The NPR Politics Podcast - After Siege, 127 Republicans Back Failed Effort To Block Certification Of Biden's Win

Episode Date: January 7, 2021

Members of the U.S. House and Senate on Wednesday voted to reject objections to President-elect Joe Biden's election victory in the state of Arizona. Debate continues and there could be further objections, though Biden's win is very likely to be certified in the coming hours.This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow and congressional correspondent Susan Davis.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 11.15 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, January 6th. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the Biden transition. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And Sue, as we are talking, the Senate is beginning to make its way back to the House of Representatives. Both chambers have voted on Arizona's electoral college votes, which is what they were starting to do when, of course, mobs stormed the Capitol. Starting off, what was the vote? Well, we always knew what the outcome of the vote was going to be.

We've known from the beginning that they did not have the votes to sustain any of these objections. And that played out tonight. Just six Republican senators in the Senate voted in favor of the objection and 121 Republicans in the House voted in favor of the objection. Otherwise, overwhelmingly rejected by a bigger bipartisan margin. And they proceed now through the roll call of the states. We do know that there will be at least one more objection. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley said on the floor earlier this evening that he did still intend to object to the state of Pennsylvania, but he would not speak. He would yield his time on the issue, but it will again force the chambers to go back into competing session. And it still is could be several hours before we have the final conclusion, which is affirming the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

This is our third podcast of the day. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. to walk through this actual certification of the vote. As we mentioned, in a show of defiance, saying that this mob will not stop Congress from doing its job, both the House and the Senate returned to their chambers this evening. The Senate will come to order. They were there to finish the task of certifying Joe Biden's election as U.S. president. Vice President Mike Pence presided over the Senate. To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today,

you did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people's house. Debate picked up where it left off in the Capitol when it was locked down and evacuated in the middle of that debate over Arizona's electoral votes. President Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed voter fraud. So several Republicans were challenging the results of key states that Biden won.

Earlier in the day, of course, Trump had urged supporters to march to the Capitol during this vote. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was one of several lawmakers tonight who directly connected the president to the violence we saw at the Capitol. Make no mistake, my friends, today's events did not happen spontaneously. The president who promoted conspiracy theories that motivated these thugs, the president who exhorted them to come to our nation's capital, egg them on. He hardly ever discourages violence and more often encourages it.

This president bears a great deal of the blame. And many Republicans, including Mitt Romney and kind of surprisingly, Lindsey Graham, tried to put an end to the conspiracy theories that the election was stolen with fraudulent votes. No congressional audit is ever going to convince these voters, particularly when the president will continue to say that the election was stolen. The best way we can show respect for the voters who are upset is by telling them the truth. Maybe I, among any above all others in this body, need to say this. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected and will become the president and the vice president of the United States on January the 20th. So, Sue, how and why did lawmakers go from sheltering in undisclosed locations to

marching back to the House and Senate to keep doing their job? There was an overwhelming sense among lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, that they had to get back to work and finish the job tonight. One, obviously, Scott, there's a constitutional responsibility here to convene on the specific date of January 6 to certify the election. There's also sort of a political statement that they needed to send to the country to that they could see them gathered again, that the business of the Congress was proceeding, following hours of rather horrifying images to the country of people essentially ransacking the Capitol and

breaking and damaging the floor of the Senate. And I think that they felt a responsibility to the country to sort of show that regular order had not been fully ruined in the country. And it seemed like a very necessary thing to do this evening. Yeah. We've highlighted some of the Republicans speaking out against the challenge to the count, speaking out against the violence today. I think one of them really notably is Kelly Loeffler, the senator who just lost reelection in Georgia, gave a speech on the floor in which she said she could no longer in good conscience continue with the objection. We also saw Steve Daines of Montana and James Langford of Oklahoma put out a joint statement saying that they would withdraw their objections. Likewise, two Republican senators from Tennessee withdrew theirs. So I do think in some ways it had a sort of chastening effect on some of these

Republicans, especially in the Senate. Senate Republicans are really sort of at each other right now. There's a lot of discord within the party, even before today, of how they were handling this and the validity of these objections. But, you know, look at that House vote. There was still 121 House Republicans willing to vote for these objections. So I don't know if we can say that today did too much to sort of quell the efforts in some corners of the Republican Party to legitimize what the president has been doing. 121 votes, even after all of this. Even after all this and some of the president's, you know, most loyal defenders on the Hill,

Matt Gaetz, he's a Republican from Florida, went so far as to suggest that some of the protesters were actually Antifa or left-wing activists. He was sort of booed down on the floor by House Democrats when he said that, but continued very forcefully to maintain some of the allegations that the president has said about voting integrity that has been proven to be wrong time and time again. So I don't know if the president lost as many allies today on the Hill as some might think he did because of his behavior, but he still has quite a bit of support, especially in the House. Yeah. Let me end with this. We talked a little bit about this before. You have worked in the Capitol for years and years. You know a lot of people

there. You have walked in those halls. You have sat in those galleries. What from today do you think is going to stand out in your mind? A long time, House Aid texted me tonight, and they said, today feels like the end of something. And I don't know why, but that's really stuck in my head. I feel like it's really hard for me to digest all of the events that happened today into one salient point. But I do feel like this is an event that we are going to be talking about for a really long time to come, because of not only what it says about what's happening inside the Republican Party, but what it says about our fellow citizens, what it says about

our elections, what it says about the safety and security of our government institutions. I think Congress and incoming President Joe Biden and the country are going to be reeling about this event for a long time to come. So we still have a lot of work to do to try to figure out what happened today and why. And a lot happened today. Like I said, this was our third podcast. We are going to end this now, though. Thank you for being with us to try to make sense of everything that happened today. We will be back in your feed at our regular time tomorrow. This story is going to continue to develop overnight, though, so make sure you check out up first when you wake up in the morning. Look forward to talking to you tomorrow, though. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the Biden transition.

And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. Thank you for listening to the Imperial Politics Podcast.