Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz did not hold back during his latest appearance on Fox News. Gaetz was invited to discuss his opposition to hopeful House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Asked how he thought the voting would continue to play out, Gaetz noted that with each passing vote, the former House Minority leader continued “decreasing in his vote share” and that she suspected the “trend is likely to continue.”
“There’s a reason Kevin McCarthy doesn’t want to continue having votes,” Gaetz began, referencing the canceled floor vote on Wednesday evening that would have led to a 7th round of voting. The House will instead reconvene at noon today. “And it’s because with each vote, he seems to be decreasing in his vote share. And we’ve only increased with votes in our vote share in opposition to Kevin McCarthy. We suspect that that trend is likely to continue.”
Gaetz then offered his prediction on how the final vote will play out, noting that there are two most likely scenarios.
“[E]ither Kevin bows out realizing there’s no path for him to become Speaker of the House, even if he picks up one or two or three or five of the 20 who have opposed him half-dozen times on the floor,” he suggested. “Or, he essentially has to wake up, bring the House into session and put on a straitjacket with a rules package that we’ve presented to him that doesn’t allow a lot of discretion for the Speaker of the House.”
So far, the McCarthy camp has appeared reluctant to meet the demands of Gaetz and the rest of the Freedom Caucus, instead leading to six failed votes in which he has now lost twenty-one Republican votes.
Gaetz went on, speaking to the reasons as to why he and his hold-out colleagues refuse to vote for the California RINO.
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“The reason we’ve demanded that is that we do not trust Kevin McCarthy. And it’s not a small body of work. The guy has been in leadership in Washington, DC for 14 years. And this town needs to change. And we’re going to change it one way or the other, either by changing out the Speaker or by having the most fundamental rewrite of the rules in really my lifetime,” Gaetz said.
Watch the full interview below:
BREAKING: Rep. @MattGaetz says he expects vote share in opposition to a Speaker Kevin McCarthy to continue to increase. pic.twitter.com/ui4xmBeV0a
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) January 5, 2023
Gaetz reminded Fox viewers that a vote for McCarthy is a vote for the swamp. Pointing out his fourteen years in Congress, the would-be Speaker has helped pave the way “for some of the worst legislation” and supporting bills that only borrow “against the futures of the next generation.”
Well, I’m not voting for Kevin McCarthy. But there are some of the 20 who I suspect might if we got control of the Rules Committee and the Appropriations Committee in the hands of folks that don’t vote for bad rules and bad appropriations bills.
Remember, before this last omnibus, Kevin McCarthy was paving the way for some of the worst legislation driving our country deeper into debt and borrowing against the futures of the next generation.
And so if we got control of those key committees in the hands of conservatives, I think there are some of the 20 who might vote for Kevin McCarthy. If things stand as they are, I would suspect that the opposition will only grow.
Gaetz finished by saying that their only objective was to represent the people that elected them.
“We’re not trying to dictate terms we represent our constituents,” the Florida Congressman said. “Look, part of the group think of Washington DC is you come here and you’ve just got to give the lobbyist your vote card and the leadership your calendar and everything will be okay. Kevin McCarthy has no ideology, even his own supporters would admit that in private. He is simply a vessel through which lobbyists and special interests operate.”
“So it’s not that we’re not being team players. It’s just that my team are the people in Florida who sent me here to fight for them,” he concluded. “My team is not the assembly of groupthink that occurs inside the swamp. We got to drain this swamp. We shouldn’t put one of the alligators in charge.”