Things got wild in Congress on Tuesday, February 25, when Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) launched into an insult-filled tirade about President Donald Trump and, in response, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) threatened to remove him from the committee meeting over those remarks.
It started when, during the meeting, Rep. Frost referred to Trump as the “grifter in chief” and claimed that Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk is using his office to enrich himself. He said, “People like the grifter in chief, Trump, and President Musk are openly using their public offices to enrich themselves to the tune of billions of dollars.”
Continuing, the anger-filled Florida representative snapped, “So, if we want to look at waste, fraud and abuse, which I’m down to do, why is there complete silence on the other side of the aisle about looking at the complete grifter that … is the president of the United States and the richest man on the earth-”
Rep. Frost was interrupted, at that point, and asked by Rep. Comer if he wanted “to revise your remark with respect to improperly identifying the president of the United States.” Furious and refusing to go along with a revision of his remarks to keep within the rules of decorum, Rep. Frost added, “I’ll say ‘President Musk’ and ‘grifter in chief Trump.’”
Chiming in somewhat after that point, the ranking member on the committee, Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) said that he “believe[s] that Mr. Musk is protected by the rules of the House or the committee.” Firing back at that claim, Rep. Comer told him, “We’re looking at the — disparaging the president now.”
Rep. Connolly continued to push back on Rep. Comer’s use of the rules against Rep. Frost, saying, “But I don’t believe Mr. Frost disparaged the president, I believe he disparaged Mr. Musk.” Rep. Frost then appeared to go along with playing by the rules and told the committee that he would agree to “say something else.”
Then, speaking, Rep. Frost proceeded to disparage the president, declaring, “President Musk and the president of the United States, Donald Trump, who is engaged in grifting of the American people, often use their public offices to enrich themselves. Someone on the other side was just asking, ‘How would you feel if you called someone else from the …”
"*" indicates required fields
Interrupting him, Rep. Comer demanded he stopped and noted that he was in violation of the rules, saying, “Hold off, hold off, Mr. Frost, hold off!” He then said, a bit later, that “the chair finds the words from the gentleman from Florida are not parliamentary because they constitute personalities toward the president, which, if you sit in the House floor, that’s always uttered by the presiding officer on the House floor, you cannot disparage the president of the United States.”
Soon, after a bit more back and fort, Rep. Comer told the committee that Rep. Frost “is barred from further participation.” Rep. Frost then sounded off again declaring, “I wanna say it’s despicable that this committee is going to silence me for bringing up —” At that point, shouting ensued and hell broke loose, with Rep. Comer threatening to throw Rep. Frost out “if he doesn’t refrain.”
Watch that here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video