GOP Rep. Proves He's The Simone Biles Of 'Verbal Gymnastics' In CNN Exchange

David Moye
·4 min read
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They don’t give out medals for verbal gymnastics, but if they did, one Republican congressman might have taken the gold based on his CNN interview on Wednesday.

Amazingly, Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) tried to blame the current House speaker debacle on Democrats, even though Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz masterminded the effort to removeRep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from the job.

In the process, he engaged in what anchor Brianna Keilar called “verbal gymnastics” in an attempt to do what members of his party have done recently: blame the opposite party for a situation started and exacerbated by his Republican colleagues.

“The Democrats knew what they were doing when they put up 208 votes to take him out of the speakership, and that’s what created the current situation,” said Scott, who briefly made a run at speaker himself.

Keilar noted, “They didn’t take him out of the speakership. [The Republicans] are the majority.”

“Just factually speaking, there were only eight Republicans and there were 208 Democrats,” Scott said, while ignoring the vote to remove McCarthy came at the behest of those eight Republicans.

Keilar pressed him: “But sir, who’s in the majority?”

“Well, the Democrats were the majority of that vote,” he said, ignoring her point that Republicans currently have a slim majority of the House.

“No,” Keilar said. “Who’s in the majority in the House of Representatives?”

“The Republicans are in the majority,” Scott conceded. “But Democrats provided the majority of the votes to take Kevin McCarthy out of the speakership.”

Keilar pointed out that “the Republicans provided the key votes” and added, “They’re in the majority. They can provide enough votes, obviously, to put a Republican speaker in place.”

Scott doubled down, noting that Democrats provided 96% of the votes to remove McCarthy, at which point Keilar referred to what he was saying as “some interesting verbal gymnastics.”

He wasn’t happy to be called out.

“What do you mean? I’m just calling out the facts,” Scott said, before once again noting the large number of Democratic votes to remove McCarthy.

“I’m talking about how it works,” Keliar explained to the congressman, before offering a civics lesson. “And that is, the majority in the House of Representatives ― your party ― is responsible for electing the speaker, not the Democrats.”

You can see the complete exchange below:

Although Scott may be the Simone Biles of verbal gymnastics, his comments didn’t get much support from the judges on X, formerly known as Twitter — including former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, who chastised Scott for not taking responsibility for the speakership debacle.

Others followed suit.

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