House Republicans suffered a series of cringe-worthy losses on Tuesday night as they failed to impeach Biden Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and advance a bill to provide funding to support Israel in its war against the animalistic terrorist group Hamas. Naturally, ABC, CBS, and NBC took victory laps Wednesday morning over the “chaotic night” and “stunner” on Capitol Hill with the GOP’s “embarrassing...setbacks.”
We wish we could lead off with a different network, but ABC’s Good Morning America put an aurora of revelry. Co-host Robin Roberts teased the “chaotic night on Capitol Hill ends with a stunning vote” thanks to “Congressman Al Green, coming from surgery, still in hospital scrubs, to cast the key vote while a bill to provide aid to Israel also fails after Republicans backed away from a bipartisan border deal.”
What party was Green, Robin?
Senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott deserved a cushy salary from House Democrats for the amount of water she carried for them: “[T]his is an embarrassing string of setbacks. In the last 24 hours alone, Republicans killed a border deal they helped negotiate, failed to impeach the Homeland Security secretary, and couldn’t even get enough votes to pass additional aid to Israel.”
“Overnight, an embarrassing defeat for Republicans. The House failing to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas over his handling of the border...A handful of GOP lawmakers refusing to fall in line, saying the party provided no evidence of an impeachable offense,” she added.
Scott further noted the GOP “thought they had the votes, but then Texas Democrat Al Green, who just underwent emergency surgery, showed up, wheelchair-bound and in hospital scrubs, to cast the deciding vote” in one of many steps in “a chaotic 24 hours...with Republicans also backing away from a bipartisan border deal their own party helped negotiate” and was, in her view, “the most sweeping reform in decades.”
For good measure, Scott tried to play cause and effect in both hours of the show to insist the GOP’s fear of Donald Trump — not its particulars — was why the deal failed (click “expand”):
SCOTT: It’s the kind of package Johnson said he wanted for months. [TO JOHNSON] You said a few months ago that you wanted to see a bipartisan agreement on border security anD additional aid to Ukraine. Senators say that they did that.
JOHNSON: They did not send us a border security measure. They didn’t.
SCOTT: After Donald Trump started bashing the compromise, Johnson declared it dead on arrival.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: It’s time for Republicans in Congress to show a little courage, to show a little spine, to make it clear to the American people that you work for them, not for anyone else.
SCOTT: So, as for where things stand this morning, Senate Democrats will force two votes, one on that package, which is expected to fail. Another one with just additional aid to both Israel and Ukraine...[A]s for Trump, well, he is celebrating the news that that border bill is dead. Of course, he wants to run on immigration in November.
(....)
SCOTT: You may remember that Republicans demanded border security provisions in exchange for additional aid to both Ukraine and Israel. Well, Democrats agreed to that. And now, Republicans are backing away from that deal. They’ve been receiving increasing pressure from former President Donald Trump, who wants to run on this issue in November. So, now, after four months of negotiation and a rare bipartisan compromise, that deal considered dead on arrival in both the Senate and House, with no clear path forward.
NBC’s Today also first went to the vote with co-host Hoda Kotb teasing “new chaos in Washington” and co-host Savannah Guthrie chiming in that it was a “stunner”.
Going later to Capitol Hill correspondent Ryan Nobles, Guthrie remarked it was quite “a surprise”.
Nobles boasted in part that it’s “safe to say....this did not turn out the way Republicans had planned” (click “expand”):
NOBLES: Yeah, that is safe to say, Savannah. This did not turn out the way Republicans had planned. They hoped to use the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas as a way to put the border issues front and center. Instead, that vote failed, leaving Speaker Mike Johnson struggling to find a path forward. A stunning development on Capitol Hill and day of chaos for House Republicans —
JOHNSON: The resolution is not adopted.
NOBLES: — who were hoping to impeach Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Holding onto a razor-thin majority, there were a few Republican defections, but they still thought they had enough votes. That was until Democrat Al Green, recovering from surgery, made a surprise appearance, providing Democrats an extra vote, enough to kill the measure.
(....)
NOBLES: But Republicans, who begged for changes at the border, now arguing this package would make the situation worse.
SENATOR RON JOHNSON (R-WI): This does more harm than good.
NOBLES: The result is the best and only hope of any type of border reform is effectively dead while the crisis at the border continues to grow with no solution in sight.
In the second hour, Guthrie returned to the “political stunner” as “[t]he vote went down in dramatic fashion” during a “chaotic night in Washington.”
Nobles also sounded off on the “stunning turn of events that Republicans in the House were just not prepared for”.
CBS Mornings made it three-for-three with the House GOP in the lead-off spot. Co-host Tony Dokoupil pivoted from the Eye Opener round-up to “the political confusion on Capitol Hill” and “[a]fter weeks of threatening to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allegedly ignoring the border crisis, GOP lawmakers did not have the votes to make an impeachment stick.”
“And, at the very same time, some of those same Republicans, apparently spooked by a warning from Donald Trump, worked to kill a bipartisan senate bill that might have addressed the very same immigration problems Mayorkas is accused of ignoring,” he continued.
Going to congressional correspondent Nikole Killion, Dokoupil invited her to share the details since “people want to know what is going on there.”
To see the relevant transcripts from February 7, click here (for ABC), here (for CBS), and here (for NBC).
