House speaker vote: McCarthy thanks Trump for final votes as fight nearly breaks out on floor

Donald Trump’s former Secretary of the Interior claims his old boss is losing his grip on the Republican Party.

Ryan Zinke, who formerly served as Mr Trump’s Interior secretary, appeared on “CNN Tonight” on Thursday to discuss the ongoing battle in Congress over the House speaker position and about Mr Trump’s future with the party.

Graig Graziosi reports.

Several Republican hardliners have questioned Kevin McCarthy’s willingness to engage in brinksmanship when negotiating with president Joe Biden, whose Democrats control the Senate. They have raged in the past when Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell agreed to compromise deals.

The hardliners, also including Freedom Caucus chairman Scott Perry and Chip Roy of Texas, said concessions they extracted from Mr McCarthy will make it easier to pursue such tactics this year – or force another vote on McCarthy’s leadership if he does not live up to their expectations.

“You have changes in how we’re going to spend and allocate money that are going to be historic,” said representative Mr Perry.

“We don’t want clean debt ceilings to just go through and just keep paying the bill without some counteracting effort to control spending when the Democrats control the White House and control the Senate.”

One of those Democrats, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, warned that the concessions Mr McCarthy made to win the job may come back to haunt him.

“Kevin McCarthy’s concessions to the extremists in his party make it far more likely that the Maga Republican controlled House will cause a government shutdown or a default with devastating consequences to our country,” Mr Schumer said in a statement.

In a sharp contrast to this week’s battles among House Republicans, Mr Biden and Mr McConnell appeared together in Kentucky on Wednesday to highlight investments in infrastructure.

Mr McCarthy’s belated victory came the day after the two-year anniversary of the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol, when a violent mob stormed Congress in an attempt to overturn then-president Donald Trump’s election loss.

Republican Kevin McCarthy was elected House speaker on a historic post-midnight 15th ballot early Saturday, overcoming holdouts from his own ranks and floor tensions that boiled over after a chaotic week that tested the new GOP majority’s ability to govern.

“My father always told me, it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish,” Mr McCarthy told cheering fellow Republicans.

Eager to confront president Joe Biden and the Democrats, he promised subpoenas and investigations. “Now the hard work begins,” the California Republican declared.

He credited former president Donald Trump for standing with him and for making late calls “helping get those final votes.”

Max Miller, former aide to Donald Trump and current representative-elect for Ohio’s 7th District, had a sharp assessment of Matt Gaetz earlier as the Republican speaker debacle entered its fourth and final day.

Speaking on Fox Business Network, Mr Miller — who backed GOP leader Kevin McCarthy in all the votes for speaker — was asked if Mr McCarthy’s struggles were reflecting poorly on former president Trump.

Here’s how he responded:

“Republican Kevin McCarthy is the new House speaker, but as bruising as it was for him to seize the gavel in a history-making election, it may be even more difficult for the embattled leader to do much with the powerful position — or to even keep it,” writes Lisa Mascaro for The Associated Press.

“Like the two most recent Republican speakers, John Boehner and Paul Ryan, McCarthy takes the helm of a restive, rebellious majority split in much the way as the party itself, between what’s left of the Grand Old Party conservatives and a new generation of tea party-to-Donald Trump hard-liners preferring almost no big government at all.”

Full report below.

Former US national security adviser John Bolton has vowed to launch a presidential bid and confront Donald Trump, whose support he alleges is in “terminal decline”.

The 74-year foreign policy hawk has never held elected office, but has said he believes he could win in two years, by pushing for America to adopt a tougher line against nations such as China and Russia.

A longtime backer of the invasion of Iraq, Mr Bolton claimed in an interview with a British broadcaster that his run would not be a vanity project.

Andrew Buncombe reports.