Gaetz Moves to Oust McCarthy, Marking First Effort in More Than a Century
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) officially moved to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Monday — the first such move in more than a century.
On the House floor, Monday evening, Gaetz sought recognition to declare “the office of speaker of the House of Representatives to be vacant” and “resolve that the speaker of the House of Representatives is hereby declared to be vacant.”
Gaetz moved to oust McCarthy after he accused the speaker of breaking a deal that was made with the House Freedom Caucus in January, which allowed McCarthy to become speaker following a tense standoff with dissenting Republicans, led by Gaetz, who had opposed his speakership.
As part of the deal, McCarthy made several concessions to the House Freedom Caucus, which were not kept, according to Gaetz.
Following the move, Gaetz told reporters, “If the Democrats want to own Kevin McCarthy, they can have him, because one thing I’m at peace with is when we stand here a week from now, I won’t own Kevin McCarthy anymore. He won’t belong to me. So if the Democrats want to adopt him, they can adopt him.”
The congressman continued, “If he’s able to stay in power, it will be him working for the Democrats continuing to do their bidding. So this is a revealing exercise, and I think it’ll show the country who’s really in charge.”
After CNN’s Manu Raju noted that it likely McCarthy would just run for speaker again, Gaetz replied, “Well I would think that if it took Kevin McCarthy 15 rounds to become speaker, and after eight months of a failed speakership, and after a successful removal vote, as your hypothesis would portend, that he would take a hint.”
Gaetz revealed that his “number two” choice for speaker would be House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), who is currently undergoing treatment for blood cancer:
I think very highly of Steve Scalise. I would vote for Steve Scalise. I would probably vote for at least a hundred Republicans in our caucus and maybe a hundred other Americans out there who wouldn’t necessarily need to be a member of the body to considered for the speakership, but I am not going to pass over Steve Scalise just because he has blood cancer and is going through treatment.
Upon being asked, “Is this like a personal disagreement you have with McCarthy?” Gaetz said:
It’s so funny that I come out here and I’ve been doing this for a great number of days with all of you, and I lay out in technicolor the specific areas of breach of the agreement, breaching the 72-hour role, breaching the suspension rule, blowing past the toplines, not passing single-subject spending bills. And yet the McCarthy operation continues to try to make this some sort of personal beef.
Gaetz insisted, “This has nothing to do with personality, this has to do with breach of an agreement. I laid that breach out weeks ago. I stood on the floor, you all covered it, and I said these are the areas of breach, they have to be rectified. Instead of getting any sincere effort to resolve that, you know, we heard the speaker’s profanity and his bluster, and that’s simply not strong leadership.”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
This is a developing story.
