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McCarthy foe Matt Gaetz votes for Trump on seventh speaker ballot

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McCarthy foe Matt Gaetz votes for Trump on seventh speaker ballot


Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), certainly one of Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) fiercest opponents, voted for former President Donald Trump over the California Republican as members solid their seventh poll within the election for Home speaker.

Gaetz, one of many 5 preliminary members to announce they might not vote for McCarthy after Republicans fell in need of their anticipated purple wave in November, has performed a number one position in rallying conservatives towards the GOP chief.

The transfer comes as McCarthy has continued to fall brief on the votes wanted to get the gavel.

His Thursday vote marks the primary time there was a break of their ranks because the first day of ballots, with Gaetz beforehand voting for Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Byron Donalds (R-FL).

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Gaetz has repeatedly floated the thought of Trump turning into speaker, pledging to appoint him since 2021.

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Trump’s spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, later retweeted Gaetz’s tweet saying his vote for the previous president.

Trump beforehand indicated that he’s not within the position.

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Stephanopoulos shares spotlight with Biden in make-or-break interview

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Stephanopoulos shares spotlight with Biden in make-or-break interview


President Biden will attempt to quiet the detractors calling for him to drop out with an ABC News interview Friday that will also put a spotlight on his interviewer — George Stephanopoulos, the former Democratic operative turned star ABC anchor and host.

For Stephanopoulos, the Biden interview — taped Friday afternoon and scheduled to air at 8 p.m. Eastern time — could be the most important sit-down of his journalistic career, bound to be dissected by both media observers and partisans of all kinds.

The armchair quarterbacking could start as soon as the first excerpt from the interview airs during ABC’s nightly news broadcast early Friday evening: Did Stephanopoulos go too hard on the president, or too soft? If Biden speaks strongly and coherently through the entire interview, will that silence the calls for him to step down?

A big audience is expected for the interview, which was just arranged three days ago. ABC initially planned to air Stephanopoulos’s full, unedited conversation on Sunday, with only teaser clips on Friday, but moved it to Friday amid heightened public interest following Biden’s halting and unfocused performance in last week’s debate against Donald Trump.

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Stephanopoulos rose to prominence in 1992 as one of the top staffers for Bill Clinton as he mounted his first run for president. His political celebrity was heightened after the release of “The War Room,” an award-winning documentary on the campaign that centered on the relationship between Stephanopoulos and fellow Clinton operative James Carville.

During that race, Stephanopoulos experienced the production of another make-or-break television interview from a different vantage. In January 1992, the campaign booked Bill and Hillary Clinton for a “60 Minutes” interview to address the infidelity allegations that were then dogging the candidate. In one crucial exchange, Hillary Clinton feistily declared that she was not “some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” helping to salvage her husband’s candidacy at the cost of her own image.

“We bet a whole campaign on a single interview,” Stephanopoulos later wrote in his memoir.

After leaving the administration, Stephanopoulos started working at ABC News in 1997, at a time when he was so famous as a celebrity political operative that the New York Times dubbed him the “thinking woman’s sex symbol.”

Since then, Stephanopoulos has become one of ABC News’s leading journalists. He currently appears as a co-anchor on “Good Morning America” and hosts the channel’s Sunday morning political talk show, “This Week.”

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He has presided over some of the network’s biggest nights of political coverage, including presidential primary debates and high-profile town halls with both Biden and Trump in 2020.



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UK election results: 5 things you should know – Washington Examiner

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UK election results: 5 things you should know – Washington Examiner


Keir Starmer led the Labour Party to a resounding victory over the Conservatives in the United Kingdom Thursday evening, shaking up British politics as discontent grows with growing poverty rates and record-high energy prices. 

After 14 years of Conservative governance, the Labour Party roared back after former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called for the snap election to take place weeks before the obligated date.

Here are five things to know about the landslide victory and what it means for America’s closest ally.

Who is Keir Starmer, the new prime minister?

Since being elected to the British Parliament in 2015, Keir Starmer has focused his efforts on making his party more electable. While he is a socialist, the new prime minister has moved to the center on some economic issues and has frustrated some pro-Palestinian factions of his party with his position on the war in Gaza. 

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Starmer promised “national renewal” as he gave a victory speech on Friday morning. He chuckled as he was congratulated by “Elmo” — or, rather, independent candidate Bobby Smith, who was dressed as the red Sesame Street character. 

Labour was able to win 412 out of a possible 650 seats — almost 64% (despite only garnering 35% of the vote share), thanks to Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system. The seat total was the party’s best showing since 1997, when former Prime Minister Tony Blair swept to power with 418 seats, and matched its 2001 total.

Keir Starmer (left) shakes hands with other candidates after he was elected for the Holborn and St. Pancras constituency on July 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Sunak apologizes for brutal result

After Sunak’s party lost 251 seats in Parliament, he apologized for the brutal loss.

“This is a difficult day at the end of a number of difficult days,” the outgoing prime minister said Friday morning. “I am sorry. I take responsibility for the loss.” 

Labour took 412 seats in the 650-seat House of Commons. The Conservatives retained 121 seats as the country waits for the election results in two more districts. 

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Sunak said he would step down as the leader of the Conservative Party but “not immediately,” as he will try to firm up the succession plans before moving aside.

Liz Truss and other prominent Tories lose their seats

Former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who was Britain’s shortest-serving leader as she spent just 49 days in the role, was among the Conservatives who lost their seats. She became the first former prime minister to lose her seat in 100 years.

In 2022, Britain elected her to lead the country by more than 26,000 votes. On Friday morning, Truss lost her race by 630 votes, a damning indictment on the country’s disenchantment with the Conservative Party.

“I think the issue we faced as Conservatives is we haven’t delivered sufficiently on the policies people want,” Truss told the BBC after her loss. The former prime minister faced widespread criticism for sparking financial turmoil during her chaotic 49-day rule. 

Penny Mordaunt, a onetime Conservative leader of the House of Commons, also lost her seat by under 2 percentage points. Mordaunt, who served in Sunak’s Cabinet, suffered a narrow defeat to Labour’s Amanda Martin.

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Nigel Farage finally becomes an MP

Reform U.K. leader Nigel Farage gives a victory speech after winning his seat at the Clacton Leisure Centre in Clacton, England, on July 5, 2024. Britain’s Labour Party is headed for a landslide victory Friday in a parliamentary election, an exit poll suggested, as voters punished the governing Conservatives after 14 years of economic and political upheaval. (Joe Giddens/PA Wire/PA via AP)

While Labour took home landslide wins, the Reform U.K. party snagged significant wins, claiming a historic four parliamentary seats. Nigel Farage became a member of Parliament for the first time, celebrating as his party tracks to become the third-largest party in Britain. Farage says Reform U.K. will “now be targeting Labour votes.” 

Former President Donald Trump congratulated Farage, a longtime ally who shares similar views on immigration.

“Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Nigel is a man who truly loves his Country! DJT.”

Farage was a central player in the Brexit fight, and his participation in the election this year was a last-minute surprise. After formerly leading the U.K. Independence Party and the Brexit Party, Farage announced last month he was going to run for leader of the Reform U.K. party.

His Reform U.K. party as a whole, however, fell victim to Britain’s electoral system, winning 14% of the vote share but only four seats. The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, traditionally the country’s third-biggest party, won 71 seats with just 12% of the vote.

Scottish National Party suffers bloody nose

The Tories weren’t the only ones who faced a string of defeats on Thursday.

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The Scottish National Party, which has dominated politics north of the border for more than two decades, was reduced to just nine seats, losing 37 and garnering just more than 700,000 votes. The shellacking was the party’s worst performance since 2010 and came after more than two years of chaos.

The Scottish independence movement’s leader, Nicola Sturgeon, unexpectedly resigned last year. Her successor, Humza Yousaf, was also plagued with difficulties, resigning in May after serving for only 13 months. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The party only competed for the 57 seats up for grabs in Scotland. A resounding victory there would have given teeth to the renewed independence referendum, but leadership problems along with fractured feelings about the referendum slowed momentum for the movement.

“We are experiencing something that we have not experienced in quite some time,” the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader, Stephen Flynn, said. “We are going to be beat in Scotland, and we are going to be beat well.”

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Washington Post Publishes Mock Withdrawal Speech For Biden

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Washington Post Publishes Mock Withdrawal Speech For Biden


The editorial board of The Washington Post published a mock speech in which President Joe Biden announced the abandonment of his 2024 reelection campaign.

The faux address — under the headline of “What if Biden spoke these words?” — imagined Biden delivering the news to Americans on Thursday, Independence Day, a week after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump sparked calls for him to end his run.

The key part in the Post’s essay read:

My season of service is nearing its close. This was a hard truth to face. But it is the natural course of things — as evident as the progression from spring to summer, from fall to winter. This is why I have decided to withdraw from the campaign for president of the United States.

It envisioned Biden announcing new debates between potential nominees, including Vice President Kamala Harris, and concluded with the president urging Americans to “search your soul as I have” when they go to the polls in November.

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Some people on social media suggested it was the Post’s call for Biden to quit the race. Others were simply confused by the editorial.



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