Live coverage: Jim Jordan press event

by Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff Emeritus

Friday, Oct. 20, 2023 Friday, Oct. 20, 2023 at 5:02:00am PDT

Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan is to hold a press event on Friday morning at 8:00 AM ET, during which he is expected to announce his continued efforts to bludgeon his fellow Republicans until they like him.

After days in which enthusiasm for Jordan’s bid for Speaker of the House has consistently declined, Republicans spent much of the evening searching for some alternative. There were clearly enough hardcore holdouts that another vote was futile. Schemes to turn Rep. Patrick McHenry into a kind of Speaker pro tem+ so that bills could be moved forward, fell apart over Jordan’s insistence that any deal come with language that made him the designated heir to the chair. Efforts to secure some kind of alternative disintegrated into squabbles, including performative posturing between former speaker Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Matt Gaetz, and now the only plan seems to be … whatever Jordan is going to say this morning.

Since bullying and threats of violence have cost Jordan votes in the last week, expect this speech to include … more bullying and threats of violence. Because that’s surely what this moment needs.

UPDATE: Friday, Oct 20, 2023 · 12:18:56 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Sometimes a truth is so obvious, that even Fox News can’t miss.

After Jim Jordan waxes poetic about the Wright Brothers and the Bible but makes no change in direction on the speakership, a Fox News host says: “I’m not sure what the purpose of the press conference was.”
— Mark Jacob (@MarkJacob16) October 20, 2023

UPDATE: Friday, Oct 20, 2023 · 12:16:46 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

That’s it folks. We came, we saw, we went away wondering why the hell Jordan made everyone get up and drag their cameras in to hear him give a standard textbook story about the short time between the Wright Brothers and the Apollo mission.

Maybe the lesson is that it’s going to take longer to get Jordan in the speaker’s chair than it took to put a man on the Moon. But at least this particular event is now over.

Carry on.

UPDATE: Friday, Oct 20, 2023 · 12:13:00 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Jordan says his plan is “to get a speaker elected” and to say Israel a lot.

And off he runs. Holy frack. I mean, Jordan underperformed my expectations of Jim Jordan, and I would have bet that wasn’t possible.

UPDATE: Friday, Oct 20, 2023 · 12:11:37 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

And that’s it.

I mean … that’s it. Jordan gave his Wright Brother’s story, a verse out of First Timothy, and an assumption that “getting the House open” means making him speaker. That’s the whole thing.

If anyone was expecting more from Jordan, the big question is, why would you expect more from Jordan? This is looking to be the Big Mac of Nothingburgers.

UPDATE: Friday, Oct 20, 2023 · 12:09:14 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

According to Jordan, the American people don’t trust the White House, they don’t trust the Senate. They only trust House Republicans.

So far, we still have absolutely nothing that looks like a plan, a policy, or a way out of the problem Jordan has done his best to create.

UPDATE: Friday, Oct 20, 2023 · 12:07:32 PM +00:00 · Mark Sumner

Jordan has started off with a story about the Wright Brothers. The point of which seems to be we were great once about a time and how the government has been “weaponized against ‘we the people.’”