Good morning. I'm playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Thursday, October 5th. The Trump campaign raised triple the amount of money as Florida governor Ron DeSantis in the third quarter. That's according to the New York Times, which is reporting that the former president brought in $45.5 million, a major hall that is being attributed

to his fundraising off his mugshot from the Georgia indictment. But given the drama on Capitol

Hill lately and Trump's monstrous lead over everyone else in the GOP primary, much of the

attention today is still focused on the house, unsurprisingly.

This morning we explore the power vacuum and the jockeying already heating up between wannabe Kevin McCarthy's successors.

And here to talk about all of that is our own congressional national security reporter, Anthony on Dragna.

Good morning, Anthony.

Hey, good to be with you. So Anthony, the first name that

came up as a possible McCarthy replacement, at least that I heard, was Steve Scalise, the House

Majority Leader. What do we know about his ability to actually secure 218 votes for the gavel?

Well, something I heard definitely throughout the day on Wednesdays among rank-ed-file

is they don't think anybody has a path yet to 218.

That obviously could change pretty quickly over the next week.

I think the challenge for Leader Scalise, there's going to be some questions about his health.

He's obviously been battling cancer and his undergoing treatment right now for that. But then there's also just a question

of a lot of moderates still feel very burned. Emotions are still very raw after Speaker

McCarthy's ouster. And I think folks are going to be looking for some concrete changes to the

rules of the chamber before they're willing to go along with

anybody. So that's a challenge for leaders Scalise, but also for anybody else who wants the job.

Right. There's been a lot of talk about the motion of vacate and the fact that any one person

can bring up a vote to oustice speaker. Do we have any sense yet about where Scalise comes down on this?

I've not heard directly from him. I don't think we've heard much from him since he announced.

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