Rep. Gaetz on House Speakership, Criticism About His Leaving House Without Speaker

Absolutely not. The United States stands with Israel. Israel has a right to defend itself and there is no need expressed by Israel that the United States has not been able to meet. That's because we have an Israel essentially on auto pay. As a consequence of legislation that was passed by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the administration is pre-authorized to meet any need that Israel could possibly express in this particular phase of the crisis. My expectation is that we will elect Speaker-designate Jim Jordan as House Speaker next week, and we'll be prepared to move forward with resolutions of support. But those are non-binding expressions of our opinion when it comes to the movement of specific materiel in the coordination on intelligence. We are pre-authorized because our relationship with Israel is that unique. Well, I think it's important to understand how that math moved. Initially there were 81 votes against Jim Jordan and then about 30 minutes later there were only 55 votes against Jim Jordan. So on that trajectory, he seems to be gaining a good amount of momentum. Also, it's important to note that those 55 no votes on Jordan were on a secret anonymous ballot like in the basement of the Longworth office building. It's quite a different thing to stand on the floor of the House of Representatives and vote against the second most popular living Republican in America. I know how hard it is to stand on the floor and vote against the party's choice. I did it to extract concessions that I thought were meaningful that unfortunately the former speaker did not live up to, but my expectation is that next week we will elect Jim Jordan. Frankly, Michael, I think we probably could have done it last night, and I would have preferred that path, but a speaker emeritus McCarthy said that he wanted Jim Jordan's family to be able to be there, his supporters to be able to be there. And I guess one thing that Kevin McCarthy and I agree on, Jim Jordan is going to be the next speaker of the House. I find it a little ridiculous, right? Like, oh no, the world is ending because the House of Representatives isn't passing ceremonial resolutions this week. The entire United States Senate was out all week. The House of Representatives takes seven weeks off every single year for essentially a summer vacation. There are days when all we vote on are procedural votes and post offices. So I think that the chaos narrative is a bit overplayed, particularly in the Beltway, because the lobbyists and the special interests want someone in the speakership that they totally control. They had that in Kevin McCarthy, and just because lobbyists and special interests have been disempowered by the motion of AK doesn't mean it was the wrong decision, and it doesn't mean that, like, we're in chaos because there were ten days when the lights were off on the House floor. We have not put our pencils down. This last week, we were getting classified briefings on the evolving situation in the Middle East. I was taking depositions of former and current Department of Justice officials pursuant to our oversight work. So don't believe that just because there isn't floor action that somehow all of our representatives aren't working. We, in fact, are continuing the work of the Congress.