On Sunday, Rep. James Comer (R-KY) sat down for an interview with “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd to discuss the future of the 118th Congress and the fate of Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
At the heart of the interview was the question of whether or not a motion to vacate the chair will be taken by any of the representatives. A motion to vacate the chair was a key concession from the GOP opposition and would allow a single representative to ask for a no-confidence vote for McCarthy.
“Well, I'm not convinced we can go the entire Congress without having it,” the House Oversight Committee Chair said. “But I believe that, if that's used, I believe that right now the overwhelming majority — and when I say overwhelming majority, 218 plus Republicans realize that Kevin McCarthy needs a chance to govern, and we're going to give him a chance.”
“So I'm not going to say there won't be one person who tries to abuse that motion,” he said, adding, “but I'm confident that McCarthy's going to be able to be given the green light to govern and to lead this conference, and do the things that we told the American people we were going to do during the midterm elections.”
The congressman was then asked whether or not he is confident about McCarthy as Speaker as it took him over four days to rally his party behind him.
“Look, I know that people are disappointed,” he said. “A lot of Republicans, I represent an overwhelmingly-Republican district that Trump won by nearly 50 points the first election when he got elected the first time. They constantly seem disappointed that Republicans aren't able to do the things that Republicans say they're going to do, like, for example, vote for a term limits bill.”
As previously reported by the DC Enquirer, the 20 GOP opposition were able to negotiate the vote of seven key pieces of legislation ranging from abortion to China to border policy.
“That is overwhelmingly popular among conservative voters in America. Republicans always campaign for Congress in two things. They say, ‘We're going to pass a term limits bill, and we're going to pass a balanced budget amendment,' Comer explained. “But yet, those two votes are neither voted on. So I understand the frustration that a lot of new members, a lot of new conservatives have.”
“And you know, they drew a line in the sand on some of these bills that we always campaign on but we never seem to vote on. And I'm confident Kevin has heard from our conference that we want to vote on these things. And I'm confident that we'll do it,” he continued. “Look, it's going to be a tough job. That's why nobody else tried to run for speaker. It is a tough job to get to 218. But I believe Kevin's the right guy, and I was proud to not only support him, I nominated him on the House floor for speaker.”
Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, then gave details about the investigations into Hunter Biden's business dealings overseas: “Look, a Harvard poll just came out and said 65% of the Americans believe that the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop should be investigated. But let me be clear, we're not investigating Hunter Biden, we're investigating Joe Biden.”
“And I think any American who's kept up with the political process over the past two administrations would agree,” he continued, adding, “we need to know what is allowable and what isn't allowable with respect to foreign adversarial intervention among family members of presidents of the United States.”
With Rep. Comer being high up in the leadership of the Republican conference, his doubt of McCarthy's ability to hold the divisive members of the party together shows the difficulties that will lie ahead in the 118th Congress. McCarthy will hopefully be able to keep things from falling apart in order to allow the majority to investigate President Biden.
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