‘Yell at Me All You Want!’ GOP Rep. Mike Lawler and Lawrence Jones Get Into Heated Debate Over Speaker Vote on Fox & Friends
Things got tense in the typically convivial Fox & Friends studio when co-host Lawrence Jones grilled Republican Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) over the chaotic vote for House Speaker.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) lost his second vote to become House Speaker, leaving the second in line position to the presidency vacant for over two weeks — which is, by any objective measure, a shockingly bad and embarrassing situation for the House GOP, which holds a slim majority.
Lawler has been a vocal critic of what he called a “clown show” when Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted as speaker when eight Republicans voted with Democrats in a motion to vacate. Lawler has targeted his frustration with “charlatan” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and did not support the more extremist Jordan in his two bids for the role.
Fox & Friends largely ignored what they’d previously derided as a “carnival of idiots” in the first half of the three-hour show, focusing instead on the Israel-Hamas War.
For his part, Jones did not share his frustration with the process, the very frustration that many voters are feeling, and asked, “What is it going to take for you guys to get your act together?”
Lawler understood constituents’ frustration over the ongoing chaos but then said the biggest challenge is building a consensus within his own conference. In other words, the Republicans have only themselves to blame for what’s unfolding because they cannot get on the same page following the disruption led by Gaetz over two weeks ago.
Jones didn’t seem to understand that answer and flatly pushed back, saying, “the Matt Gaetz thing is past us now. We have a new nominee that’s on the floor. And the question is, why aren’t you voting for him?” And then the yelling started:
Lawler: Respectfully, it’s not past us. And that that’s the challenge here. And what I’ve said to Jim Jordan—
Jones: McCarthy is not the nominee.
Lawler: What I’ve said to Jim Jordan from the very start is you have to get the right people in the room so that we can hash this out.
Jones: I’m asking about you though, congressman. Not the right people — you! You are voting against.
Lawler: With all due respect, you can you can yell at me about it. But with all due respect, if we don’t get everybody in the room to hash out the path forward, it doesn’t matter who the speaker is. All right. We can elect a new speaker, but we still need 218 votes on the floor to pass our appropriations bills to deal with aid to Israel, to deal with the crisis in Ukraine, to deal with our border. If we can’t compromise within the conference. Forget about the Democrats within the conference. We’re not going to be able to govern. And that is the fundamental problem here. So when you had eight people team up with 208 Democrats to unceremoniously remove Kevin McCarthy without cause, and then they moved to block Steve Scalise because they wanted Jim Jordan, you create a problem within the conference. And what I’m saying is if you want to fix it, as I told Jim Jordan last week, get everybody in the room that needs to be there and fix it. That’s the only way forward.
Jones: Leave the room until it’s fixed. Yeah, we’ll see this another way.
Lawler: We told Jim, Stay in the room till you get 217. Don’t put it on the floor until you have it.
Jones: Agreed. And he. And he did. He went without it. And we had less votes yesterday than before.
What is evident in this exchange, which was spirited and civil, is the disconnect between a television pundit parading their ignorance of compromise and deal-making and asking very simple questions about why something isn’t working, and an elected leader who knows he has to make deals and compromises to get anything done.
In other words, it’s a perfect example of why the speakership chaos is currently unfolding and why Jim Jordan’s strong-arm tactics and extremist win-at-all-cost ways are hurting his chances of becoming Speaker of the House.
Watch above via Fox News.
