After 101 House Republicans voted with Democrats for the $1.2 trillion spending bill, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) filed a motion to vacate against House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Johnson’s predecessor, former Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who was ousted from the speakership in October, provided his opinion on the current state of the U.S. House of Representatives on Face the Nation on Sunday.
When asked if Johnson should be fearful of the motion to vacate, McCarthy — whose ouster came through the same motion — said no, “I do not think they could do it again. That was sheerly based on Matt Gaetz trying to stop an ethics complaint.”
[Gaetz (R-FL) was the congressman who filed the motion to vacate McCarthy.]
When asked if he endorses Greene’s tactic, McCarthy again mentioned Gaetz: “Matt’s case was much different. It’s about a personal thing that he had done and that’s what he was trying to get something illegally stopped. This is not the case here. So I would not be afraid of a motion to vacate. This is about policy.”
When Face the Nation anchor Margaret Brennan noted that McCarthy referred to Gaetz twice, and asked if he had any evidence to back up his accusations, McCarthy said: “Well, I think the ethics committee, it was purely Matt coming to me, trying me to do [sic] something illegal to stop the ethics committee from moving forward in an investigation that was started long before I became Speaker.”
When Brennan interrupted to ask “Something illegal?” McCarthy replied: “I don’t know what the facts are there. It’s a personal issue of what what he’d done as a member of congress. I would simply said that the ethics committee has the right to look at whatever there going forward and I’m not going to get in the middle of it one way or another.”