During a press briefing on Tuesday, Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA) was asked about the decision to protect Speaker Mike Johnson from a motion to vacate.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Thank you, Vice Chair. I want to ask about the decision to help on the motion to vacate from the caucus meeting this morning. You've talked about Speaker Mike Johnson as the chief architect of electoral college objections. The House, of course, will have to certify an election in January. What should people make of the fact that this is now the guy that you guys would state to keep the House functional?
00:26 First of all, I would say that none of the discussion that we had in caucus was about saving Mike Johnson. The underlying motion to vacate was not discussed. The motion to table was.
00:42 And there is a distinction there. It's not lost on me the role that Mike Johnson played when the lead up to January 6th. We saw that in our work on the January 6th committee and it has not been forgotten by our members.
01:00 However, we want to turn the page. We don't want to turn the clock back and let Marjorie Taylor Greene dictate the schedule in the calendar of what's ahead. We want to turn the page and focus on the pressing issues that everyday Americans care about.
01:16 And spending time on this just doesn't make sense to us. And so after hearing from our caucus, both today and in the preceding weeks, we felt that that was important to clarify.
01:33 And in the leader's statement, in our joint statement, he said specifically that this was on this motion to vacate because of the Republican rules that they all passed, by the way, that we all voted against.
01:48 It's possible that this could happen again with respect to this motion that she could bring up.
01:56 We want to turn the page and we want to move on.
02:03 Yeah, sure. First of all, and the leader said this morning, we're not asking individuals to take a position that is opposed to their values.
02:15 We want to hear each member is going to vote their district and their conscience guided by the Constitution. There may be a procedural vote that would table her proposal that she could bring forward.
02:30 And if that motion to table, we would be inclined and many members indicated that they would be as well to table the motion and to put this behind us and to move on.
02:40 There's important legislative business ahead. That should be the focus for the American people.
02:45 Thank you, Mr. Just to follow up on that, though, Congressman Green is suggesting that she will move forward with this motion to vacate, citing the statement that you all put out.
02:55 She claims that you are endorsing Speaker Johnson's speakership, that the speaker cut a backroom deal with you all.
03:02 And then she says, I'm a big believer in recorded votes because putting Congress on record allows every American to see the truth and provides transparency to our votes.
03:11 How do you specifically respond? I'm not going to try to get in the head of Marjorie Taylor Greene.
03:16 I don't know what goes on in there. It's her right to bring that up.
03:21 The Republican rules that she voted for that we voted against allow any single member to bring this proposal up.
03:29 This is she is a legislative arsonist and she is holding the gas tank.
03:35 And Kevin McCarthy allowed that to happen. That's not lost on anybody.
03:41 What we are saying is we don't need to be a part of that. Let's turn the page.
03:46 Let's focus on the issues that the American people care about. There's an FAA bill that was dropped.
03:52 There's important work that we still have ahead. So I haven't read her full statement, but I'm not going to get into a back and forth on what she means.
04:03 So on that note with Marjorie Taylor Greene, though she's threatened to bring this up again, is it time for Democrats to try to change the rules to raise this threshold on the motion to vacate?
04:15 Again, this is a Republican rule. If they want, they have the ability to change their own rules.
04:20 We all voted against this Republican rule that would allow one person to bring it.
04:24 If if they are concerned about the rules that they all voted for, it is completely within their right to revisit that and to bring something to the House floor.
04:33 If they want to make changes in a bipartisan way, I think they know where to find Leader Jeffries.