‘Same Stupid Clown Car With a Different Driver!’ GOP Rep. Wants ‘Foundational Problems’ Fixed Before New Speaker Named

Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-SD) is a frustrated member of the House of Representatives, and he unleashed a stream of insults aimed at the far-right faction of his own party following the ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on CNN on Thursday.

CNN anchor John Berman welcomed Johnson as a guest during a segment on the House, and right off the bat, the congressman ripped into the man responsible for the move to vacate the speakership, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). Berman had asked whom he was going to support as Speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) or Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Johnson made it clear that it was way too soon to declare his support for anyone:

Johnson: Oh, I’m not with anybody yet. I think we’ve got a lot of questions we need these candidates to answer, in part because if we don’t change the foundational problems within our conference, it’s just going to be the same stupid clown car with a different driver. And, you know, Max Miller had mentioned Matt Gaetz earlier in Manu [Raju’s] report. I’m glad he did it, because the reality is, if Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise can’t figure out how to deal with that saboteur, we’re just going to have another blowout, whether it’s two weeks or six weeks or eight weeks. You know, Matt Gaetz and those hardliners, they’re a real problem. And I don’t think the pyromaniacs are going to be satisfied after they’ve burned down one house. I think they’re going to have an itching to go burn down a couple more.

Berman: So just to be clear, you just call them pyromaniacs and saboteurs. Did I have that right?

Johnson: Yeah. I mean, I guess I probably could have chosen my words a little more carefully, but it’s not time for polite talk. Yeah, we’ve got a southern border that’s in crisis for $33 trillion in debt. And these guys, chaos artists, decided that we needed to take a couple of weeks off from governing the country. They’ve been playing silly D.C. parlor games about leadership rather than having us actually get things done. And because they crave the attention, because they crave the chaos, it doesn’t end here. We’ve got some real work to do if we’re going to be a big boy, big girl, grown-up party to govern the House.

Watch the video above via CNN.