Why some Republicans are finally speaking out against Trump's future in the party

Now, here in Washington, a gap is growing among Republicans over the

party

's current and

future

leaders. Republican leader Kevin McCarthy's bid to become House speaker is in jeopardy. Last week he won enough votes to be nominated for the position by his

party

, but he still needs to get 218 votes in the House and so far it is not clear that he can get so many because

some

Republicans, mostly in the House Freedom caucus, have said they will not support him. All of this comes as the course of prominent Republicans calling on the party to put former President Trump, that's Donald Trump of course, behind them is getting louder.

Let's stop supporting crazy unelectable candidates in our primaries and start supporting winners who can close the deal in November. I'm a never again Trumper, why? Because I want to win and we lose to Trump, it was very clear to us in 18 of 20 and now in 2022. Still, Trump remains popular in the Republican base, which will be critical to winning the 2023 presidential nomination, so Susan responds that you interviewed former vice president Mike Prince, what did your interview do? reveal what Mike Pence thinks about the

future

of the Republican Party and perhaps his own ambitions. Well, Mike Pence believes there is an opportunity for him and that the Trump era and voters might be willing and able right now to say that's over.

Now it may turn out that he is wrong about that, but he sees an opportunity for himself; is critical of Trump's policies, not of Trump's policies, but of Trump himself in a way that, of course, he never was as vice president and you hear an upward trend as we finish hearing from people like the former president Ryan and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a willingness to criticize Trump that we haven't seen since he won the nomination in 2016. Is that enough to convince Republican voters to defeat Trump in a primary to elect

some

one? If not, Ron DeSantis or whoever his nominee is, I don't think we know yet, but we know that there is a new vulnerability around Donald Trump that didn't exist before.

I also have to ask Vice President and former Vice President Mike Pence. He was quite harsh on the January 6 Committee in other interviews. He also said no. At least he said at least in part when asked if Trump bears any criminal responsibility. He says well, no, he's not sure because Trump was listening. To the bad lawyers, what do you think of that, given the fact that Mike Pence ran to save his life on January 6th? Yes, his life, his family's life and it was endangered by the president, the former president, uh, well, I think Mike Pence is trying to do both, he's trying to be critical, he's trying to defend the action that took January 6, which so dismayed Donald Trump, while also appealing to Trump voters, and that's threading a needle that I think is very difficult, and we will do it. see if he can do that and of course we covered former President Trump together some interesting days we had together.

I'm wondering if you could talk about how real you think this breakup with Donald Trump or at least this attempted breakup with Donald Trump is. the fact that we've seen Republicans go away and then sometimes come back to Trump when it's clear that the base is still with him, yeah, I mean, if you remember the former president when he ran for president in 2016 and when he became president , told voters and Americans that they would never get tired of winning and now, after successive GOP defeats in 2018, 2020 and 2022, there are several Republicans who are getting tired of losing and are being outspoken. about criticizing the former president criticizing his choices in some of these primaries criticizing his broader political philosophy that is turning off many suburban and moderate voters now, as you mentioned, the president continues to have support among his base, he continues to be the only Republican who You can rally thousands of people to come together and rally behind you, and that's a tremendous thing in a Republican caucus, especially at a time when the party is somewhat fractured and doesn't have many Alternatives and has a number of people. that they are trying to be that alternative and when there are several people splitting a vote against President Trump, the former president and Trump, who has his base that will be with him no matter what, could have a planned path to the nomination simply based on in fact. that even if you get 30 or 35 percent and they are Rock Hard Rock Solid supporters and you have five other people who are also running for the nomination and who split that vote, it may be difficult for anyone else to have a chance, so I don't consider the former president as a formidable Republican candidate, uh, potential candidate, as someone who continues to lead the party in different ways and continues to have influence over everyone in the party, especially in Congress, and briefly I also want to ask him if what What do you think of former President Trump?

Could I continue by briefly answering what that tells you about his plan? If you could, yes, he will still be the fighter, the pugnacious former president that he has been for so long. He's been a politician as long as he's been a businessman and he wants to hit back harder than anyone could hit him so he's looking and taking names and I would expect him to be very cruel to other Republicans who try to cross him and try to take advantage. from the fact that there are a number of people who don't see him as strong as he was when he was president and we're seeing that some Republicans may say they don't want to be with him, but we're also seeing this. sort of a grassroots effort to vilify anyone who goes against their election deniers or I'm thinking of Arizona where Bill Gates is who was a high ranking official who worked there on the election system that he basically had to get into. hiding because of what was happening with the people attacking him, what does that tell you about where the Republican Party is?

Look, many of these people lost election deniers in positions of authority like governor or election oversight, but they didn't. I lose by a lot and there are many people who strongly feel and actually believe that the election is rigged and being stolen. I was in Arizona, in a congressional district where one of the tabulators simply wasn't printing accurate marks. and a gentleman came out who identified himself as a poll worker and began to worry the crowd about how maybe his ballots wouldn't be counted if they were put in the ballot boxes, which was incredible given that this has always been the process that they have followed. do it, but the point to answer your question is that it is widespread that many of these people lost, but what was that?

Why was it because Trump wasn't there, insisting and supporting them every step of the way? Based on my report that because he was quiet and these people were a bit risky, in the end everyone just accepted, but it could have been very different, but I have to say the best thing that happened in In my opinion, in this election there was 13 people running in six battleground states for jobs that would have given them oversight of elections. Yes, 13 of the 13 lost and you know, we have some election deniers elected in safe red states, that's not a Big Deal, but the idea that we as a country don't elect election deniers isn't that dangerous. in the states that will determine the next presidential race, I think the most important thing that happened is huge, it's huge, some of them were elected. to Congress, we have a much larger number in Congress right now, but to Susan's point, they are not in positions of authority to oversee the elections in 2024, which makes a big difference and we may have actually averted a crisis constitutional and, of course, I want Let's move on to the other thing that we talked about at the beginning of this, which is part of the fallout from the midterm elections, is that Kevin McCarthy Susan is going to spend a moment of her life getting these 218 votes for being president of the House of Representatives, what is your opinion? her strategy to get there and what could happen if she doesn't get those votes right.

She's going to work pretty hard between now and January 3rd because she simply has no cushion, she has no margin for error and we'll see what kind of compromises she needs to make with the freedom caucus and with others to secure the votes. her. I think it's very possible that she won't be elected president because you know you don't need to defeat him with anyone, you just need to deny him a majority of those. present at the vote and at this moment, if the elections were today, he would not get there, he would not get there.

Totally, we only have about 30 seconds left, but I just want to show you what her opinion is on what the White House is like. Seeing all of this given the fact that the president is trying to figure out how to deal with his agenda while all of this is unfolding, yes, you hear from White House officials that President Biden has worked with members of the Republican Party in the past and that already happened. over 200 bipartisan bills over the first two years, so they're optimistic they'll be able to get things done, but they're also bracing for impact because they know Republicans want to investigate everything about his administration and his family, and so That's waiting to see how aggressive Republicans will be when it comes to oversight of the Biden Administration and Heidi, the slim majority that Republicans have reflects the lean majority that Democrats have.

I think it's very interesting to me that our country is kind of swinging, but just a little bit this way and then a little bit that way, what do you think about that pit with redistricting? It would probably be very different if we didn't have the maps drawn the way they are drawn and I think I need to consider the popular vote in terms of making those determinations, but, to miss the point, they will use it only to do the investigations because this majority will do It seems like the Tea Party was really easy to defeat. manage for John Boehner only the concessions that they will demand from McCarthy, if he succeeds, he already had to reach an agreement with Marjorie Taylor Green, who now says to tell everyone that I am going to have a lot of power. and you see it already going back to some of the things she said, like accusing Mayorkas, yeah, yeah, well, there's definitely a lot to see.

Many thanks to our panelists for joining us and sharing their reports.