Kevin McCarthy Takes A Dig At Mike Johnson After Ouster Vote: ‘Couldn’t Live With Myself If I’d Done A Deal With Democrats’

Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) took a dig at his successor, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), after he survived being ousted from leadership earlier this week.

On Wednesday, the House shutdown Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) motion to oust Johnson via a bipartisan vote. Last year, McCarthy was pushed out of House leadership following a vacate motion led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

Some hardline Republicans have criticized Johnson by claiming he cut a deal with Democrats to stop them from backing Greene’s motion by passing legislation giving aid to Ukraine. McCarthy said during an interview on Politico’s Power Play podcast that he “couldn’t live” with himself if he had cut a deal to save his speakership.

“I couldn’t live with myself if I’d done a deal with Democrats,” McCarthy said. “If you can’t sustain being speaker by your own majority, should you sustain it? No.”

McCarthy, while critical of the motion to vacate, made a clear distinction between Greene’s and Gaetz’s approaches. He noted that Greene’s motion was rooted in a policy disagreement, a stark contrast to Gaetz’s personal attack, which he found more objectionable.

“It’s different than a Matt Gaetz,” he added. “She wants to have a policy discussion.”

McCarthy continued, “The motion to vacate doesn’t allow a Speaker to be Speaker, and you need to have that otherwise, we’ve got a coalition government is which it seems like they have today and that’s not as productive.”

The former California lawmaker then claimed that if he had stopped the ethics complaint filed against Gaetz, he would still be speaker, but he added he “would rather stand on the merit of doing what is right.”

“If you wanted me to break the law and stop the ethics complaint, I could still be speaker,” McCarthy concluded. “But I’d rather stand on the merit of doing what is right.”

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