Gaetz Wants to Oust McCarthy From Speakership for Averting a Shutdown

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy pulled an end run around the far-right wing of his party, striking a deal with Democrats to pass a clean spending bill and avert a government shutdown, and GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz is so mad about it he wants McCarthy ousted as speaker.

“I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week,” the Florida congressman told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. “I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that will be trustworthy.”

“Speaker McCarthy made an agreement with House conservatives in January and since then he’s been in brazen, repeated material breach of that agreement,” Gaetz said. “This agreement that he made with Democrats to really blow past a lot of the spending guardrails we set up is a last straw.”

McCarthy said at a press conference Saturday that he is not afraid of an attempt to remove him from his leadership position. “If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it,” McCarthy said. “There has to be an adult in the room. I am going to govern with what’s best for this country.”

Separate from his efforts to remove McCarthy, Gaetz himself may be in trouble if the current Ethics Committee investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct and illicit substance abuse fails to clear him.

“We want him out,” an anonymous Republican member of Congress told CNN.

“Look, the one thing everybody has in common is that nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy,” Gaetz said. “He lied to Biden, he lied to House conservatives. … And the reason we were backed up against the shutdown politics is not a bug of the system. It’s a feature.”

If Gaetz wants to remove McCarthy, he’ll likely need support from the very people he doesn’t want McCarthy to work with — Democrats. Some may be inclined to work with Gaetz, though, considering McCarthy has launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden and reneged on a deal with the White House regarding spending levels. Already it looks like Gaetz’s effort to boot McCarthy has at least one Democratic supporter: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said Sunday that she would “absolutely” cast that vote.

When Tapper pressed Gaetz on how he would gather support from the opposing party, Gaetz said, “I think Democrats should vote against McCarthy for free.” But if Democrats don’t join his effort to oust the speaker, the congressman said, “He will be their speaker, not mine.”

This breaking news story has been updated.

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