House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) used his leadership status to extend his so-called “magic minute” much farther than that to rail against the spending bill on the House floor. The bill, which contains President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda. is all but certain to pass.
House Democrats roasted McCarthy on Twitter and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) called the speech a “temper tantrum.”
During Thursday’s edition of The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell dropped in McCarthy’s speech in real time.
“Kevin McCarthy is still speaking on the House floor in what is now the longest speech of his life,” said O’Donnell. “Most House members only get to speak for one minute at a time on the House floor, but the leaders of each party basically have unlimited speaking time in situations like this.”
The MSNBC host said McCarthy is “using that unlimited time as no one on the losing side of a vote in the House ever has before. He is clearly a desperate man on that floor tonight. Desperately, not trying to win the vote, but desperately trying to hold on to the job of Republican leader in the House, especially in the hope that the Republicans win control of the House next year and he will become speaker… Let’s dip in to a sample of where the mind of Kevin McCarthy has wandered
MSNBC cut to the live feed on the House floor, where McCarthy stated, “Just think for a moment that in America, children can’t play outside on their own property for fear of their safety from cartels and traffickers. I’m not talking about the cities where you defunded the police.”
“Ok,” interrupted O’Donnell. “We’ll just stop on the lie since there are no cities anywhere in America where anyone defunded the police, certainly not the Democrats in that room. That has never happened. So the danger of dipping into Kevin McCarthy is the exposure of just the lies that he’s been spewing as he’s been out there.”
Watch above via MSNBC.