Matt Gaetz Says He Has ‘Enough Republicans’ To Oust Kevin McCarthy From Speaker Role Transcript

Mr. Gaetz, how many Republicans do you have with you in this effort?

Well, I have enough Republicans where, at this point next week, one of two things will happen. Kevin McCarthy won’t be the Speaker of the House or he’ll be the Speaker of the House working at the pleasure of the Democrats, and I’m at peace with either result because the American people deserve to know who governs them. I’m sorry, I’m going to let her have a question.

Yeah. So you’ve made it clear that, if this fails, you will try again. How soon would that happen?

Well, I’m not so pessimistic as to immediately accept that it’ll fail. I think that’s the likely outcome, but this won’t be the only time. That’s probably all I’ll say on that.

Has the speaker talked to you, reached out to you at all in any way, touch on the floor just now?

he hasn’t talked to me since he appointed me to the National Defense Conference Committee and we talked about some of our aligned defense priorities, but that was some weeks ago.

What do you think it means that there’s a number of Republicans now that say they’re keeping an open mind to the motion of vacate?

Well, I hold no malice toward any Republican who doesn’t support the motion to vacate. I believe the basis for the motion to vacate is Kevin McCarthy’s repeated breach of the agreement that he made in January. Just look at the breach that we’ve seen over the last few weeks. He blew past the pre-COVID spending top line he agreed to, he put a bill on the floor to fund the entire government without 72 hours to review it in violation of the agreement he made, he said that there would never be a bill on the floor of the House that spent more than $100 million without the opportunity for amendment, and yet the last continuing resolution violated that agreement, as well.

(01:29)
He also agreed to a rule that he would never use the Democrats to roll a majority of the majority, but in the last vote on Ukraine, we had a majority of the majority vote no, and yet that was not something that the leadership honored. They used Democrat votes to send more money to Ukraine. And maybe the last straw for me was learning that Kevin McCarthy had created a secret side deal with President Biden on Ukraine while we were in the middle of this government funding battle. A secret side deal on Ukraine is not what the American people want to see out of Republicans.

He denied that.

[inaudible 00:02:12] if it’s likely to fail as you expected, what did you accomplish [inaudible 00:02:12]?

Well, I think the American people deserve to know the coalition that really governs them. And Kevin McCarthy likes to pretend that he makes coalition with conservatives, but all he really does is break his word with conservatives. The coalition that really runs this country is the uni party. It is the Biden, McCarthy, Jeffries government, and that is what we will demonstrate with this vote.

If you succeed, who are you going to-

[inaudible 00:02:32] why you suspect that he made a side deal on Ukraine with Biden?

Well, because Joe Biden said he made a side deal, House Democrats said he made a side deal. And when the speaker’s office was asked about a side deal, they made some opaque reference to wanting to support Ukraine and do border funding. And as I said in my remarks on the floor earlier today, regardless of how you feel about Ukraine money or border money, these two things should not be lumped together. They deserve their own dignity and their own vote. And the people are tired of seeing the ways of Washington that jam everything together in order to really frustrate actual legislators.

If you succeed, McCarthy’s almost certainly going to put himself up as a candidate for speaker again. And that may mean that’s no one who can get 218 votes. Are you prepared to go through that possibility with no one getting 218 votes?

Well, I would think that, if it took Kevin McCarthy 15 rounds to become speaker, and after eight months of a failed speakership, and after a successful removal vote, as your hypothesis would portend, that he would take a hint.

Are you talking to any Democrats about this? If it were serious, you would be trying to convince the [inaudible 00:03:36].

Look, I have made no deal with Democrats because I believe that Democrats should vote against Kevin McCarthy for free. It’s Kevin McCarthy who’s out there offering deals to Democrats. So if there’s a deal made with Democrats, the only deal is to make one with McCarthy because I’m not offering anything and won’t offer anything. And by the way, if the Democrats want to own Kevin McCarthy, they can have him because one thing I’m at peace with is, when we stand here a week from now, I won’t own Kevin McCarthy anymore. He won’t belong to me. So if the Democrats want to adopt him, they can adopt him.

If you’re successful, who would be your alternative? Who would you be putting up there if you’re successful?

Look, our number two is Steve Scalise. I think very highly of Steve Scalise. I would vote for Steve Scalise. I would probably vote for at least 100 Republicans in our caucus and maybe 100 other Americans out there who wouldn’t necessarily need to be a member of the body to be considered for the speakership, but I am not going to pass over Steve Scalise just because he has blood cancer and is going through treatment.

What would you say to members who have worked so hard to try and get these appropriation bills through? That’s finally happening. Now, they say they don’t want to be distracted from that. What do you say to those members who don’t want to vote against McCarthy for that reason?

Well, mostly, I would say you’re welcome because we weren’t endeavoring on the appropriations process earnestly until we held a political gun to the speaker’s head last week. We left for a six-week vacation and we’d only passed one of our appropriations bills, the Veterans Bill. If Kevin McCarthy was serious about appropriations, we’d have been here all of July, we would’ve been here in August, and we would’ve been doing the people’s work, passing their budget. The American people are tired of Washington DC not having a budget, running $2-trillion annual deficits sitting atop a $33-trillion debt. And if this country’s going down, I’m going down fighting. I’ll give you a followup.

It’s happening now, right? Y’all were supposed to be back home in your districts. That hasn’t happened. There are appropriation bills on the calendar. I know it might’ve taken awhile to get here, but you’re here. And so what do you say to your colleagues who say, “We can’t support this because we want to get this done. We want to get the government funded?”

Well, I would suggest, if we were real serious about that process, we wouldn’t be having four-day work weeks. We started votes tonight at 6:30 p.m. on a Monday. Most Americans don’t start work at 6:30 p.m. on a Monday and end a few hours later. So I don’t believe that the level of effort that you’re seeing out of the congress this week is reflective of the momentum that we had built previously.

But you’re going to need Democrats to vote with you to oust McCarthy and you’re criticizing McCarthy for having to potentially need Democrats to keep him in the job. Aren’t you pretty much doing the exact same thing here?

Mono, the yellow brick road of working with Democrats has been paved, constructed, engineered, and architected by Kevin McCarthy. Look no further than the debt limit deal, a deal he passed with Democrats. Look no further than the last continuing resolution, which he passed with Democrats. And by the way, if he’s able to stay in power, it will be him working for the Democrats, continuing to do their bidding. So this is a revealing exercise and I think it’ll show the country who’s really in trouble.

Just to follow up on that, though, most Republicans still do support McCarthy. So why bring this up if you don’t have the support of most of your conference?

Well, he doesn’t have my support anymore and he doesn’t have the support of a requisite number of Republicans to continue as the Republican speaker. Now, he may continue as the House Speaker and he may continue as a speaker of the Democrats and some sort of uni-party coalition, but he is not going to be a speaker in power as a consequence of Republican votes, based on the number of people who are going to be with [inaudible 00:07:17].

Mr. Gaetz, is this a personal disagreement you have with McCarthy or is this solely just on [inaudible 00:07:21]?

It’s so funny that I come out here, and I’ve been doing this for a great number of days with all of you, and I lay out in technicolor the specific areas of breach of the agreement, breaching the 72-hour rule, breaching the suspension rule, blowing past the top lines, not passing single-subject spending bills, and yet the McCarthy operation continues to try to make this some sort of personal beef. No one seems to be real eager in engaging me on the substance of my argument, which is that we need single-subject spending bills, we need to return to pre-COVID spending, but some people try to make every policy disagreement personal because they are so personally embarrassed from their own failures.

(07:59)
And so this has nothing to do with a personality, this has to do with breach of an agreement. I laid that breach out weeks ago. I stood on the floor, you all covered it, and I said, “These are the areas of breach. They have to be rectified.” Instead of getting any sincere effort to resolve that, we heard the speaker’s profanity and his bluster, and that’s simply not strong leadership.

Can you make that agreement in public? Because none of us have seen that agreement.

I’ll go to Rachel next.

Mr. Gaetz, are you concerned that some conservatives who agree that McCarthy is in breach of these promises he made in January are not backing your effort, people like Chip Roy, Byron Donalds, Thomas Massie? Obviously, somebody who tried to oust Bainer says that this could backfire conservatives. Are you worried about that pressure and that fracture in conservatives actually undercutting you?

No. Listen, Chip Roy and Thomas Massie, we all want to get to the same place. We all want to have less spending, we want to return to the budget process that is in law, and I hold no ill will toward them if they make a different tactical choice than I’ve made. So if my dear friends who I agree with on almost everything, Mr. Roy, and Mr. Perry, and Mr. Massey, want to own Kevin McCarthy, then that can be their choice and they can make whatever choice they’d like.

Does Trump support this effort?

Mr. Gaetz, you have threatened that, if you fail, you will continue to call up motion to [inaudible 00:09:18].

That question has already been asked.

Mr. Gaetz, do you believe that your fellow Republicans who vote in favor of Kevin McCarthy should receive primary challenges in the 2024 election?

Listen, some of them, but certainly not all of them. There’ll be a number of great conservatives and friends of mine who do vote with Speaker McCarthy. I don’t have confidence in him anymore, and I think a requisite number of Republicans have lost confidence such that the only way he’ll be able to stay in power is by working for the Democrats.

[inaudible 00:09:44].

I’m sorry, I’m going to try to go to some people that haven’t had a chance to ask a question. Yes. Go ahead, ma’am.

Congressman, you are saying that you don’t trust Kevin McCarthy. A number of Democrats right now are saying the same thing, that they don’t trust him. They can’t hold him to-

The one thing we have in common is he’s lied to all of us.

… a handshake deal right now. If you were to move forward, if there were to be any kind of agreement, what would that look like and what would you need to see from the speaker at this moment?

I think the die is cast, based on the motion I just filed. I think the time for that discussion would’ve been over the last several weeks, but instead, we saw the speaker continuing … The speaker did not just fail to remediate the breach of the agreement he made with us in January, he accelerated the instances of breach. After I laid out the breach, he went and violated the 72-hour rule. After I laid out the breach, he violated the 100-million no-amendment suspension rule. So he seems to be reverting to the very unfortunate muscle memory of Washington DC that has put our nation at the top of $33-trillion debt, that has led to $2-trillion annual deficits in our near future, and the rapid global de-dollarization of the economy.

(10:49)
When you look at the BRICS system, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, they’re moving away from the dollar. And just in August, they added six new countries, including G20 economies in the Western Hemisphere and Gulf monarchies. Moreover, you saw US News say that the number one economic trend of 2023 is de-dollarization, globally. This worries me.

(11:14)
You all get all worked up that there’s going to be some uncomfortable, chaotic moment that I’ll feel pressure from conservatives or Democrats or whomever. I feel the judgment of history. I feel the weight of that. I worry that, when the history books are written about this country going down, that my name is going to be on the board of directors here. And if this country’s going down and if we’re losing the dollar, I’m going down fighting. And I don’t care if that means fighting Republicans, Democrats, the uni party, the leadership, the PACs, the lobbyists. I’ve had it. I’ve been here seven years. We don’t have a fucking budget. We haven’t had one since the mid ’90s. I’m through with it. I apologize for using that word, but the only path forward here is to have single-subject spending bills that can be reviewed, amended, considered, and I think that is the responsible way that our legislatures all over this country operate for good reason.