McCarthy Gives Trump Credit For Victory: “He Was All In”.
Newly-elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy thanked former President Donald Trump for helping him get the votes, telling reporters: “I don’t think anybody should doubt his influence.”
“He was with me from the beginning — somebody wrote the doubt of whether he was there — and he was all in. He would call me and he would call others. And he really was — I was just talking to him tonight — helping get those final votes.”
McCarthy, who spoke with Rep. Matt Gaetz on the floor between the 14th and 15th ballot, told CNN’s Manu Raju: “At the end of the night, Matt got everybody there from the point that nobody voted against the other way, so it actually helped unite people.”
The new House Speaker also thanked some of the core negotiators by name — Reps. Garret Graves, Patrick McHenry, Bruce Westerman, Scott Perry, Chip Roy and French Hill.
House drama: McCarthy said he is “1,000%” confident he will serve out his term, even with the new one-person threshold on the motion to vacate.
He also dismissed concerns that tonight’s drama on the floor is a taste of what is to come in the House over the next two years.
“I think by having the disruption now, really built the trust with one another and learned how to work together,” he said. “What we’re going to have to find in our mindset is that we have to frontload. We have to think about and work on the bills with a microcosm of the conference before we even start writing it. And that’s really what we learned here.”
Credit: CNN
