Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Garrett Haake, reporting in Washington, where the House of Representatives remains without a speaker after House Republicans this afternoon once again tried and failed to rally behind their nominee. Right now, Republicans are trying to figure out what comes next after House Judiciary Chair and former President Trump's pick for speaker, Jim Jordan, fell well short of the 217 votes needed to secure the gavel. Jordan's team says they plan to try again later today.
We will bring you the very latest in a moment. But we begin right now with breaking news tied to the escalating war between Israel and Hamas. Here in Washington, President Biden is expected to depart this afternoon for Israel and for Jordan for high stakes wartime visit to the Middle East, coming as Israel prepares for a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip. This all comes amid an apparent deadly strike on a hospital and we want to warn you, some of the footage you're about to see is disturbing.
According to the Palestinian health ministry, hundreds have been killed in a hospital bombing in North Gaza. This is new video that appears to show paramedics rushing to the scene of the hospital that was struck. Palestinian authorities have blamed Israel. The Israeli military says they did not carry out the strike and that their intelligence points to Islamic militants inside Gaza.
NBC has not confirmed the details of the bombing or the death toll. There is more from the scene showing paramedics tending to the wounded outside the hospital. Meanwhile, the injured appear to have been rushed to nearby hospitals. This is the scene as ambulances arrived outside another nearby hospital in Gaza City.
And the bodies of those killed in the bombing also appear to have been brought to nearby hospitals. Now, this comes as many hospitals in Gaza are facing shortages of supplies and electricity. Amid the uncertainty of exactly what happened, the bombing comes at a sensitive moment for the White House as the president heads to Tel Aviv and as Hamas has twice in the past two days suggested they would be willing to release non-Israeli hostages. The White House is cautioning that Hamas's claims should be viewed skeptically.
Still, a major focus of the president's trip will be on those estimated 200 hostages, a few of them believed to be Americans currently being held inside Gaza. Also high on President Biden's agenda during the visit, working with Israel on a plan to get humanitarian aid into Gaza, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced last night after a marathon nine-hour meeting with Israeli officials. The United States and Israel have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza and them alone, including the possibility of creating areas to help keep civilians out of harm's way. It is critical that aid begin flowing into Gaza as soon as possible.
The exact details of any humanitarian plan remain unclear as the situation inside Gaza grows more dire. The only way out of Gaza to the south at the Rafah crossing remains closed, despite hope earlier this week that it would be open to allow civilians to get out and humanitarian aid to get in. Joining me now from Israel is NBC News correspondent Raf Sanchez. NBC News correspondent Josh Letterman is in Tel Aviv.
And with the latest on the president's trip is Erin Gilcrest, who joins us from the White House. So Raf, I'll start with you. Talk me through this news we're getting of this hospital struck in Gaza. What do we know so far?
And is it sort of a back and forth of what Palestinian and Israeli officials are saying? Yeah, Garrett, so the Palestinian Authority is saying that at minimum, hundreds of people have been killed in what they say was an Israeli airstrike on the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City. This is in the northern half of Gaza. This is in the area where Israel has been warning people to get out.
The fatalities seem to have been concentrated in a courtyard in the front of the hospital. This seems like it was families who believed, fatally, as it turned out, that a hospital might be a safe place for them and that if they went to the area around the hospital facility, that they might be spared the fighting raging around them. As you said, the images coming out of Gaza, coming from this hospital, are absolutely horrific. The death toll appears to be at minimum in the hundreds, but new figures are being suggested all the time.
We have just heard from the Israeli military. They are saying that at the time this hospital was hit, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which is a smaller terrorist group which operates inside Gaza, was in the middle of firing a barrage of rockets into Israel. And the Israeli military says intelligence from multiple sources we have in our hands indicates that Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch which hit the hospital. So Garrett, we should say a couple of things really quickly.
This is a fog of war situation. We are not able to get inside Gaza. The Israeli borders are sealed. The Egyptian borders are sealed.
Our teams cannot get there. We cannot see with our own eyes what is happening. But we should say the Israeli military at this point is not providing any evidence to back up its claims. It is citing intelligence that it has.
We should say the death toll here appears to be far, far larger than what we associate with Palestinian rocket fire. The rockets fired from Gaza are deadly. They are dangerous. But they do not typically kill 500 people in a way that heavy, heavy explosives dropped by Israeli aircraft potentially to destroy tunnels underneath Gaza City have the potential to kill hundreds of people.
And Garrett, we should just say finally that the Israeli military does have a track record, sometimes in these chaotic situations, of saying things at first which end up not being true in the end. And one example is the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, that Palestinian journalist with Al Jazeera. The Israeli military initially blamed that on Palestinian gunmen and only much, much later on did they accept that it was most likely an Israeli who fired the fatal bullet there. So a chaotic situation inside Gaza.
The reverberations are being felt all across the region. There are major protests going on in the occupied West Bank right now in cities like Ramallah, in cities like Hebron. There are protesters gathering at Israeli embassies all around the region. And as I'm sure you'll talk about, this has the potential to seriously derail President Biden's trip to the Middle East.
No, you're absolutely right, Raf. It's all connected and the fog of war element makes it so difficult to parse what's going on. I appreciate your reporting on this. And please stay safe.
I want to turn now to Josh. Josh, we talked a lot on this broadcast yesterday about this offer from Hamas to potentially release some hostages. Excuse me, more information on that topic tonight. What can you tell us on the latest on that process?
Well, Garrett, a senior Hamas official has told our colleague, Richard Engel, that Hamas is willing to release civilian hostages within one hour if Israel would simply halt those airstrikes. That official telling Richard that they have no problem releasing civilians, but that it's simply logistically impossible while there are ongoing Israeli airstrikes. And prior to that, we had heard from a Hamas official that they had every intention to release the foreign nationals who are part of that group of hostages, saying essentially that they had been taken accidentally in the fog of that battle, of that terror attack a little over a week ago and ended up in the Gaza Strip and that Hamas was simply waiting for the conditions to be right on in the field for them to release those hostages. Now, obviously, we have not seen any hostages released right now.
Israel has not offered any unilateral ceasefire to get hostages out or for any other reason. But we did, of course, see that video that Hamas released of one of those hostages, a French-Israeli national, seeming to show how Hamas is trying to signal to the rest of the world right now, not only that some of those hostages are still alive and that are being treated well, but also that there could be some prospect for eventually getting them out of the Gaza Strip. And, Josh, talk about the degree to which this is going to be a White House priority and the kind of multinational delicate discussions around the possibility of getting hostages released. I mean, you're a diplomatic correspondent.
Just exactly how complex is this process now and likely to become? Well, it's a huge priority for the Biden administration, not only because these are civilians, but also because we know that there are Americans among that group, probably a little over a dozen based on the estimates that the U.S. has. And so this has been a real rush of diplomacy involving not only the U.S., but a lot of other regional allies.
Because remember, Garrett, it's not like the U.S. has a relationship with Hamas and can go and sit down with them and broker a deal. And so the U.S. has been trying to work with all of those other countries that do have relations with Hamas, like Qatar and like Egypt and like the other Arab nations in the Persian Gulf, to try to see if they can be intermediaries with Hamas.
But so far, it's unclear how much ground has really been moved forward in those discussions other than these somewhat cryptic statements that have emerged from Hamas over the last 48 hours or so. All right, Josh Letterman, thank you for that reporting. Let's turn now to Aaron Gilchrist outside the White House. And Aaron, obviously, this bombing serves as a good reminder about the scope of the violence that we're talking about here and the changing conditions on the ground, how that might relate to the changing plans at the White House and how they're approaching this trip.
What do we know about the stakes of this trip and where are we even in the process? What's going on at the White House right now? This was already, we know, a fragile situation that we're dealing with in the Middle East now. And now with the reporting around this at least one more vote on a second ballot for speaker.
The crucial thing for Jordan here is to show he's making progress, to show he's gaining votes and not losing votes, as some Republicans, including Ken Buck, who voted against Jordan, predicted he would do with our colleague Katie Turner just a little bit ago. A crucial moment for Jim Jordan to show that he still has a path here to becoming speaker, or could this whole thing collapse? So, Sahil, if not Jim Jordan, who? I mean, what's the prevailing thought on this?
You have Kevin McCarthy with a handful of votes, Steve Scalise with a handful of votes, former Congressman Lee Zeldin with a handful of votes. And then there's Patrick McHenry with a bow tie and a gavel sitting up there in the chair. I mean, if it's not going to be Jim Jordan, who? Garrett, I'll boldly predict that Lee Zeldin will not become the next speaker.
Beyond that, it is so difficult. It is so difficult to see how this plays out. I can see three potential paths here. The first is Jim Jordan somehow shows he's making progress.
He might not win it on the second ballot, but if he gets closer, you can see a number of the defections, people like Mike Kelly, Steve Womack, or generally party guys known as team players. If he shows he's making progress, they might find their way to supporting him, particularly because, you know, their votes in this first ballot was a way to show solidarity with Steve Scalise on the basis of believing he was mistreated. The second option, which Congressman Buck, again, floated on our air, is to temporarily empower the speaker, the acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, for something like 30 days. This is something that several Democrats have suggested as well.
Patrick McHenry is generally seen as a straight shooter, as someone Democrats believe they can deal with, especially on a short-term basis to prevent the government shutdown, maybe authorize some action on Israel. And then this, you know, what I would call the nuclear option, which some Republicans are already suggesting, is put Kevin McCarthy back up there. He had 96% of the conference. He had more support than Jim Jordan had today and more support than Steve Scalise appeared to have when he withdrew.
Put him back up there, do one, two, three, maybe 15 more ballots and try to wear the conference down to elect him. That is not a serious option that's being, you know, let's say, actively considered by McCarthy himself, who is behind Jordan. But this is, again, a moment of deep peril for Jim Jordan, for the House of Representatives, and for every American who is relying on Congress to act, to do something on their behalf. I appreciate the reporting, Sahil.
I think of the McHenry thing as like the speaker equivalent of a CR. Just stretch out the current thing for 30 days and push it down the line. It feels like that was sort of like the teleological conclusion of where this Congress has been going. But that's a story for another Time, I guess.
Sahil, thanks. Joining me now to break down the numbers from this first speaker vote is our numbers guru, Steve Kornacki, who's at the big board. And Steve, as Sahil and I were just discussing, a whole lot of opposition to Jim Jordan came out of the woodwork for this vote here. Where and how did he come up short?
Yeah, a couple different places. And like you guys were just saying, I think the number there of 20 was just more than folks were expecting. And part of that was just the expectations setting on the part of the Jordan folks who were out there pushing yesterday the idea that he was closing in, that it might be single digits, that they could isolate the opposition after the first vote and then really crank the pressure up. And instead, you end up with 20 Republicans voting no.
And it is a range here. You look at the top of this list here of the Republicans who voted against Jim Jordan. There's Don Bacon from Nebraska. Don Bacon, that's a blue district Republican.
This is the congressional district in Nebraska that actually voted for Joe Biden by seven points. Biden got an electoral vote out of Nebraska. It was from this district. So just based on the politics of his district, his sort of moderate reputation politically, that's probably a sensible vote for Don Bacon to be making.
But then you've got somebody like Ken Buck you were just talking about who was on our airwaves, really seems to be dug in here against Jordan, talking about the idea of other Republicans who aren't on this list right now maybe joining in. Buck is not from a blue district. Buck is not what you would typically call a moderate Republican. You see a lot of folks like that.
Kay Granger, you were mentioning Mike Kelly from Pennsylvania. He's been pushing for this idea of could McHenry somehow get an expanded speaker's role for a little bit. And I think what's got to be most concerning for Jordan right now is that a letter has been circulating here in the last few hours. Mario Diaz-Balart from Florida sent a letter to Patrick McHenry that basically said, let's go right back to the floor and let's vote right now.
And a number of other Republicans, Carlos Jimenez has joined that call. Kay Granger has now joined that call. Mike Simpson has joined that call. Steve Womack has joined that call.
And a Republican who voted for Jordan on the first ballot, Marionette Miller-Meeks from Iowa, she just in the last few minutes joined that call. So to that idea that Buck put out on our airwaves that there could have been Jordan yes votes from the first round who flip on a second ballot, there's one from Iowa, Marionette Miller-Meeks, who's joining with a group of Republicans who seem to think Jordan's in a weak position and who seem to want to pounce right now. She's joining with them. That can't be a good encouraging sign for him.
Steve Kornacki with the highest stakes game of whack-a-mole ever played in Washington, D.C. Steve, thank you. And joining me now for some more context on what we're seeing from the House Republican conference as a former member of the House Republican conference, Carlos Curbelo from Florida. He's now an NBC News political analyst.
So Carlos, when you look at that list, that big board that Steve just broke down, what surprised you most about this opposition to Jim Jordan today? Well, Garrett, I think the diversity of that list is really remarkable and it makes it tougher because if you have a problem with appropriators, you can try and go cut a deal with them. If you have a problem with swing district members, you can maybe make some accommodations. But when you have a problem with members from different factions, from all five families as House Republicans like to say, it really makes it hard because then you have to start making all sorts of promises.
And those promises can hurt Jim Jordan with other members. So look, I'll tell you that those who were opposed to Jordan were surprised by the total today, the 20. Last night a lot of them were just hoping to get to double digits. They kind of had a marker.
They wanted to get more than eight, which is the number of defections that Kevin McCarthy ultimately had, which got him deposed. They got more than double that number and they can now make the argument that Jim Jordan is actually a weaker candidate for speaker than Kevin McCarthy. And yes, there's growing momentum in the House Republican conference, Garrett, for this idea of leaving Patrick McHenry in place. Patrick McHenry is respected widely in the Congress.
He is a leader that has traditionally helped swing district members who are very worried about their prospects for reelection next year. And as some have mentioned, a lot of Democrats feel comfortable working with Patrick McHenry. Doesn't mean they like him, but they feel comfortable working with him. They feel that he can be an honest broker, that he can be trusted in this unique position that he's in.
So if Jordan fails again and his vote tally doesn't grow considerably, I think the odds of McHenry staying in place are going to start growing significant. McHenry also has made it very clear he doesn't want the job, which may speak well of his judgment in this moment. I want to ask you about the moderates and all of this, particularly those New Yorkers. I mean, it's kind of a tale as old as time that moderates are expected to fold when the spotlight is on them in this way.
Did the numbers help kind of stiffen some spines? Or do you think if you're the Jordan team, it's those kind of swing district moderates that you're going to be the first people you try to pressure to change their vote? Well, I think there's a couple of factors. Number one, yes, the fact that there's 20, that really helps people hold strong.
The fact that it's not just them, that respected Republicans like Kay Granger, Mario Diaz-Balart, I mean, these are senior appropriators. These are not Republican rebels. So the fact that there are names like those, Steve Womack, that gives a lot of these centrist members a lot of comfort. And then look, Garrett, they know that Jim Jordan is one of the original architects of the chaos that the House is living right now.
I served with Jim Jordan. He was always a thorn in the side of leadership. He undermined John Boehner and ultimately, you know, started the movement that pushed out John Boehner when Paul Ryan was Speaker of the House. I mean that that relationship was a bit more cordial, but still it was Jordan and his faction that was consistently undermining Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, the leaders at the time.
So these swing district members know what Jim Jordan's DNA is. They don't This is not a thing that I have been saying. Like, it's the way from Gaza city and the most we are evacuating to the south of Gaza Strip. They were scared because they know that the Israeli occupation will not hesitate to kill them while they are evacuating.
Some of them, and actually it happened. They targeted a convey of these people and they were still sitting here. Israel disputes that. I want to ask you about how President Biden is on his way.
Of course, I'm sorry. Of course, we would say that we are not, we didn't do that. Israel has been killing us since nightingale day and they never know that they are the capable. But the fact on the streets and the ground is that they are killing us.
There is no one single day. There's no one single day that Israel didn't kill us, a Palestinian, even in Gaza or the West Bank. I want to ask you about President Biden, who's on his way to the region right now. What would you want Americans for the American president to know about what your needs are?
What influence do you think the American president would have on shaping this conflict, this crisis now in Gaza? I don't, I'm so sorry to say that I'm not expecting any briefing from the U.S. President Biden, but I would say that I'm pleading the American people who are the paying taxes to the government by these taxes, they are supporting Israeli weapons that it's killing us. I'm calling the American people who are very emotional.
I have been, I was in the U.S. in March and I met for my first time and I met a lot. I would say tens or hundreds of American people. I saw by my own eyes that they are very emotional people.
That's a lot of them are incidentally with the Palestinian people. I'm asking these people who have a lot of heart to go into the street to participate in the demonstration. We are following here in Gaza. Even if we don't intend to speak as much as we can, we are following the news.
Yesterday there was a demonstration in D.C. and New York Times. Thanks a lot to the Jewish for peace for organizing. Of course, in addition to other organizations who organize these demonstrations.
This is the only thing that we can count and depend on. But for politicians, Biden is giving the green light. He's giving the green light to the Israeli occupation to kill us. He's sending lots of weapons.
We are being killed now by these weapons. It's, by the way, just for your information, there's a strange weapon for the first time that we are being bombed by it. It hasn't allowed sound and it has a very dark black color with a very weird smell. I'm so scared if it's chemical or something like that.
But I would say that this is the result of the unlimited support from the American administration to the Israeli genocide occupation government. All right, Fadia Bushalma with the perspective on the ground in Gaza. Thank you for joining us and please stay safe. Thank you so much.
We should note that NBC News has not confirmed any reports of the use of chemical weapons by Israel. And the IDF has specifically denied using phosphorus munitions inside Gaza. I want to bring now NBC News chief Washington correspondent and chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell. And Andrea, I just want you to react to what we just heard from you, somebody who's covered conflict in this region for decades and the frustration there that you hear and the belief that Americans are willing to sort of turn their back on this.
And obviously some sort of factual questions about what Fadia's experienced there. But the anger is real and the emotion is real. And I think I'd just be curious to hear your reaction to it. You know, I've covered it for decades from both sides.
The anger, the pain is so real. It's so gripping to their families, to their homes, to their civil society. And the difficulty of President Biden's mission and of Secretary Blinken's shuttle trip for these last days is to try to cut through that with leaders who are feeling vulnerable because they're being pressured by the anger of their citizens in both communities and try to get the region to get past the pain of what they're living through right now. And we can't speak to this man's experience.
In his world, he will not believe that Israel didn't do this. And in Israel's world, they will not believe that Hamas has not done, aside from everything they did do, with every incident going forward, that did not come from them. And the horror of both people's experiences that you can't speak to this man about, well, Hamas started this war with the most savage attack imaginable. But he's reflecting, you know, grievances that go back decades, generations of people who've lived, you know, wanting a homeland, wanting a state, moving from one place to another, being abused by the Hamas leadership.
No elections since 2006. So everyone is being victimized. And I don't know how you navigate this with the horrible thing about this explosion today. And we don't know who did it.
You know, there's got to have to be a lot of forensics to even determine that if it can be. But it has certainly thrown into disarray the game plan that only hours ago we were discussing, all of us, with leaders on all sides. Well, I was going to ask you about that, because how much more difficult is Joe Biden's job now, given the questions about the hospital bombing? I mean, we still have the questions about this convoy explosion the other day.
But the unknowable facts of this moment make the diplomacy so much more complicated. If not impossible. And first of all, they have been hoping that the West Bank would not explode. Hezbollah was, of course, the biggest threat to the north.
But the West Bank is right there, completely integrated and assimilated. They're their neighbors. They're their employees. They're their students, their teachers.
I mean, they're all living in the same place, despite the walls and all the separation that has tragically occurred in the years since Camp David. And since the 1993 breakthroughs when you saw Arafat and Rabin on the lawn, as he stood on the lawn of the White House on the South Lawn and saw the handshake. Like a very long time ago now compared to this moment. Produced a Nobel Peace Prize.
So all those hopes have evaporated. And they're trying to resurrect something like that right now. And if Abulaziz, the familiar name of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, does not show up in Jordan, that is a major problem. They were hoping to get buy-in from him to keep the West Bank quiet as much as he can.
He's been ineffective at doing that. The security agreements have not worked in recent years because he's had no power. And Hamas has been rising in its power because of its effectiveness. You interview with many people, gaining some things.
So if he does not show up, that's one big piece missing. And it certainly puts King Abdullah, who is right now having dinner with Secretary Blinken. That's on the schedule, at least unless that's changed. So he's got a third of his population who's Palestinian in refugee camps forever in Jordan.
And so every Arab leader is feeling vulnerable by what's happening. And until they can get humanitarian aid into Gaza, the president's mission will not be successful. That's why he's going. That's why they need this lull in the fighting in the ground invasion to get the aid in.
How much does the president's relationship with Netanyahu come into play here? And I think about the very public support Joe Biden has given for Israel at every phase of this conflict so far. But also what we know are the private assurances to be cautious and to protect civilians and public assurances on that. And talk to me a little bit about the balance of that messaging and what the president kind of needs to get out of this moment.
And his meetings with the Israeli prime minister. Well, the tensions between them go back many years when Joe Biden was first vice president, goes to Israel. And the settlements are expanded as he's arriving. Right.
A major snub. A major snub. But they have really managed to navigate this. And Netanyahu is insulted that he did not get a meeting at the White House.
But they did meet in New York and they did a lot of good work together. And they had a mutual goal with the Saudis to work on normalization in January, February, early next year, if they could. If a lot of obstacles could be overcome on all sides. So they've been working together.
And I can't tell you the extent that the Israeli people were overwhelmed by what Joe Biden said in the immediate aftermath of the attack against the people in Israel. The Hamas attack and the visceral response of Joe Biden and then Secretary Blinken when he arrived on Thursday, you know, saying truly personal responses. Unprecedented. No American president has ever said the things about Israel that this president did when this happened on the 7th and in the days afterwards.
And no Secretary of State has ever embraced Israel. And it has been profoundly, people were moved to tears. Members of Netanyahu's ministry and key advisors were acknowledged that they were crying as a result. So he's gained a lot of leverage there.
And that's why I think they believe that, I know they believe that they can come now and say, you have to make sure you limit the casualties. This is going to be a grinding weeks or months of war and get that aid in and get it in now. He'll have a lot of leverage and he will have to use all of it and his experience in the foreign policy arena on this trip. I can't imagine a more delicate moment here.
All right, Andrea Mitchell, thank you for that reporting and that perspective, which I think is so valuable. And as the president is preparing to leave on this trip, his administration is sending even more military personnel and equipment into the region. According to a defense official, the Pentagon put about 2,000 U Blue dogs had all the power. There was like 60 of them.
They were at the height of their power. But Nancy Pelosi was able to really navigate her own caucus, her own caucus. They had so many different needs and interests, so ideologically diverse and geographically diverse. It is such a striking contrast to see how disorganized and dysfunctional the current Congress is.
Do Democrats have any regret that they're in this moment and they were sort of willing to step aside and watch McCarthy fall to his fate if they end up with a Speaker Jordan, or is this, if you're a Democratic member right now, you're perfectly happy to watch it fall? I think when Mr. McCarthy decided to pursue impeachment of the president, he lost all goodwill he may have even had. I don't know if he had any, but he lost a lot of goodwill.
He was like a day trader. He was just trying to survive by the hour. Did you know how to jump in? Yeah, who knows?
I think Democrats that I spoke with, their aides at least, are really excited about campaigning against Jim Jordan if he ends up winning, especially in those districts that Republicans currently represent that Biden won. I mean, the reality is Jim Jordan is incredibly unpopular within the GOP, much less so outside of the GOP. And Democrats think that could work for them in their favor. But I was gonna say to your point earlier, though, when you mentioned about what happened in previous House speakerships, I think this is a perfect example of how too often people like to compare the base of the Democratic Party and the base of the GOP in terms of the squad and the Freedom Caucus.
And I think right now we're seeing that they really are different in terms of when it comes together. And the leadership is different. Danielle, so how do the Republicans get their party back then? If all these points are true and we're talking about sort of base elements here and unpopular figures, what's the path forward?
There's one answer to every single political question we face, whether it's Ukraine or it's the speakership or it's how the House is run or the Senate is run or how the election goes or who wins, and that's leadership. And the GOP right now has a real bankruptcy of leadership. And I'm a Republican. I watch this and I don't know how to get from here to there.
I think it's regrettable, although I think you're exactly right that the Democrats are all salivating at the idea of Jim Jordan. I just want these people to do their job. He's the ad maker, a Democrat ad maker's dream. I think two things we know true right now is that they will likely, the government will probably shut down and that the Republicans are going to lose the House.
There are 18 Republicans and Democrats in Biden held states, six of whom won by less than two percent. Another six of whom won in districts that Biden won by double digits. If I'm any of those 12, I'm voting for anybody but Jim Jordan. Well, it sounds like Pete Aguilar kind of set the stage for this possibility of running against Jim Jordan.
I want to play for you guys some of his floor speech here and we'll react on the other side. A vote today to make the architect of a nationwide abortion ban, a vocal election denier and an insurrection insider to the Speaker of this House would be a terrible message to the country and our allies. Do Democrats have any regret that they're in this moment, you know, they were sort of willing to step aside and watch McCarthy fall to his fate if they end up with a Speaker Jordan? I want to pivot now to the foreign affairs piece of the story today.
And you are our foreign policy expert here. I was one of the people who kind of thought that the pressure to look like we were governing seriously and we were going to move aid to Israel and maybe Ukraine might force action before we got to this point. That hasn't been the impact now. At what point do you think that sort of looming duty to like be the world's remaining superpower starts to matter in this discussion?
I have that same vein hope. Forgive us, right? Because, you know, these people do actually have jobs and it's not a circus and they're not performers. They're there to pass bills.
The Israelis are going through ammunition at an incredible rate. They are going to end up having to cut back on their Iron Dome missiles to protect the Israeli homeland if we do not move quickly in order to appropriate emergency aid for Israel. The House, you know, something, look, Israel isn't the most important thing in the world to every American. But I look at the House of Representatives and ask what in heaven's name would make them serious?
There are thousands of people dead. This is a terrible ongoing war. And the one thing we don't want to see as Americans is that terrorists get the upper hand because we can't get our political act together. Michael, you heard, I think, Andrea in the last segment, I hope, talking about the sort of response to Joe Biden in Israel and the way he's handled this so far.
At what point on the international stage do people start to say, Joe Biden saying the right things, but what is America doing? I think it's a good question. And I think how should the White House handle that issue? And I think you asked a really good question of Andrea is how do you how does the relationship between Biden and Bibi ultimately affect what's going on here?
And I think Andrea brought it up. Like there has been tensions in that relationship since 2010. Of course, there was a frosty relationship between the Obama White House and Netanyahu government. But Joe Biden is a familiar face to the Israelis.
He's a familiar face to the Israeli people. He this friendship goes back four years when he met Bibi as a staffer here in D.C. When he when Bibi lost his election in 99, Biden did not treat him like it has been. Biden wrote him letters.
Bibi stopped by his office. This is a relationship that goes back decades and it's real. And I think that Biden has a real opportunity to bring what has been, you know, Bibi has been antagonistic occasionally. And there have been.
It's a grown up friendship. It's a friendship between people who don't always like each other. Exactly. But Biden has tremendous loyalty and support for the state of Israel.
And so I think this is an opportunity to reset almost with Bibi. But he has to deliver, right? And he can't deliver by himself. He needs he needs Congress, actually.
What do the deliverables look like? I mean, we were talking about this in the last segment, too. The idea that humanitarian aid may be the biggest piece of this puzzle right now. I mean, do you agree with that viewpoint that, you know, aid on the humanitarian parts is a bigger deliverable or is it still kind of weapons for Israel supporting the Iron Dome?
Danielle. I want the Israelis to do their best to spare innocent Palestinian lives. But no, for me, the priority is the eradication of Hamas. And while I look at what the Palestinian people have been put through by Hamas, I also look at their Arab neighbors who are so sympathetic to them on social media, but won't let them through the Rafa border crossing into Egypt, won't let them into Jordan.
I look at the money the Saudis and the Qataris have poured in, especially the Qataris, where we have a base, by the way. And I think to myself, the American taxpayer doesn't have to foot that bill. Qatar can foot that bill while we help the Israelis defeat a shared terrorist enemy backed by Iran. I will say, though, the aid is the priority for the progressive base.
And the reality is we've seen progressive lawmakers. We've seen organizations come out expressing their concern about the treatment of Palestinians. And they are pretty upset, quite frankly, with Biden for taking such a pro-Israel stance. He's been consistent given his own policy convictions and the relationship between the U.S.
and Israel over years. But we do know that Biden needed these progressives to win the White House in 2020 and he'll have to win them, need them again in 2024. I found the progressive response has been a little more muted than I would have expected necessarily. Do you think Democrats have been a little bit more united than they have been in other instances?
And perhaps just because the start of this was so abominable, the Hamas attack. But how long do you think that unity can hold? I think it's going to continue for a while, in part because the Democratic Party strategy, especially in the House right now, is to be as unified as possible. So even though they have these deep convictions that differ with the president's, they don't want to end up looking like the Republicans at all.
And so we're going to see a level of self-control and discipline and their criticism of the president that, you know, we probably wouldn't have seen in 2018. Maybe they don't want to look like Hamas supporters. I was going to say to your point earlier, though, when you mentioned about what happened in previous House speakerships, I think this is a perfect example of how too often people like to compare the base of the Democratic Party and the base of the GOP in terms of the squad and the Freedom Caucus. And I think right now we're seeing that they really are different in terms of when it comes together.
Danielle, so how do the Republicans get their party back then? If all these points are true and we're talking about sort of base elements here and unpopular figures, what's the path forward? There's one answer to every single political question we face, whether it's Ukraine or it's the speakership or it's how the House is run or the Senate is run or how the election goes or who wins. And that's leadership.
And the GOP right now has a real bankruptcy of leadership. And I'm a Republican. I watch this and I don't know how to get from here