‘Definite Fact Checks Need To Be Made There!’ CNN Anchor Stunned By McCarthy ‘Hard Turn’ From Feinstein Tribute To Shutdown Rant

CNN anchor Sara Sidner was stunned by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy’s “hard turn” from a tribute to the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-NY) to rants about the government shutdown and the impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden.

News broke Friday morning that the trailblazing senator had passed away at the age of 90, prompting a flood of tributes. McCarthy spoke movingly about the bipartisanship he experienced with Feinstein — then segued into blaming Democrats for the shutdown and burnishing his party’s impeachment inquiry hearing.

On Friday’s edition of CNN News Central, Sidner noted the “hard turn” and the need to “fact check” things McCarthy said — which correspondent Lauren Fox and anchor Dana Bash obliged:

SARA SIDNER: All right. We made a really hard turn from the death of Dianne Feinstein and actually something that you don’t often hear, a very bipartisan moment there where he talked about working together with her to get a water act passed. And then he launched into the government shutdown, blaming everything basically on Biden and the Democrats. Let’s get straight to Lauren Fox, who is on Capitol Hill. And talk us through what we just heard. There are some definite fact checks that need to be made there!

LAUREN FOX: Well, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy clearly at a point where he knows that he has no good options right now to avoid a government shutdown, he walked the press through there basically some victories that he says that his party had last night. Yes, they did pass three individual spending bills. They failed to pass another one with more than 20 Republican defections. But none of the bills that they passed last night, none of the bills that he was celebrating would avoid a government shutdown at this point. That is because they are all dead on arrival in the Senate and they only partially fund the full federal government.

Right now, McCarthy’s focus is to try to get that short term spending bill through the Congress, but he does not have Republican votes to do so. He may not even have the procedural votes to get over an initial hurdle. And that puts him in a position where there really are no good options right now.

And you saw there, he’s trying to basically make this about the southern border. That is a message that he is intending for hardliners who say that they want to crack down on the Biden administration. But he’s arguing if they don’t vote for this proposal, then they essentially are just supporting the Biden administration.

But you also see him, and he has done this in the hall over the course of the last several weeks, blaming Biden for a shutdown. Of course, McCarthy and Biden had an agreement on spending levels that was part of the debt ceiling deal that they brokered in May.

And yet House Republicans have continued to move forward with individual pieces of spending legislation that are at far lower levels than what was agreed to between House Republican leadership and the White House.

So just a couple of things to keep in mind. As you hear House Speaker Kevin McCarthy there, again, the expectation is today around 11:30, there will be this procedural vote to try to pass a short term spending bill with just Republicans backing it. But he doesn’t have the votes right now. In fact, Representative Matt Gaetz is on the floor of the House railing against that proposal. He has been a key detractor of the speaker and has been threatening to potentially oust the speaker if he doesn’t make good on a series of demands that conservatives have been arguing for.

KATE BOLDUAN: So, All right, Lauren, stick with us. Let me bring Dana Bash in on this one as well. Dana, what do you see in Kevin McCarthy’s attempt at messaging out of this and in this tough moment in this, as I’ve been kind of describing it as the rock, him being in a rock between a rock and a hard place of his own design.

DANA BASH: I don’t think it is surprising that what you mostly heard there was not about the shutdown and spending, although he did talk about it a bit, but it was about Hunter Biden. It was about Joe Biden. It was about allegations, which we should say, as we’ve said and as was demonstrated with this hearing that the oversight committee had yesterday. We don’t have any evidence that Joe Biden committed any impeacheable offenses. In fact, some right-leaning legal experts said that under oath yesterday. So the fact that that was a very big part of his remarks is is quite telling about where he wants us to be focused.

Watch above via CNN News Central.