Matt Gaetz Denies ‘Fantastical’ Claim From Ex-Tucker Producer About Making Kevin McCarthy Beg for Speakership

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) challenged the claims of former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg by denying he was ever contacted to be part of a plan to make a cable news bloodsport out of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) bid for Speaker of the House.

“The fantastical story about ‘brokering’ the Speakership during TV interviews was never considered or even introduced to me. I doubt it was presented to Speaker McCarthy either,” Gaetz wrote on Twitter. “This seems to call into question many of the claims made by this disgruntled employee.”

Gaetz was reacting to an interview Abby Grossberg gave to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, where she talked about her lawsuit against Fox, her claims about the network’s toxic environment, and the network’s attempts to domineer her before her firing. As Grossberg talked about Tucker Carlson’s reign at Fox before his firing, she said there was an arrangment in the works where Carlson and Gaetz would set terms for McCarthy before allowing him onto Carlson’s show to plead his case for the speakership.

Here’s Grossberg’s description of the plan:

His plan was to have Kevin McCarthy come on the show, according to Justin Wells. [He] revealed this grand plan to us.

Tucker, a few days earlier, had sort of set some terms for McCarthy, which included this Church kind of committee that he said about — I think — this was about January 5. So, about January 2, he said: ‘You should have this Church Committee.’

So, fast-forward to January 5th, they start asking me to book McCarthy on the show that night. I had worked with him a lot when I was at Sunday Morning Futures and had a relationship with his team.

That afternoon, Justin came in and he said: ‘Here’s the plan. Tucker is going to first have Kevin on, hear him beg and grovel. Then we’ll bring in Matt Gaetz and Matt Gaetz will then kind of set his terms. Then Tucker will set his terms that McCarthy has to agree to…We’re going to make this whole thing happen on air and save the Republican Party.’

Carlson made two public demands of McCarthy throughout his chaotic bid to become Speaker, both of which were granted, most notably access to more than 40,000 hours of Jan. 6 video footage. Gaetz was one of the leading holdouts who stood in the way of McCarthy’s speakership back in January.