It's the Bryan Lair show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Well as you have no

doubt heard for the first time in U.S. history, a speaker of the house has been

removed by a vote of the house in the middle of his term. Now Kevin McCarthy

insists that he wasn't the problem. Everybody's sitting there in today's

world if you're sitting in Congress and you took a gamble to make sure

government was still open and eight people can throw you out a speaker and the

Democrats who said they wanted to keep government open. I think you've got a

real divide. I think you've got a real institutional problem.

Institutional problem. Former speaker of the house, Kevin McCarthy, after he was

removed yesterday. So what happens now? Are the chances of a government shut

down next month even greater than they were with McCarthy in? Does the

institution have a problem as McCarthy argued there or only the divided

Republican party? After House Republicans split their votes to sink McCarthy

while all the Democrats hung together and did the Democrats take the right

gamble voting in a kind of strange bedfellows coalition if you think about

it with Matt Gaetz and the MAGA eight to make that history time will tell. We'll

get one Democratic congressman's view of all this now and talk about some

other issues too. It's Congressman Richie Torres of the Bronx. Congressman

always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Always a pleasure to be here. You know, we talked on the show the last two days

in anticipation of yesterday's vote about what's better for the country from the

Democrats' point of view. Keep McCarthy in after he helped you avoid a

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