‘This Is All Totally Unprecedented’: Chris Hayes Shocked After Steve Scalise Drops Speakership Bid

MSNBC host Chris Hayes was in awe over the “totally unprecedented” situation in Congress on Thursday after House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) dropped out of the race to succeed Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as House speaker after failing to secure enough votes.

Reacting to the breaking news on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, Hayes said:

This is all totally unprecedented in American history. We haven’t had this before. It’s 100 years since we had a motion to vacate the chair. Amidst an unfolding global crisis, the second in line to the president and constitutional office of Speaker of the House remains vacant, with no clear path for this House Republican caucus to rally behind anyone for an election.

NBC News Capitol Hill correspondent Ali Vitali weighed in, saying, “What’s important here is, on the one hand, it’s back to the drawing board for the rest of the Republican conference now because they have to go back, likely behind closed doors, do another kind of secret speaker election, see if they can’t get consensus at that point, and then try to bring it back to a more public floor vote.”

She noted:

We never even hit that phase with Scalise, but there are still going to be people who are jockeying for this, including the man who was Scalise’s official challenger in this round of the speakers race, Congressman Jim Jordan. He is someone who had thrown his support behind Scalise, but he never lost support from some diehards within this conference.

I do have to say, though, I don’t think it matters who the person is. They are all going to have an immensely difficult road getting to the magic number that they need to actually become speaker. In my conversations with members earlier today, when they did about three hours of basically an airing of grievances behind closed doors, some of them apparently in that meeting even joked that they don’t even think Jesus could get 217 votes in this conference. And as much as that’s hyperbole and it’s a punchline, I’m actually not sure that they’re wrong.

The position of speaker of the House was left vacant earlier this month after eight Republicans, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), voted with Democrats to oust McCarthy.

While Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) took over as speaker pro tempore, House Republicans have been unable to come together to select an official replacement for McCarthy.

In a press conference on Thursday, Scalise told reporters, “If you look at where our conference is, there’s still work to be done. Our conference still has to come together and it’s not there. There are still some people that have their own agendas.”

Watch above via MSNBC.