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Tapper cuts off Haley for blaming Biden for House not having Speaker

by Lauren Sforza - 10/15/23 10:25 AM ET

CNN’s Jake Tapper shut down GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley for blaming President Biden for the House being unable to elect a new Republican Speaker after Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) unprecedented ouster.

Tapper asked Haley on “State of the Union” if Rep. Austin Scott’s (R-Ga.) remarks on the House Speakership election were accurate when he said the Speakerless House makes the Republicans “look like a bunch of idiots.” Haley began her response by criticizing the Biden administration before Tapper jumped in to interrupt, saying that the turmoil in Congress was not at the hands of the president.

“Well, I’ll tell you what’s right is. Under the Biden administration, we’ve seen chaos within —” she said before Tapper interjected.

“You can’t blame that on Biden. You can’t blame this on Biden,” Tapper said.

“Well, you have to let me finish,” Haley said. “We have seen chaos with inflation. We’ve seen chaos with the lack of transparency in education. We’ve seen chaos on the border. We’ve seen chaos with crime on the streets, and now we’re seeing chaos around the world.”

“What I’m saying is you can’t fix Democrat chaos with Republican chaos. They need to get it together. They need to get in a room and figure out who this is going to be and come out unified. That’s what Republicans need to do. This is not a good look. This is not good for our country. We saw what happened to Israel when they were distracted,” she continued.

The House voted to oust McCarthy from the top leadership post nearly two weeks ago. Since then, the House has been in disarray as House Republicans struggle to come to a consensus on who their new leader should be.

After Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) took his name out of the running last week following the GOP conference’s vote to nominate him, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was put forward by the conference. It’s unclear whether he would have enough support on the House floor to be elected as Speaker.

Updated 12:52 p.m.