Pelosi Asked if McCarthy has ‘What It Takes to be Speaker of the House’

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi couldn’t suppress a laugh when CNN’s Dana Bash asked her if GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has “what it takes to be Speaker of the House?”

On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Bash asked Speaker Pelosi about McCarthy’s quest to become speaker, and a clearly amused Pelosi at first tried to point out that control of the House has not been decided.

When Bash pressed, Pelosi laughed and delivered her blunt assessment of McCarthy:

Dana Bash: House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, he’s working the phones, probably as we speak, trying to firm up the votes he needs to become Speaker, if Republicans do in fact take the House.

As somebody who has been Speaker for a combined eight years, do you think Kevin McCarthy has what it takes to be Speaker of the House?

Speaker Pelosi: Well, let’s just get through the election, okay? They haven’t won yet. They have been measuring for draperies. They have been putting forth an agenda.

They haven’t won it yet. Let’s – after we – after the election is concluded, depending on who is in the Majority, there will be judgments made within their own party, in our own parties, as to how we go forward. It’s not up to me to make any evaluation of what their possibilities are.

Dana Bash: Well, you are uniquely qualified to understand what it takes to be Speaker of the House.

Speaker Pelosi: Yes, I do. I do. I –

Dana Bash: Does he have it?

Speaker Pelosi: (laughs) Well, why would I make a judgment about something that may or may not ever happen? No, I don’t think he has it. But that’s up to his own people to make a decision as to how they want to be led or otherwise.

What is important, though, is that this election has been a victory For The People, for the candidates who had the courage to run in the face of any predictions, for the grassroots people, VIPs, our volunteers in politics, knocking on millions of doors to get out the vote.

Don’t ever underestimate. Now, see, I’m a former party chair, so I’m ‘own the ground.’ You have to own the ground. And owning the ground took us to the place that we are now, much closer to victory than anyone would have predicted.

And, of course, our President, President Biden, and President Obama being out there to make people aware of the importance of this election, and that the prospects were that we could win to offset some of the punditry that were wedded to the past, when we’re – that we know elections are about the future.

But I don’t – I don’t really get into Republican Caucus politics. That’s up to them. But, nonetheless, we still think we have a chance to win this. But nobody would have ever expected that we would be this close. Well, we expected it, but the, shall we say, ‘conventional wisdom,’ however conventional it was or how unwise it was.

Watch the video here: