a fight and they're hitting each other and throwing chairs.

You know, we never thought we'd see this kind of thing figuratively in our own country. And also last night, as you know, there was a letter. This was almost the piece de resistance. Matt Gaetz wrote to the architect of the Capitol saying, by what right does Kevin McCarthy sit in the Speaker's office? He didn't do well today. He said, how much time has to pass before, these are Gates's words, before McCarthy is considered a squatter? So now you've got the prospect of McCarthy being thrown out of the Speaker's suite, presumably on live television. And you've got, you know, this idea in your mind, or at least in mind, maybe it'll be a reality TV show that,

you know, Gates will go in there and throw his Barca lounger out of the speaker's window. And this will look even more like these parliaments in other countries that we're just not used to. I mean, it on many levels was cartoonish yesterday. And there's so many destructive forces within the Republican Party. And I understand how you could say, Joe, that this is decades in the making at the same time to a point you were making yesterday for Kevin McCarthy himself in terms of basic negotiation. Wasn't this preventable? Well, it should have been. I mean, it should have been a month to do the deals.

And when I say Nancy Pelosi would have never taken this to the floor, if Nancy Pelosi had known. That she didn't have the votes, she would have had a press conference a week before and announced that she was stepping away. But what Nancy Pelosi would have done is, somebody told me last night, she would have found five great codels for five Democratic members who were going to vote against her to go on and an assurance that when they came back, they were going to have more influence in the House than ever before. She would have done what was necessary to get the votes or she wouldn't have had her name on the ballot. This is what's so for me and I think for Nancy Pelosi and for other people who actually know how to do this sort of stuff. What's so confounding you? You take a vote where you don't know the outcome of the vote on the House floor that you just I'm sorry, that's not even a rookie mistake. That's just Bush league. And you wonder how a guy is in Congress that long where he doesn't

know the outcome of this thing. You don't listen. You don't wing it. You don't wing it when the whole world's watching and your career is on the line. But that's exactly what happened yesterday. I really, you know, it's interesting hearing Michael Beschloss talk about the Republican Party, that it was actually once seen as the party that knew how to get things done. I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where they went to the Democratic and the Republican conventions. And I think the Republicans unhurled a huge banner that said, we don't like people. And then they went to the Democratic party that unhurled a banner that said, we can't govern. And that that applies, of course, to this Republican Party. Now we can't govern again, this is just this is just a follow up to a disastrous 2022.

This is only happening because Republicans screwed up the midterm so horribly. They should have won by 30, 40, 50 seats. They should have won the Senate. They should have they should have had that red wave that all their Republican pollsters were predicting, but they didn't. And now they compound the problem by looking like complete fools in front of the entire world. And those swing voters out there that are looking at this, they're going, OK, yeah, it's a good thing I didn't vote for Republicans because they really they're they just they don't know how to govern.

And it raises the obvious question, if they can't vote to elect the House speaker, what's it going to look like when everything else comes up before this Congress? All the business of the debt ceiling and and balanced budgets and all of those kind of things, Claire. And these are the people, this group of people holding up the vote right now. Republicans, these are the insurrectionists. Andy Biggs, an honorary member of the Cyber Ninjas in Arizona. Ralph Norman called for martial law around the election. These are the people now pulling the strings of the party. And as many people have noted, Kevin McCarthy earned this moment by courting them

so closely. And this is what he's left with. Yeah, some of the people who voted against him yesterday, he spent big money in their races electing them. The 10 percent that are standing against Kevin McCarthy are the same 10 percent that cost him seats. So they're denying him the speakership in two ways. One, they blew a bunch of elections because of these yahoos. And now these same yahoos are making the Republican Party look like a joke. And I think it's important to remember what unites political parties, principled leadership and policies they believe in. And the problem with the modern day Republican

Party is they have no policies they unite around. All they want to do is be against the other guy. On the Democratic side, it's lower health care costs, more gun safety, reproductive freedom, protecting our democracy. You can easily tick off the things that unite the Democratic Party. The only thing that held the Republican Party together with chewing gum and bailing wire was that narcissist down in some sand some sand trap in in Florida. It was Donald Trump. And he didn't have principled leadership. And clearly, Kevin McCarthy doesn't have principled leadership. So this is not going to have a safe landing for the Republican Party unless and until they reunite around policies that the American people can sign off on. Yeah. You know, Kevin McCarthy and a number

of Republicans along the way, and Nancy Pelosi touched on this, lost his moral compass. He didn't. Did he need the midterms truly to understand that people prefer their democracy intact? Did they need the midterms to understand that people don't like insurrections? And crawling back to Donald Trump, I mean, this man did not know the line. He did not know his value, if I may. And Jackie Alimany, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the Democratic response in the room yesterday. And then what is on tap today? What can the House Republicans do next? Yeah, Mika, I want to get to that, but I just have to say, you know, I think even if Kevin McCarthy had found his conscious,

these this set group of members would never support him. And I think it speaks to sort of the broader issue that's facing Congress today and sort of the perverted incentives for these members to be obstructionists, to be Kevin McCarthy. You had Andy Biggs sending out fundraising emails amid all of this drama yesterday, saying that he was proud to block Kevin McCarthy and was going to bring conservative power back to Washington, D.C. I'd love to see the fundraising numbers for Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, all of these people who are profiting in some way politically on social media with their with their own personal following and own personal brand that they've created from holding up, legislating, becoming actual members in this Congress. As for today and for the Democratic response, it was actually quite remarkable to watch former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is now just a regular Congresswoman, glad-handing on the floor of the House with Democratic colleagues. The difference between

McCarthy and Pelosi and their demeanor couldn't have been more stark and different. Pelosi was all smiles, you know, socializing with Democratic members. And Democrats were just there to witness the show. There is no way at all Democrats are going to get involved here. I know it's something that, you know, moderates and even McCarthy have potentially been tossing around that maybe they're going to ultimately bring in some Democratic support. But but Democrats are here to watch Republicans essentially implode. As for today, I think we're going to see what we saw yesterday, a few more iterations of these votes, and we might see the vote count against McCarthy actually brought in. But that being said, the write-in candidate, House member Jim Jordan of Ohio, does not want this job. He said so repeatedly. You're not going to see him fold.

You're not going to see the moderates that he would need their support in order to actually become the speaker fold. So it's going to be a bit of a mess. But at the same time, we also heard last night that some members of leadership were going to socialize some of the negotiations with the broader conference. So we'll see if McCarthy can come to the table today at noon when lawmakers get here with some sort of new agreement with these House Freedom Caucus members. So, Michael Beschloss, whenever we use the phrase, this hasn't happened in 100 years, we think of you because you're a chosen profession, not because of your age.

So, please, put us, what was the chaos we saw yesterday, the chaos we're almost certainly going to see today, please do put it into some historical context for us. Well, this is the question I'd ask, you know, and I would have asked it if I were around in 1855 or 1923, which thankfully I wasn't in either case when, you know, these speakers races went on to many, many ballots, although not with the eye of television or modern coverage. But here's the question I'd ask all of our friends who are watching this morning. You saw what happened yesterday. The House has huge responsibility for the future and health of your families, your economic health. You know, if there's, God forbid, a terrorist crisis, would you feel good about your family's lives being

in the hands of the leadership that you saw yesterday? You know, you mentioned Donald Trump. You know, Donald Trump was the one who was pushing Joe. I was going to say Joe McCarthy. I'm really operating in history, pushing Kevin McCarthy and was asked by our friend Garrett Haik yesterday, are you still for McCarthy? And Trump says, well, we'll see what happens. You know, Trump is always there when he needs you, but maybe not otherwise. Like Titanic is going down. What are you going to do, Mr. Trump? Well, we'll see what happens. And the serious thing about all of this is something I think we've really got to focus on. Yesterday, the new Republican majority in the House took out magnetometers, reduced security in the Capitol.

Why is that? We are two days before the anniversary of January 6th, two years ago. There have been shootings in the House chamber in the past, you know, with reduced security. Why is this happening so soon after we had an insurrection that almost cost us our democracy? Well, great question. NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss, thank you very much. And The Washington Post's Jackie Alimany, thank you for your reporting as well. And still ahead on Morning Joe, Democratic Congressman Pete Aguilar takes a swipe at Kevin McCarthy during speakership nominations yesterday. We'll show you those remarks that got thunderous applause. Plus, veteran Democratic strategist James Carville joins us with his takeaways from yesterday's speakership stalemate.

Also ahead, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky will be our guest as President Biden prepares to visit his state today in a bipartisan event with Mitch McConnell. And up next, we'll go live to the hospital in Cincinnati where DeMar Hamlin remains in critical condition. What the family of the Buffalo Bills safety is saying about his health after suffering cardiac arrest on the field. You're watching Morning Joe. We'll be right back. I'll say this about DeMar Hamlin. Man, it's a really personal thing for me, being a Pittsburgher and that me, being a Pittsburgher. And that young man being a Pittsburgher, I've known that guy probably since he was about 12. Just got a lot of respect and love for him as a human being.

His commitment to the pursuit of his goals and dreams of doing what it is he's doing right now, which is playing in the NFL, and to watch him make personal decisions and make that a realization, it's just an honor to get to know young people like that. I got a lot of love for that young man. We lifted him and that organization up in prayer, reached out to Sean McDermott to lend whatever assistance I could. But I don't have a lot to add other than that. I just respect the fact that you guys appreciate how personal it is for me, not only for me, but just for all of us. That is longtime

Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin yesterday reflecting on his own relationship with Buffalo Bills safety DeMar Hamlin, who remains hospitalized in critical condition after going to cardiac arrest on the football field in Cincinnati on Monday night. Joining us now from Cincinnati, outside the trauma center where Hamlin is being treated, NBC News correspondent Maggie Vespa. Maggie, good morning. What's the latest there?

Willie, so the family is giving us some updates on how Hamlin is doing. And basically, as far as his status is concerned, that hasn't changed. As you said, he's still in critical condition inside the ICU here at this trauma center. But his uncle telling media last night that he's now been flipped onto his stomach. The doctor's trying to improve the situation regarding blood in his lungs, trying to drain a lot of that. And they say he is still on oxygen. He's still intubated, but he's needing less oxygen than he used to, which they say obviously is a sign of that. And they say he is still on oxygen. He's still intubated, but he's needing less oxygen than he used to, which they say obviously is a sign of improvement. And over the next few days,

they hope to take him off of oxygen altogether. Here's more of what his uncle had to say to CNN last night. Take a listen. Right now, they got him on a ventilator, so they're trying to get him to breathe on his own. So we're just kind of taking it day by day. He's still in ICU. They have him sedated. He's still sedated right now. They just want him to have a better chance of recovering better so they felt that if he's sedated his body can heal a lot faster than if he was woke and possibly caused other complications. Well, his heart had went out, so they had to resuscitate him twice.

They resuscitated him on the field before they brought him to the hospital, and then they resuscitated him a second time when he got to the hospital. And we've heard from medical experts again that these next two days will be crucial to see if, again, Hamlin can start to breathe more on his own. So we'll see how that goes, and we'll bring you updates as we can. In the meantime, the family also releasing just a written statement from inside that hospital. I know we got that, and we wanted to show you part of it.

They say, in particular, they just wanted to thank everybody, including Football Nation, for, again, expressing sincere gratitude for the love and support. And they've asked people to please keep DeMar in their prayers. Another big element of this story that's making a lot of traction online is the GoFundMe for a toy drive that DeMar started in 2020 to help buy toys for children in need. He had a goal this year of $2,500. That is now, as you can see, approaching $6 million. Fans just flooding that GoFundMe to show support again for DeMar. So again, obviously now we're coming up on 36 hours since this happened. This is

Wednesday morning. It happened Monday night. And we're getting updates from inside the hospital. It shows signs of slow improvement. But again, the family, as all the fans are, incredibly hopeful that that continues. And we'll get some more updates and bring it to you as we can. Let's hope that improvement continues. NBC's Maggie Vesp outside the hospital in Cincinnati. Maggie, thanks so much. And guys, we learned from the NFL yesterday, the game will not be played this week. There was some talk of trying to fit it in. These teams just don't want to play. They're not ready to play. They may never play that game. They'll play their scheduled games on Sunday. But we are hearing from the family there.

We heard from his uncle who talked about DeMar Hamlin being resuscitated a second time in the hospital, which is something we hadn't heard previously. But we'll continue to wait for the hospital and the doctors to give us some medical updates as well. Right. This is this is obviously so touch and go. It also for this type type of injury, from everything that we've heard, everything we've read about, there is absolutely no speculating. It can go in any direction. And so the doctors, the family, and the millions of fans who are out there praying will continue doing that. And we can only hope for for his recovery, be it speedy or slow, just his recovery. Just but it's right now. It's really day by day. It's hour by hour.

All right. Coming up, we're going to dig into this morning's must read opinion pages on the House Republican caucus in chaos. Plus, Chris Matthews will join the conversation. He worked for one of the longest serving House speakers in American history. Morning Joe, we'll be right back. How it end, he knows in the snow tip mine, I find, hatching from the seed of your thin mind. Are you going to vote for McCarthy today? Do you have any comment at all on the protests going on outside of your New York State Legislative Office? Any comment at all? Say to the voters of Long Island, say that they voted for you based on the resume they saw on your website. Sir, do you plan to resign?

When was the last time you spoke with GOP leadership? What is your legal name? I'll say that. What is your legal name? I've got to say, walking around those halls, the tunnels underneath, the first day, it's like confusing enough. Confusing enough. You can imagine with all the cameras and everybody running after you.

And every question was piercing and legit. This guy has lied his way into office and there are a lot of questions about what is next for him. Congressman-elect George Santos yesterday ignoring reporter questions about his future in Washington. His time in the House starting off with him playing fast and loose with the truth. In a statement released by his office, Santos said he was sworn in by the Speaker of the House yesterday. That, of course, did not happen because there was no speaker elected. That statement has since been removed from his official congressional website. Let's turn now to the must read opinion pages. We have two must reads from pretty conservative publications. The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal has a piece entitled

The GOP's Chaos Caucus Returns, and it reads in part this. House Republicans say they want to drain the swamp and save America, but they can't even get through day one without a display of dysfunction. More than a few Republicans, alas, have a history of preferring combative soundbites to actual governing. And the fiasco Tuesday is an ominous sign of old habits being reasserted. Without 218 Republican votes in the House, Republicans will have no leverage to negotiate with a Democratic Senate and White House, no matter who the speaker. House Republicans have won two years the majority to show the electorate they can govern better than Democrats and President Biden. They're getting

off to the kind of start that will persuade even their own voters to send them back to the minority in short order. And you're hearing this from absolutely, it seems, everybody. Mike Allen in Mark Halpern's newsletter this morning, he writes, sums it up pretty well, who exactly is on the side of the rebels. The point being that the full gang of 500, the Murdoch wing of the conservative movement, the Democratic Party, north of 90% of House Republicans,

most of red media, plus the odd couple of Karl Rove and Marjorie Taylor Greene, all think what the rebels are doing is pointless, selfless, self-destructive and counterproductive. Everybody's against this. But these 20 people, how does this end? Yeah. A little math problem there. So first embedded in what you said, Marjorie Taylor Greene suddenly as the voice of reason, like that's what everybody has been scratching their heads about. But what I'm hearing is that it's purely a power play that she wants to be on the winning side, what she thought was going to be the winning side. She wanted to be McCarthy's go-to MAGA ally. When he rolled out his plan for the midterms last fall, she was in the camera shot right behind him at the time. Nobody understood

why. But it's part of courting this group that just didn't work, that it just didn't sell with enough of them. What somebody said to me last night is if you're going to sell your soul, you have to make sure someone is buying. And that's the dilemma for the McCarthy forces. They were right about one thing. They were going in. They were hanging their hat on the idea that there was not a feasible, realistic alternative. Well, that part turns out to be true. It turned out not to save him so far. And they thought they could win a war of attrition. But now it's going the wrong way. And Claire McCaskill, this from The New York Post. The editorial board writes this morning, Jim Jordan is exactly right on renominating Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. The Post writes, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan got it exactly right in his speech,

renominating Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House ahead of the second ballot Tuesday afternoon. The voters gave the Republican majority a clear mandate, and honoring that should be the top priority of every GOP member. Yesterday, we urged the rebels to grow up. They failed to heed our request, just as they failed to heed Jordan's wisdom. And for what? Not for the country, not for the voters, for their own petty ends. And we can add in here, last night on Fox News, almost across the board, Claire, the host of the primetime show, sort of admonishing this group of 20, some of them on the air, confronting them directly and saying,

what are you guys doing? What's the end game here except to look, make the Republican Party look like a clown show? Yeah, it's hard for me to go along with an editorial that says that Jim Jordan is exactly right and full of wisdom. That is a little bit of bridge too far for me at this time of the morning. You know, and the interesting thing is anybody who wants to say, well, it's such a close margin, it's so hard. Please understand that for the last two years, the Democrats have ruled with an even closer margin, 50-50 in the Senate, and fewer Democrats versus Republicans than the Republicans have now in terms of majority. Pelosi and Schumer

and Biden managed to get so much done with incredibly tight margins. These guys can't even find their way to the bathroom or elect a speaker with bigger margins than Nancy Pelosi had for the last two years. So it is really damning for the Republican Party. And that's why you see Fox News panicking. That's why you see The Post panicking. That's why you see The Wall Street Journal panicking, because this does not help them in 2024. And that's the prize they have their eyes on right now. So interesting. And that's the prize they have their eyes on right now. So interesting.

And this really was all along, Jonathan O'Meara. If you talked to Team Biden after the election, a lot of them quietly said they would never say it publicly, but they quietly said, OK, wait, let's get this straight. We control the United States Senate so we can get all the judges through. want. We can get all the ambassadors through we want. We can get all the cabinet members through we want. We don't control the House, which we thought was going to get a blowout. But you're going to have the craziest people in Washington, D.C., deciding which direction that place runs. I mean, the Biden people I spoke with were pretty gleeful about how this set them up for 2024. And that was like a couple of days after the election. They had it exactly right. This is for 2024. This is terrible news for Republicans and

pretty great news for Democrats. Yeah. Here's an image that sums up yesterday in the West Wing. Every TV, of course, tuned to the votes in Congress for the speaker. Lots of smiles and a little laughter among Biden aides, a little gleeful into how badly this is going right out of the gate for Republicans. And you're right. Look, Republicans, eventually, when they sort this through, there'll be a lot of investigations. No White House likes that. Biden aides I've talked to are bracing themselves for how unpleasant some of that will be. But politically, absolutely. This is a good dynamic. They increase their their margin in the Senate. They can get their ambassadors through the president renominated a bunch yesterday. They can get judges confirmed. They have what they need there. President going with Mitch McConnell. We'll talk more about this later to Kentucky today and bipartisanship and

act of looking like a grown up, a stark contrast to what you're seeing in the chaos in the House and the Republicans, not just the Republicans have the House. It's the margin is so slim. It is so unruly. And the lunatic fringe, as a Biden aide put it to me, is so empowered that likely they're going to overreach. They're going to backfire. And the White House only looks good by comparison, which sets them off so well for a reelection bid that we all believe will be announced in the next few weeks. I mean, I know we have to go to break, but really quickly, Claire, as a conservative, as a supporter of law enforcement, as a supporter of the intel community, coming out of and I know you saw it in Missouri, too, coming out of this reaction to the 1960s where the Pentagon was attacked and our troops were attacked and the intel community was attacked, like every conservative I ever knew campaigned against the church commission and how they

gutted, how they gutted the intel community and stopped them from doing what they needed to do to keep Americans safe across the world and at home. Right. I say that to say this is one of the sticking points for these extremists. They want their own private fund to be able to conduct their sort of church commission investigations to go after, attack. And a lot of them say dismantle the Federal Bureau of Investigations. It is it's just radicalism that will make America much less safe. You know, playing to the cheap seats has a steep price and what they're doing when they say they want to do away with the IRS. Our country is in debt, so we want to make sure

nobody pays their fair share. That makes no sense. Let's let's do away with the receivables department in a business that's failing. That's just dumb. Do away with the FBI, which is the most respected law enforcement agency in the world. You know, go after the military. This whole idea that the Republican Party has become the flag waving. We want to get rid of everybody in uniform because we don't trust them anymore is terrible for our country and even worse for the Republican Party. And they want to get rid of them.

Why? Because they're holding Donald Trump accountable as far as the FBI and the DOJ goes. And also because the military actually kept their oath. Donald Trump. And didn't subvert the Constitution of the United States of America for Donald Trump. A man who keeps losing for that.

And that's their crime. Claire McCaskill and Mike Allen, thank you both very much for being on this morning.