Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is not done yet.
Ahead of another likely losing vote for his speaker bid on Friday, Jordan said he thinks his opponents within the House Republican conference can still be persuaded to come around to him.
“Look, there’s been multiple rounds of votes for speaker before. We all know that. I just know that we need to get a speaker as soon as possible so we can get to work for the American people,” Jordan told reporters at a morning press conference Friday.
Jordan was referencing the marathon series of 15 votes it took for Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to win the speaker’s gavel back in January. But momentum seems to be going against Jordan, not toward him. In his first vote, he got 200 of the 217 GOP votes he would need to become speaker. In his second, he dropped to 199.
Since then, many of the Republicans who voted against him have said they have received various types of threats and intimidation tactics to get them to vote in his favor.
“We stayed the same. We picked up a few, we lost a few. I think the ones we lost can come back,” Jordan said.
One potential scenario is a similar marathon series of votes to those in January with the idea of wearing down his opposition. But that strategy could backfire with his colleagues, who are now deep into the third week without a speaker and getting increasingly frustrated.
Jordan also stuck by his actions surrounding the 2020 presidential election and his support for former President Donald Trump’s lies that the vote was rigged against him.
Asked why he sent a memo outlining a potential strategy to try to overturn the election’s results to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Jordan downplayed the action.
“I forwarded it on to him. That was all it was,” Jordan said, citing the memo’s author as a former inspector general under Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary under George W. Bush.
“I think there were all kinds of problems with the 2020 election. I’ve been clear about that,” Jordan said.
Jordan’s actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol have been shrouded in mystery. He has said he spoke to Trump several times during that day but has refused to disclose the subject of those conversations and blew off a subpoena from the bipartisan congressional committee that investigated the attack.
Jordan demurred on how he might approach the supplemental spending proposal that President Joe Biden advocated for in a televised speech Thursday night. The bill is expected to total $100 billion, with the majority of the money going to Ukraine and some to Israel. Biden called both countries critical to the defense of democracy globally.
“I’ve got to see the package but we certainly need to help Israel,” Jordan said.