Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy spoke with the press after a motion to vacate the chair passed on the House floor. McCarthy unloaded on fellow Reps. Mace, Gaetz, and Rosendale who voted against him.
“They’re not conservatives and they don’t get to call themselves conservatives,” McCarthy told reporters. “You all know Matt Gaetz…You know it was personal. It had nothing to do with spending.”
From The New York Post:
McCarthy charged that his Florida counterpart’s actions were “not becoming of a member of Congress,” and that Gaetz’s long-expected motion to strip him of his gavel was fueled entirely by a House Ethics Committee investigation of the Sunshine State lawmaker and McCarthy’s refusal to intervene in the matter — a claim Gaetz denies.
“Regardless of what you think, I’ve seen the texts. It was all about his ethics, but that’s all right,” McCarthy said.
The former speaker, whose 269-day tenure leading the lower chamber is the shortest in nearly 150 years, also accused Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) — one of the eight — of appealing to God for Republicans to suffer defeats in 2022 midterm elections.
“Matt Rosendale. He goes to Mass every day,” McCarthy said. “But you know what he said his prayer was all last year? That Republicans didn’t have a big victory. That they had a narrow victory.”
“When you have members like that, that are part of your team, you’ve got a tough team,” he added.
Watch the clip above.
McCarthy lashes out at GOP rebels Mace, Gaetz and Rosendale in defiant exit speech https://t.co/6w0YEyHdD5 pic.twitter.com/5mCoXEDfjI
— New York Post (@nypost) October 4, 2023
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