House Republican Absolutely Annihilates Gaetz for McCarthy Rebellion on CNN: ‘One of the Greatest Acts of Heresy I’ve Seen’

The vast majority of House Republicans did not want to see Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) ousted as House Speaker, and one of them had some very harsh words for the tiny faction of hard-right representatives who led the rebellion, calling it an act of “heresy.”

CNN anchor Kate Bolduan spoke to Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) on Wednesday morning in the aftermath of McCarthy’s ouster, and he singled out Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) for leading the charge to vacate the position of Speaker of the House after McCarthy worked with Democrats to keep the federal government open over the weekend. Bolduan asked D’Esposito about the current state of House Republicans, who went into recess following the vote:

Bolduan: You did not support this move to oust Kevin McCarthy. You were supportive to keep Kevin McCarthy. Now that the sun is up, one again has risen again on Capitol Hill, how do you describe the state of things over there?

D’Esposito: I think yesterday we saw from Matt Gaetz one of the greatest acts of heresy that I’ve seen in a while. He’s literally taken one of our oldest institutions and put it into a downward spiral, all over selfish needs, all over Twitter feeds and raising money. And, you know, he he criticized Republicans, specifically Kevin McCarthy, last Saturday when we were able to pass a bipartisan, 45-day C.R. to keep this country moving forward, to keep our government open. He criticized us that we worked with Democrats. That was one of the reasons as to why he moved the motion to vacate. But yet yesterday, he worked with Democrats, some of the most progressive and far-leaning left in the conference in order to take Kevin McCarthy out. He is, by every stretch of the definition, a complete hypocrite.

The lashing didn’t end there. Bolduan pointed out that while D’Esposito put some blame on Democrats for the ouster, “this is a Republican conference problem, full stop,” adding, “this is a problem amongst Republicans. No Republican would expect Democrats to help join them to vote for speaker.” And concerning the eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to oust their own House Speaker, D’Esposito had equally biting words for them:

[W]orking in government, working for our country is about compromise, and some of those individuals had no interest in compromise. It’s what they wanted or nothing. And quite frankly, you know, I think most people, as we saw yesterday, 96 percent of our conference trusted Kevin McCarthy and supported him to be our speaker. But unfortunately, we had a small group who wanted to play real political games and wanted to be, you know, use our rules to to commit terrorist attacks. And that’s what we’re dealing with now.

Watch the video above via CNN.