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‘The View’ Flips Out Over House Republican Speaker Fight

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


The co-hosts of ABC’s “The View” flipped out on Monday over the drama that unfolded last week with Republicans nominating Rep. Kevin McCarthy to become the speaker of the House. During a segment on “The View,” co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Sara Haines claimed that Republicans held the entire country “hostage” and acted like “thugs” on the House floor.

“The Republicans like to use identity politics and they like to talk about thugs a lot, and they like to talk about other people. I saw a lot of thuggishness going on. I saw thugs at work. I saw this uncivilized nature, and it’s like they were raised by wolves many of them, and so I wonder, if you are doing that in the chamber on the House floor, how do you expect to govern and lead by example? That’s something I wouldn’t want to see my kids do, and they were doing it,” Hostin said.

Haines said the 20 Republicans that had refused to vote for McCarthy held the entire country “hostage” by holding up the vote.

“The part here that is so bothersome is we watched the holdup of 20 people which weren’t just holding the Republican Party or McCarthy hostage. They were holding the entire country hostage because there were no members sworn in, there was no legislative business, no security briefings, you name it, so they kept going,” Haines said.

Co-host Ana Navarro said it felt like she was watching a “real housewives reunion” and said being speaker of the House might mean the “death” of McCarthy.

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“You know how they do that. They tear wigs, they pull hair, they flip over tables. I was, like, man. Where’s Andy Cohen when we need him? Kevin McCarthy got what he wanted. It’s going to be on his obituary that he was speaker of the House, which is a good thing because being speaker of the House might be the death of him,” she said.

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Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is urging her colleagues in the House to trust and have faith in newly elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a move that surprised some of her colleagues.

During an interview on Fox News’ “MediaBuzz,” Greene spoke with host Howard Kurtz about the drama last week surrounding 20 House Republicans refusing to vote for McCarthy to become the speaker until he made a slew of concessions.

Below is a transcript of the conversation:

TAYLOR GREENE: “There’s no reason to prolong this. Let’s get on with it.”

KURTZ: “Okay. Now, you told — a few months ago, you told ‘New York Times Magazine’ writer Robert Draper for his book about McCarthy, you said, ‘I think that to be the best Speaker…’ — we can put this up here — ‘…of the House and to please the base, he’s going to give me a lot of power and a lot of leeway. If he doesn’t, they’re going to be very unhappy about it. That’s not in any way a threat, that’s reality.’ So could it be said — and this has gone on in the history of our republic — that you’d already cut your deal, that if McCarthy became Speaker, you wouldn’t be treated as some fringe character, but you would have influence?”

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TAYLOR GREENE: “That’s not at all true. As a matter of fact, I don’t have any committee assignments yet. I’ve only submitted the same form that every other member gets to submit, asking for committees, and I don’t have a promise. I’ve already heard some people saying what they’re getting because that was, honestly, what a lot of the negotiations in the end were all about. I have no promise. I have no deal. I only fully supported — I’ve said this all along — the agenda that’s laid out there, it’s even on Kevin McCarthy’s website, what we can accomplish in the Republican conference, and the reason why I told that to Robert Draper is because I have the support of base, and I keep telling everyone here in Washington this is what the American people want. And it was easy for me to get onboard with this agenda because I see the conference come around the same things and —“

KURTZ: “Yeah. But just to deal with one bit of history, the Democrats stripped you of your committee assignments. I think that was raw politics. But in fairness, didn’t you also say around that period that you’d been a follower of QAnon conspiracy theories, then you had rethought this and you were no longer influenced by the group?”

TAYLOR GREENE: “Well, like a lot of people today, I had easily gotten sucked into some of the things I’d seen on the internet, but that was dealt with quickly early on. I never campaigned on those things. That was not something I believed in, that’s not what I ran for Congress on, so those are so far in the past.”

KURTZ: “All right. You tweeted, I guess in late December, ‘Being conservative and anti-establishment, I used to criticize Kevin McCarthy a lot.’ So, if that’s true, why did you end up on his side when some of your fellow conservatives in the Freedom Caucus — you know, Gaetz was saying, ‘He will not win next week, next month, next year.’”

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TAYLOR GREENE: “Thank you, that’s a great question. Yeah, he did say that. And sure enough, Kevin is our Speaker. Well, here’s what happened. I came into Congress and, you know, Kevin and I, we had some public confrontations — not necessarily confrontations, but said things about one another. But I did something that I wish more members of Congress would do. I started talking with Kevin McCarthy. I went and met with him and got to know him better and got to understand where he sees the conference going, what he sees our agenda and what we should do, and that’s why I came around a lot sooner than 20 of my Freedom Caucus colleagues. But, listen, here’s the great news, I’m glad they came around this past week. So what you saw them do, learn to trust him and have faith in the plan going forward, I was able to do that over the past year. But I hope more of my colleagues do that.”

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