Boebert says Republican chaos is fine because it means US isn’t sending money to Ukraine

‘Government isn’t spending money sending it to Ukraine so the American taxpayers are certainly winning’

Lauren Boebert has said she is fine with the chaos in the Repubican party over the vote to choose Kevin McCarthy as the House speaker because this meant the US government was not aiding Ukraine in its war efforts.

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday, she said she was fine with what one-time president Donald Trump has dubbed to be “unnecessary turmoil” as the “government isn’t spending money sending it to Ukraine so the American taxpayers are certainly winning”.

She said in the interview that she was fine “doing this” but also added that she had urged Mr Trump to tell Mr McCarthy to drop his bid for House speaker.

The GOP leader lost in a fourth round of voting on Wednesday amid GOP disunity over his nomination.

While nominating fellow Republican Byron Donald, the Colorado representative said: “Let’s stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us. Even having my favourite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off — I think it actually needs to be reversed.”

The former president also urged Republicans to vote for Mr McCarthy as House speaker and criticised the “unnecessary turmoil” within his own party.

In a Truth Social post on Wednesday morning, the former president endorsed the GOP House leader saying he “will do a good job, and maybe even a great job”.

“We’ll see what happens. We’ll see how it all works out,” Mr Trump, however, also said in an interview.

His show of support for Mr McCarthy came after three roll call votes were held on Tuesday that all ended with the GOP leader failing to secure enough votes for the job. Another two votes failed on Wednesday as well.

Meanwhile, in three consecutive rounds of balloting on Wednesday, Mr Donalds received 20 votes to Mr McCarthy’s 201 votes, with one Republican voting “present” — keeping Mr McCarthy from the 218 votes required to secure the gavel.

House Democrats stuck together, as they had on Tuesday, with all 212 voting for their party’s leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries of New York.