Luke Russert: ‘Ted Cruz Literally Just Cut off the House GOP at the Knees’

BALL: “NBC’s Luke Russert joins me now live from capitol hill. Luke, they were so confident this morning, the Republican Caucus, the leadership, they seemed like they had all come together around the $659 million, plus the vote on Dhaka. What the heck happened?”
RUSSERT: “You know, Krystal, I’ve been here since the beginning of John Boehner’s leadership on Capitol Hill and I’ve seen a lot of these where the vote gets pulled last minute, because they just don’t have the support. I have never been more shocked about one than what just happened today. The house GOP leadership was very confident all week. They have support for his plan. They brought this down from originally $1.5 billion to $660 million to appease the conservative right within their conference. This was done to make sure this could get through, because John Boehner did not want to go into the August recess allowing the President to slam the house GOP for not doing anything. Well, guess what happened? Last night some conservative members met with Ted Cruz. They said they would not support this bill, even though you had Democrats, a few moderate ones saying they would support it. So, there is no route to 218. So, Ted Cruz literally just cut off the house GOP at the knees, as they head into a five-week recess regarding the issue of immigration and the border crisis. This is amazing. It’s also amazing Krystal, because this was the first vote the new house GOP leadership had. This is Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise the new whip. We have to say, but the grade on this one is a fail, because they weren’t able to get this forward. I stopped at few Republicans before we came up here. They were very perplexed. They were ready to start going over to vote. It was so surprising that the Democratic whip operation had put out an e-mail to get ready to vote no on this and then pulled it right back. This was signed, sealed and delivered and they were not able to produce a real terrible blow to the House GOP and this new team has put together, Krystal.”