Jim Jordan Face-Plants Even Harder During Second House Speaker Vote

Fifteen days without a speaker of the House, and it appears that the Republican Party, and the nation, are back to square one.

Representative Jim Jordan lost the floor vote for the seat a second time on Wednesday, and by an even bigger margin than in the first round of voting, marking what many believe to be an end to the ultraconservative’s bid for the House’s most prominent position.

The Ohio Republican secured only 199 votes on Wednesday, two fewer than he got a day earlier. Twenty-two of his own colleagues voted against him.

It’s not a surprise that Jordan is bleeding votes. Republican opposition to the Freedom Caucus founder was tight ahead of the vote, with one House GOP member predicting potentially 25 votes against Jordan if voting went to a third ballot.

“The opposition is organized. We’re in tight comms, unified, and growing,” the unnamed member said, reported CNN’s Manu Raju.

Even one of Jordan’s own allies asked for “prayers” for the speaker nominee on Wednesday morning, predicting more losses for Jordan, reported Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman.

Jordan’s rise-and-fall candidacy highlighted a growing rift in the Republican Party, split between a handful of far-right members of the House and a silent majority of moderates.

The GOP began weighing new options even before the second ballot for Jordan’s speakership began. Extending Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry’s term is chief among them, though Jordan has spoken out against it, reported Fox News’s Chad Pergram. The move would extend McHenry’s temporary position to November 17 and increase his power ahead of the impending government shutdown next month.

“We’ve been at this for two weeks. The American people deserve to have their government functioning,” Jordan said to a huddle of reporters ahead of Wednesday’s vote.

There was one word sorely missing from President Biden’s big speech in Israel on Wednesday: “cease-fire.”

Biden visited Israel on Wednesday to express solidarity with the country and meet with leaders there. In a lackluster speech from Tel Aviv, he cautioned against Israeli aggression and condemned Hamas, but carefully avoided calling for a de-escalation in the conflict.

“Hamas committed atrocities that recall the worst ravages of ISIS, unleashing pure, unadulterated evil upon the world. There’s no rationalizing it, no excusing it. Period,” Biden said.

He made the distinction that the “vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people,” he said.

However, he only issued a soft warning to Israel: “While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it.”

“After 9/11 we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes,” he said.

Biden did not call for a ceasefire or de-escalation, and promised to support Israel. “I know the choices are never clear or easy,” he said.

“What sets us apart from the terrorists is we believe in the fundamental dignity of every life,” Biden said, but he made no mention of the egregious statements made by many Israeli officials suggesting they believe just the opposite, and no condemnation of Israel’s indiscriminate massacre of Palestinians.

Israel’s immense military response in Gaza has left over 3,000 Palestinians dead and over 12,000 thousand injured, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Israel continues to block Gaza from receiving any food, water, electricity, or humanitarian aid. On Tuesday, a bombing at a hospital in Gaza wounded and injured hundreds of people, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis. Palestinian officials have blamed an Israeli airstrike, but Israeli officials claim that a misfired Hamas rocket was to blame, a point which Biden echoed in his speech.

Instead of calling for a ceasefire, Biden made it clear that his priorities lie with the Israelis.

“For me, as the American president, there is no higher priority than the release and safe return of all these hostages,” he said.

Biden said that the violence “cuts deeper” in Israel, because of the “scars left by millennia of antisemitism.” He pointed out that the day of Hamas’s incursion was the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

“The world watched then. It knew. And the world did nothing. We will not stand by and do nothing again,” he said referring to mass genocide. This sentiment sits in stark contrast to statements like those of Holocaust scholar Raz Segal, who has called Israel’s military response in Gaza a “textbook case of genocide.”

Biden’s silence fits with a HuffPost report last week that found that U.S. diplomats have been warned not to use the words “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed,” and “restoring calm.”

Biden’s speech also comes shortly after the U.S. vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that condemned Hamas’s attack, condemned all violence against civilians, and called for a “humanitarian pause” in Gaza. The U.S. was the only country in the UNSC to veto this resolution.

Republican fears around Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent party pivot appear to be coming true.

In a potential three-way 2024 presidential election, RFK Jr.’s influence over independents would give President Joe Biden a seven percentage point advantage over Donald Trump, according to a new national poll by NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Marist.

The junior Kennedy, who began his presidential campaign on the Democratic ticket, drew the ire of Republicans last week when he switched to being an independent in his long-shot White House bid.

That decision is apparently leaching support among independents, and some Republicans, away from Trump.

The 1,218-person survey shows that between Biden and Trump alone, the campaign for the White House would be a tight race, with Biden securing 49 percent of the vote against Trump’s 46 percent.

However, when RFK Jr. is thrown in the mix, support for Trump drops to 37 percent and Biden’s number dips to 44 percent, with RFK Jr. nabbing 16 percent of the vote—a graver loss for Trump than previously predicted.

With Kennedy running as an independent, Democratic support behind Biden dips by five percentage points, while Republican support behind Trump plummets by 10 points, according to the poll’s findings.

The 69-year-old’s outsider campaign has curried favor with some members of the far right for disavowing aspects of U.S. history while touting vaccine conspiracy theories. But RFK Jr.’s numbers in the recent poll also speak to a growing demographic in American politics: independents tired of hyperpartisan politics who are looking for another option.

“Although it’s always tricky to assess the impact of a third-party candidate, right now Kennedy alters the equation in Biden’s favor,” said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “What this does speak to, however, is that about one in six voters are looking for another option, especially independents.”

Representative Elise Stefanik might have thought she was offering a stoic show of support while nominating Jim Jordan for House speaker on Wednesday, but instead she was met with a cacophony of boos from her colleagues when an unexpected turn in her speech nodded to Jordan’s alleged role in a collegiate sex abuse scandal.

“Jim is the voice of the American people who have felt voiceless for far too long,” Stefanik said on the House floor. “Whether on the wrestling mat or in the committee room, Jim Jordan is strategic, scrappy, tough, and principled.”

It was an odd detail to highlight amid what is arguably the highlight of Jordan’s already explosive political career.

Jordan, who served as an assistant coach to Ohio State University’s wrestling team between 1986 and 1994, has faced severe blowback for allegedly participating in a coverup of the rampant sex abuse by team doctor Richard Strauss.

Strauss committed 1,429 sexual assaults and 47 rapes against at least 177 male student-athletes during his tenure with the team, according to a 2019 university report.

After Representative Steve Scalise lost the GOP nomination last week, former OSU athletes spoke out en masse against the possibility of a Jordan speakership, arguing that the ultraconservative politician failed to protect them from the serial predator and “doesn’t deserve to be House speaker.”

“Do you really want a guy in that job who chose not to stand up for his guys?” former OSU wrestler Mike Schyck told NBC. “Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House speaker?”

A Jordan spokesperson, Russell Dye, denied that the Trump-endorsed congressman knew of the abuse during his time at OSU. “Chairman Jordan never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it,” Dye said in an email to NBC.

It appears that even Fox News is sick of Republican infighting.

Fox anchor Brian Kilmeade was caught fuming on a hot mic during the speaker vote on Tuesday, snubbing Representative Don Bacon as a “dumbass” after the Nebraska Republican voted against Jim Jordan.

Kilmeade may have been reaching the end of his rope with the divided caucus. Earlier in the day, the testy Fox & Friends host called the House GOP a “carnival of idiots” for floundering amid the party’s leadership crisis.

Off the floor, other members of Fox seemed equally tired of the charade.

“We wouldn’t be here if every single Democrat didn’t vote with eight Republicans to shut this place down,” former speaker Kevin McCarthy told a press huddle moments after Jordan lost the House vote.

“There’s 16 Republicans who voted against Jim Jordan today on the floor, including two votes [for] somebody who’s not even a member anymore,” Fox News’s Chad Pergram lashed back. (In reality, 20 Republicans voted against Jim Jordan.)

The frustration is palpable from a network that actively attempted to rally support behind Jordan. One of the station’s highest-rated anchors, Sean Hannity, was exposed over the weekend for conducting a pressure campaign against undecided party members in an attempt to push the Ohio Republican past the 217-vote finish line, reported The Washington Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell.

Meanwhile, moderates are beginning to question if the ultraconservative Republican is the only option, openly floating the idea of keeping Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry in the position with expanded powers until November 17, when government funding expires.