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McCarthy is the new speaker of House of Representatives after 15 ROUNDS OF VOTING

The Republican lawmaker received 216 votes and thanked former President Trump for his support.

Kevin McCarthy

(Cordon Press)

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The Republican legislator from California, Kevin McCarthy, finally became the speaker of the House of Representatives after 15 rounds of voting in four intense days.

"I hope one thing is clear after this week: I will never give up. And I will never give up for you, the American people," McCarthy said after receiving the gavel.

The decision was made Friday after meeting for the fourth consecutive day to elect the new speaker of the House, in a because of the number of rounds of voting that were necessary before a winner was declared.

McCarthy won after getting 216 representatives to vote in his favor. However, it was not easy for the legislator. Although the candidate was initially considered by many to be the obvious choice for this term, "hard wing" Republicans blocked the vote during the previous rounds of voting.

"Trump was with me from the beginning"

Even Donald Trump's support was not enough for the California lawmaker to become the new speaker. In fact, all the candidate's efforts seemed to be in vain. McCarthy wanted to thank the former president for supporting him throughout these last several days:

I do want to especially thank President Trump, and I don't think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning.

Club for Growth President David McInstosh went so far as to acknowledge that McCarthy negotiated with Freedom Caucus members and agreed to key demands so that they would stop blocking the vote and elect him as speaker of the House. However, these alleged agreements were not reflected among voting numbers that day, as the Republican candidate even lowered the number of votes in his favor.

Calls for unity within the party

Another highlight of McCarthy's speech was when he called for unity within the Republican Party:

I think by having the disruption now, really built the trust with one another and learned how to work together. What we’re going to have to find in our mindset is that we have to frontload. We have to think about and work on the bills with a microcosm of the conference before we even start writing it. And that’s really what we learned here.

Not to be overtaken by China

One of McCarthy's objectives will be to prevent China from overtaking the United States economically:

We'll also address America's long-term challenges, the debt and the rise of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As for the CCP, we will create a bipartisan select committee on China to investigate how to bring back the hundreds of thousands of jobs that went to China, and then we will win this economic competition.
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