Friday, in his last words as a member of Congress, Ken Buck said he has no regrets to be leaving early and denounced the 118th Congress as a “dysfunctional place.” Many— most?— Republicans realize they picked the wrong leader in the indecisive, woosie MAGA Mike, although my favorite Republican Deep Throat on Capitol Hill told me everyone he talks to agrees it’s an impossible situation and it wouldn’t matter who they elected speaker. “We’re like two parties under one roof and at this point, we’re throwing plated at each other. When we get back in two weeks, it’ll be knives... Fucking Greene; I’d like to wring her scrawny neck. Most of us would. Showboat asshole; the only thing she cares about is publicity.” And the Georgia crank was still doubling down with manic Trump-speak on Monday morning:
On Sunday Maegan Vazquez and Mariana Alfaro reported that House Republicans are in disarray and puzzling over what to make of MAGA Mike’s leadership. “The speed of their disenchantment with Johnson is a reminder of the difficulty of leading the restive Republican caucus, which has been shrinking because of member departures. On Friday, Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin announced he would resign next month to join the private sector, leaving Johnson with just one vote to spare to get measures passed on party lines. At the same time, the Republican Party faces deep divisions over how to handle major policy issues and whether to ever work with Democrats. Members of the [extremist] House Freedom Caucus have already admonished Johnson as a weak leader who they believe does not fight back in negotiations with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). ‘Mike was wrong,’ Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), who vehemently opposed his right-flank peers’ effort to oust McCarthy last year, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday, describing Johnson’s approach to steering a $1.2 trillion funding bill that passed the House 286 to 134 on Friday, with the support of 185 Democrats and 101 Republicans. At the same time, the Republican Party faces deep divisions over how to handle major policy issues and whether to ever work with Democrats.
They noted that Marjorie Traitor Greene’ vacate the chair threat “may become more pressing next month when Johnson asks the House to approve additional funding for foreign allies and border security. She has repeatedly said that she would press a motion to vacate if Johnson put a Ukraine funding bill to the floor, a policy Greene and many other far-right members vehemently oppose… The divisions that continue to plague the fractious conference are the latest examples of frustration for House Republicans.”
With Trump adamantly opposed to doing anything that Putin disapproves of, “It’s unclear how much political capital Johnson will need in bringing the conference on board to approve aid for Ukraine. While the Senate has passed a $95 billion bipartisan national security package— which includes several billion in aid to support Ukraine, assist Israel and combat Chinese military aggression in the Indo-Pacific— Johnson has faced pressure from fellow Republicans to halt Ukraine aid efforts until border security-related funding is included. Roy said Sunday that Johnson would face more difficulty if he pressed ahead with a vote on the measure… Some Republicans expressed concerns that moving forward with a motion to vacate the speakership could lead to unintended consequences, such as selecting a less desirable candidate from their party— or even a Democrat.”
On Sunday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) was on Face the Nation. He said “it’s indicative that even Matt Gaetz, who was the architect of ousting McCarthy, is saying this would be a huge mistake, because it could actually throw the balance of power over to Hakeem Jeffries.”
And speaking of the architect, Face the Nation also invited McCarthy on for an interview. He said that “The one advice I would give to the conference and to the speaker is: Do not be fearful of a motion to vacate. I do not think they could do it again. That was surely based on Matt Gaetz trying to stop an ethics complaint… It was purely Matt coming to me trying, trying [to get] me to do something illegal to stop the Ethics Committee from moving forward in an investigation that was started long before I became a speaker.”
Gaetz and his allies, are spinning it very differently… claiming McCarthy said he would make “this go away” if Gaetz played ball. McCarthy laughed wihen a reporter relayed that to him over the phone.
The feud between Gaetz and McCarthy came to the forefront when Gaetz triggered the vote last October that ultimately led to McCarthy’s ouster and led to Johnson getting elected speaker.
McCarthy on Sunday afternoon maintained that Gaetz filed a motion to vacate because of his refusal to intervene in the ethics probe.
“What Gaetz was always trying to do was leverage me to try to do something in the Ethics Committee that I would not about his investigation,” McCarthy said.
“I never knew [the investigation] was going on. I’m not going to get in the middle of it. And they can do whatever they’re doing,” he added.
A spokesperson for the House Ethics Committee declined to comment.
Carr reiterated that McCarthy had no power to do anything Gaetz would have wanted him to do anyway, saying, “House leadership has a whole lot of power in a lot of different ways, but Ethics is specifically designed to be completely separate from that.”
“We don’t discuss what investigations are ongoing, how votes should happen,” she added. “Those conversations happen all sorts of ways on every other committee … but Ethics? There’s no communication about what they’re dealing with.”
NBC News on Sunday reviewed a copy of communications between Gaetz and a friend that McCarthy said proves Gaetz filed the motion to vacate the speakership due to the ethics investigation.
In a message, which NBC News agreed not to quote directly to avoid identifying the friend, Gaetz neither confirms nor denies that he’s considering filing a motion to vacate because he’s upset at McCarthy about the ethics investigation — although he made clear that he blamed McCarthy for his troubles.
Gaetz’s congressional office did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on the communications.
McCarthy chided Gaetz, alleging the Florida Republican “would jeopardize the entire majority and try to remove me from the speaker to protect” himself from anything that could emerge publicly from the Ethics Committee investigation.
All the reasons Gaetz gave publicly for filing a motion to vacate McCarthy are moot now, another GOP member of Congress told NBC News.
“If Matt Gaetz believed in the rules so much and believed in regular order, and believed in single appropriation bills, he would have been screaming from the rooftops and demanding [another] motion to vacate and demanding that everyone get rid of [now-Speaker] Mike Johnson,” the member said.
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