We Need To Talk About Kevin McCarthy
Americast
BBC
4.3 • 3.1K Ratings
🗓️ 5 October 2023
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For the first time in US history, a speaker has been kicked out. A group of Trump-supporting Republicans carried out a coup to remove him from the chair of the House of Representatives.
How did it come about? What does it say about the Republican Party? Put simply, what the hell happens now? Americast is called to order to shed light on the situation in Congress.
And on the theme of political division, Naomi Klein explains her theory behind what’s making America hard to govern and why not everyone on the left wants to get behind Joe Biden.
HOSTS: • Justin Webb, Radio 4 presenter • Katty Kay, US special correspondent • Anthony Zurcher, North America correspondent • Marianna Spring, disinformation and social media correspondent
GUESTS: • Naomi Klein, liberal writer and activist • Victoria Spartz, Ukrainian-born Republican congresswoman
GET IN TOUCH: • Join our online community: https://discord.gg/qSrxqNcmRB • Send us a message or voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 9480 • Email Americast@bbc.co.uk • Or use #Americast
Find out more about our award-winning “undercover voters” here: bbc.in/3lFddSF.
This episode was made by Daniel Wittenberg, with Rufus Gray and Catherine Fusillo. The technical producer was Ben Andrews and the sound designer was David Crackles. The editor is Jonathan Aspinwall.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:04.7 | Kevin McCarthy did a deal and now he's gone, he's out the door, the speaker has been spoken |
| 0:11.1 | for, something's broken, something's wrong, Team America's, pray tell, what the |
| 0:15.9 | hell is going on. Oh my goodness, proper poetry sent in by an Americaaster, Adam Taylor. The question though, what the |
| 0:26.8 | hell is going on? I'm going to put to, well each of you. A long long time ago Justin Webb, |
| 0:32.1 | a quick trip down memory lane back in about 2012, I remember a TV |
| 0:36.5 | piece for the news in which you walked down a beach in Florida and it was during |
| 0:41.0 | Obama's time of divided government and you said the problem is |
| 0:44.5 | America has become ungovernable. Justin Webb has a special report from Florida. |
| 0:50.7 | This country has become essentially ungovernable. |
| 0:55.0 | It's politics. |
| 0:57.0 | And Mr Webb, you were prescient because literally America was ungovernable. |
| 1:02.0 | So we have a situation in which the Speaker of the House of Representatives, |
| 1:06.4 | who is basically the boss of the House of Representatives, has been booted out of |
| 1:10.6 | office by the right wing of his own Republican Party. |
| 1:15.0 | For the first time in American history, we now have Congress without a speaker. |
| 1:19.0 | On this vote, the yeas are 2. |
| 1:23.8 | The nays are 2 10. |
| 1:27.7 | The office of Speaker of the House of the United States House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant. |
| 1:37.0 | Exactly. I was in the House of Representatives up on the press gallery and on one side of the |
| 1:41.9 | chamber all of the Republicans were looking like they |
| 1:44.8 | were attending a funeral long faces dark suits all sitting in the chairs just |
... |
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