Here's how it started.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reading the resolution condemning the Oval Office Occupant's racist tweets, urging House Democrats and Republicans to join her in a bipartisan statement of support. It should surprise no one that Georgia's @sshole Representative Doug Collins interrupted to attempt to call Speaker Pelosi's remarks "Out of Order" and get them stricken from the record. (Striking a House Speaker's words has not happened since 1984, by the way.)
"I have already cleared my remarks through the Parliamentarian before I read them," as she dropped the resolution on the desk and walked away, to some applause, even.
Collins still made a motion to have her words stricken, and the required drama ensued wherein buttwhistles Republicans like Sean Duffy from Wisconsin waved his arms all about and cried about how the racist tweets "didn't mention anyone's race or name specifically, so HOW CAN THEY BE RACIST OH MYGOD I'M MELTING z[0u$J*Y^%j1nbz+)+43h5@#$a7!!!!" or something, I don't know, it's possible I paraphrased. Oh, right, and he did call the four freshman Congresswomen at the center of the Congresswomen "anti-American." So THAT'S supposed to be okay.
Rep. Rev. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO) was presiding over the House as Speaker Pro Tem while the motion was being debated, and the Parliamentarian was reviewing the record and the rules. No matter how many times he implored and insisted the debate not get personal, and that the Republicans play by the rules, he finally reached his absolute limit.
Has a Speaker ever abandoned the Chair?
This is indicative of the level of pain Republicans are willing to inflict on their own colleagues, and it is beyond disgusting.
