The seemingly never-ending fight for the House speakership has exposed a glaring rift within the Republican Party, with a group of hard-right holdouts refusing to budge when it comes to electing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
While McCarthy continues to negotiate and offer up every concession he can think of to try to sway this MAGA faction to finally give him the speaker’s gavel, the ultraconservative members have declared themselves “Never Kevin” while watching McCarthy squirm through 11 (and counting) unsuccessful votes.
Throughout this ordeal, the majority of Fox News hosts and commentators have clearly thrown in with the establishment wing of the GOP (and former President Donald Trump) and urged the far-right contingent to do what’s best for the party and stand down. Yet, at the same time, the conservative cable giant’s loudest and most influential voice has increasingly backed the anti-McCarthy crowd while taking swings at his own colleagues.
ADVERTISEMENT
With each round of speaker votes that McCarthy has lost since Tuesday, primetime star Tucker Carlson has grown increasingly more outspoken in his support for the rebel group of lawmakers opposing the California lawmaker.
For example, after McCarthy fell short in his first three votes, Carlson called the inter-party struggle “refreshing” and a sign of true “democracy” while simultaneously praising McCarthy—whom he has long criticized.
“To be fair, this is politics and McCarthy does have strengths,” he declared. “It’s not easy being speaker when the House is this closely divided. And in some ways, Kevin McCarthy is perfectly suited for that. He’s skilled in politics. Not a small thing.”
The right-wing nationalist host, though, set a marker that night, listing off a set of demands that the holdouts would force McCarthy to accept in order to become speaker. According to Carlson on Tuesday night, McCarthy shouldn’t be speaker unless he appointed Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to chair a “Frank Church committee” probing the FBI and releasing all the footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Carlson has pushed several conspiracy theories about the Capitol attack.)
By the time Wednesday arrived, Carlson made it clear that he was fully siding with the “Never Kevin” crowd, all while most of his Fox cohorts were begging the group to fold and end the standoff.
“Oh, you've got reservations about Kevin McCarthy? You don't want to be ruled by a man who wears a Ukrainian flag lapel pin and lives with Frank Luntz?” Carlson snarked on Wednesday night, referencing McCarthy’s close friendship with Luntz, a pollster and GOP insider.
Carlson also blasted Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), a vocal critic of the anti-McCarthy hardliners, calling the conservative lawmaker “the snarling face of the donor class” for comparing the group to “terrorists.”
Just an hour later, however, Carlson’s primetime compadre Sean Hannity locked horns with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), one of the leaders of the “Never Kevin” contingent. Repeatedly urging the pro-Trump congresswoman to “pack it in” and take the loss, Hannity grew increasingly agitated as Boebert dismissed his pleas.
Hannity’s shouting match with Boebert, meanwhile, prompted Fox’s smaller far-right media rivals to pounce and call out the conservative network for casting in with the “uniparty swamp rats.” Newsmax host and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson, for instance, called Hannity “the Praetorian Guard of the establishment” while decrying his “embarrassing” interview with Boebert.
If Hannity’s face-off with Boebert made the far-right mad, Fox & Friend’s host Brian Kilmeade’s description of the holdout group made them absolutely furious. Grousing on Thursday morning about the continued stalemate, Kilmeade fumed that “this is how insincere the insurrectionists are.” Realizing almost immediately how loaded that term is, especially on the right, Kilmeade tried to take it back.
“Probably shouldn't use that word,” he scrambled. “The people that don't wanna vote for Kevin McCarthy.”
His Fox & Friends co-host, Steve Doocy, was also irate over the dead-enders in the House GOP caucus. “I heard so many people say, ‘You know, that’s just how democracy works.’ This is not democracy. This is a televised hijacking,” Doocy asserted. “They are intent, simply, on blowing up the party, which they are doing, and this Congress. They do not care.”
Despite the anger directed their way by MAGA media figures and ultra-right provocateurs, Fox News pundits have continued to rush to the network’s airwaves to denounce the “Never Kevin” crew.
“Just as you can’t give in to terrorists and you can’t give in to hostage-takers, you can't allow them to take the conference hostage and win,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Fox News contributor, proclaimed on Hannity’s show.
“They all look like idiots, and that's how they are acting,” Fox commentator Ari Fleischer, a former Bush White House press secretary, exclaimed on Thursday.
Fox News host Jeanine Pirro went even further on Thursday’s broadcast of The Five, crying that the hardliners were “making the Republicans look ridiculous” while attacking Boebert personally. “With all due respect, I mean, the woman barely won her race,” she added.
Fox News contributor Ben Domenech also compared the House impasse to a “terrorist standoff” during a Fox Business Network appearance on Thursday—a bridge that was apparently too far for Carlson.
The primetime host included Domenech’s remarks in a montage of other cable news personalities criticizing the holdouts, leaving his most biting mockery for his Fox colleague.
“Another one of the buffoons in the clip you just saw went further and called the whole thing terrorism, which is the remorseless use of violence against a civilian population to effect a political goal,” Carlson huffed, adding that Domenech was part of the “moron community.” (Of course, this is far from the first time that Carlson has taken public shots at his Fox News colleagues. Memorably, his mockery of veteran Fox News anchor Shepard Smith—who defended another Fox News personality that Carlson ridiculed on-air—led to Smith’s departure.)
While Carlson continues to cheer on the GOP infighting and touts it as “what democracy looks like,” another one of his right-wing primetime colleagues has tried to thread a needle by supporting the process while calling on unity.
“What looks chaotic and kind of seems counterproductive to many—it’s actually, in its own way, refreshing because it’s democracy in action,” Laura Ingraham said on Wednesday night. She also went on to say that the group was “playing with fire” and “blocking McCarthy” didn’t help them in the long run.
And on Thursday night, she was telling the rebels that it was time to end the standoff before confronting the top ringleader of the group, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). In the end, Gaetz told Ingraham that he would resign if the Republicans struck a deal with Democrats to get McCarthy the speakership.
