Gaetz vows to move this week to boot McCarthy

Oct 01, 2023

Conservative hardliner Rep. Matt Gaetz will move to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House, the hardliner said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week,” Gaetz (R-Fla) said. “I think we need to rip off the band aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.”

The Florida lawmaker has threatened to force a vote on booting McCarthy from leadership for weeks, promising to follow through if McCarthy worked with Democrats to avert a government shutdown. McCarthy did so on Saturday, after a group of hard–right Republicans led by Gaetz tanked McCarthy’s efforts to pass legislation that would prevent a government shutdown on Friday.

Gaetz has been a thorn in McCarthy’s side since before the California Republican won the speakership in January. Gaetz repeatedly refused to back McCarthy during the speaker’s race, culminating in a lengthy standoff on the House floor. Gaetz and other Republicans who blocked McCarthy’s ascension eventually backed down – but not before squeezing several concessions out of McCarthy.

One of those concessions lowered the threshold for filing a so-called motion to vacate — a move to evict the speaker — to one House member. After months of dangling the threat over McCarthy’s head, Gaetz says he’s ready to move.

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

It’s unclear whether Gaetz’s mission to oust McCarthy has significant support from Republicans, or whether Democrats will step forward to protect him. Some members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, many of whom have been critical of McCarthy in the past, have distanced themselves from Gaetz’s gambit.

“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.”

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