For the first time in a century, the vote to select a new Speaker of the House advanced beyond a single ballot on Tuesday. Yet according to Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, the Capitol Hill ordeal being televised on nearly every major news channel was much ado about nothing.
Speaking on The Five, the significance of Rep. Kevin McCarthy failing to acquire a majority vote after three ballots was apparently lost on Gutfeld, who struggled to make a coherent argument against its newsworthiness.
“Speaking of drama, you know the difference between that last vote one hundred years ago and this one? This one’s on TV. What are we doing? If this was relegated to C-SPAN, we wouldn’t even know it existed,” Gutfeld exclaimed, prompting agreement from co-host Jeanine Pirro.
“But because it’s on our shows now, they are like, ‘Okay, this is for my future. I’m going to be like, I need to do this to make the people on Twitter happy… or [so] my buddies on television will invite me more often, because I’m seen as feisty,’” Gutfled continued, not making clear who exactly he was referring to.
Gutfeld seemed discouraged after just one day of a GOP-controlled House, commenting later that “it’s like the Republicans read a book by the Democrats saying how to really screw up your party.”
The House ultimately voted to adjourn until Wednesday at noon—but not before McCarthy fell 16 votes short in the third round of voting. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) received 20 votes, one of which came from Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who had previously backed McCarthy. Even Fox News anchors couldn’t help but describe Tuesday’s events as “pretty bad,” even approaching an “unmitigated disaster” for McCarthy.
Gutfeld predicted that when it’s all said and done, McCarthy will “probably” prevail. “But I don’t care!” he shouted. “This is the worst game of chicken ever. It’s just a game of chicken. You have a car going at the other, and you wait. And it’s not even that. It’s not even that. It’s just bad!”
Jesse Watters then turned to liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov, asking, “You must really just love watching this, don’t you?”
“Not a bad day to be a Democrat,” Tarlov replied, joking that headlines should read “Dems in Array,” in light of the fact every single Democrat in the House voted for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the incoming Minority Leader.
