Fox News Reporter Warns House Speaker Delay Becoming a ‘National Security Issue’

Fox News congressional correspondent Chad Pergram pointed out on Thursday that concerns are beginning to bubble up regarding the national security implications of the House of Representatives being without a speaker – effectively shutting the chamber.

“Another nominating speech on behalf of Kevin McCarthy,” began Neil Cavuto as he cut away from the House floor.

“They’re going for a 10th vote on this. But like all the others we’ve seen before, it be an uphill battle to see if those numbers change for Kevin McCarthy, as you can see. Typically, we see 20 vote against him. They vote for alternatives to him and that number is not budge. And some of the McCarthy forces had been wanting to see, or at least if we were still going to be wildly away from the four that we can afford to lose the four Republicans, we could afford to lose two to get to that magic number at least will bring that 20 who aren’t big fans of ours down,” Cavuto added.

“And that has not happened. Back to Chad Pergram on all of this. So it raises what I had touched on with you before, the notion that Democrats maybe play a role here, the Marcy Kaptur thing, she would cross lines, but she would want something for that. And, you know, it wouldn’t be necessarily Kevin McCarthy, let’s say, or Democrats, you know, stand down. Some of them don’t vote or vote present, which would change that denominator, all sorts of possibilities and maybe concessions to go along with those Democrats to get just that. So where do you see this headed?” Cavuto asked Pergram.

“Well, at some point there’s going to be those talks because people are starting to get upset, you know, staying on the floor. It’s one thing to do this for two or three days. Let’s say we’re here tomorrow. Let’s say we’re here all Friday night, Saturday, the weekend. Again, those talks are being had very quietly right now, but they are starting to being had because we are no closer to electing a speaker than we were on Tuesday afternoon when they started the Congress,” Pergram replied.

“And something that the Democrats and some Republicans have started to hit now is that this might be a national security issue,” he continued, adding:

If you look in your Constitution, the first officer that’s mentioned for the United States is the speaker of the House. In Article one of the Constitution. The Senate majority leader is never mentioned anywhere. In fact, we didn’t have a Senate majority leader until about 110 years ago. So the speaker of the House is the constitutional officer for this branch of government. You have Democrats and Republicans who are starting to say, wait, we can’t get briefings on important things that we need to talk about What would happen if there were to be a crisis. That’s a problem, you know, if there’s health issues out there.

And so the Democrats and some Republicans are starting to hammer that, now does that result in some sort of negotiation? I want to see who this person is, though, who Ro Khanna, the Democrat from California, and Marcy Kaptur, the Democrat from Ohio, who would be willing to vote for because, again, that person hasn’t arrived yet. It’s hard to see. We talked about this the other day, Neil, about sometimes you get in a leadership election, somebody comes out of nowhere. That person still has not met, has not materialized.

Watch the full clip above via Fox News