The ouster of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as Speaker of the House was all but guaranteed by all of the deals he made behind the scenes with the far-right members of the GOP caucus.
That's the view of Kurt Bardella, a former Breitbart staffer turned Democratic strategist, who joined MSNBC's Katie Phang to discuss the situation on Tuesday following the historic House vote.
"If you make continuing deals with devils, it comes back to bite you," said Phang. "Was this inevitable? Was the fact McCarthy was going to be ousted an inevitability?"
POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?
"Once there were 15 rounds of voting back in January to make him Speaker of the House ... that he had to make all these mysterious side deals that they were never transparent about and they refused to disclose to the American people," said Bardella. "Once he was anointed Speaker that way, there was a proverbial gun to his head and this was always going to be the inevitable outcome."
"When you see this much power, when you're so desperate to just get the name Speaker of the House, you know, above your office, you're willing to do anything and say anything and make a deal with anyone to try to achieve that," Bardella continued. "Well, this is what's going to happen. You're going to be held hostage. It is insane in a conference of more than 200 members has allowed themselves to be taken hostage by six, seven, eight radical MAGA extremists. That's not the way to function and not the message you want to send: if you trust us with the majority, this is how we're going to conduct, it's going to be chaos and dissension and pettiness."
"And now what they're doing now is taking out a giant billboard saying 'vote for Democrats if you want competency in 2024,' because right now it's just chaos," added Bardella.
Watch the video below or at the link.
Kurt Bardella says McCarthy had a "gun to his head"www.youtube.com
