Conservatives had hoped to put on a show of unity at the Republican National Convention, but at one point old divisions resurfaced when Matt Gaetz mocked Kevin McCarthy on the floor while being interviewed.
“What night are you going to speak? If you were to get up on that stage, you’d get booed. You’d get booed off the stage!” Gaetz laughed at the California Republican.
His assistant tweeted a clip of the meeting.
Gaetz and McCarthy have a long history of sparring.
The Florida firebrand filed the impeachment motion that resulted in McCarthy losing the job he had worked his entire career for.
Conservatives had hoped to put on a show of unity at their Republican National Convention — except for one moment.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., mocked former President Kevin McCarthy on the convention floor Tuesday while giving an interview.
McCarthy said in April that he lost his job because he refused to help Rep. Matt Gaetz cover up “sleeping with a 17-year-old girl.”
“I’ll tell you the truth about why I’m not speaker of the House,” McCarthy said in a talk at Georgetown University titled “How Strong Is Our Democracy?”
“It’s because a person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old girl,” the California Republican continued. “Did he or didn’t he? I don’t know.”
McCarthy has long accused Gaetz of launching the landmark impeachment motion that ousted him from the chairmanship last year amid an ongoing ethics investigation into his conduct.
Gaetz responded to the House Speaker’s accusation about X: “Kevin McCarthy is a liar. That’s why he’s no longer Speaker of the House. Ask the 224 people who voted to impeach him.”
In February, McCarthy suggested that Gaetz, who is married, “lies about who he sleeps with.”
The House Ethics Committee first opened an investigation into Gaetz in April 2021 but paused it while the Justice Department launched its own investigation into the member.
Gaetz confronted McCarthy while he was doing a live television interview.
Gaetz and McCarthy have a long history of sparring.
“What night are you going to speak? If you were to get up on that stage, you’d get booed. You’d get booed off the stage!” Gaetz laughed at the California Republican.
The Florida agitator filed the eviction motion that resulted in McCarthy losing the job he had worked his entire career for.
The Justice Department ultimately decided not to file charges against Gaetz.
However, the House Ethics Committee has reopened its investigation into the Floridian.
Additionally, newly reported text messages show Gaetz soliciting a young woman whom his now-imprisoned friend Joel Greenberg had paid for sex with to accompany him on a three-day excursion to the Florida Keys.
The messages, reported by ABC News, allegedly occurred in May 2017, months after the Florida Republican took office.
The texts described in detail to the outlet allegedly show Gaetz asking the woman to fly on a private plane and join him, another woman and three other men in the Keys.
McCarthy is the only House speaker to lose control of a midterm session of Congress. He subsequently left the House and has since failed to put any brakes on the eight Republicans who voted to impeach him.
