1 year ago
Republican presidential candidates are calling the ousting of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy “predictable,” “performative” and “a gift to Democrats.”
In a historic move Tuesday, the House voted 216-210 to oust McCarthy, with a handful of conservatives joining Democrats to remove him. McCarthy said Tuesday that he will not seek the speakership again.
“What I saw yesterday was unfortunately incredibly predictable,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Wednesday. “As with most things in politics ... it was not policy, it was personal. Matt Gaetz doesn't like Kevin McCarthy and was intent upon executing this type of assassination, and that's what he did. It was a political assassination yesterday of Kevin McCarthy.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told Scripps News on Tuesday before the vote to oust McCarthy that he opposed McCarthy “when it wasn’t cool, years ago,” while he was in Congress. DeSantis also said that the motion to vacate was “performative” and the “typical theatrics” that happen in Washington, D.C.
“He is really somebody that Donald Trump has backed and put in that position. I think they have not delivered results,” DeSantis said.
Prior to the vote Tuesday, former President Donald Trump posted to Truth Social to criticize the move without naming McCarthy or Gaetz: “Why is it that Republicans are always fighting among themselves, why aren’t they fighting the Radical Left Democrats who are destroying our Country?”
McCarthy, who relied on Trump's backing to win the gavel this year, tried to appease hard-liners in the Republican Party and Trump by opening a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. But it proved to be not enough, as Trump did not defend McCarthy’s speakership after he relied on Democrats to keep the government funded this weekend.
In a video posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said that the “point of removing the House speaker was to sow chaos.”
"That’s what the critics of Matt Gaetz and everybody else is saying," Ramaswamy said Tuesday. "And my advice to the people who voted to remove him is [to] own it."
“So was the point to sow chaos? Yes, it was," Ramaswamy continued. "But the real question to ask, to get to the bottom of it, is whether chaos is really such a bad thing?"
Former Vice President Mike Pence, on the other hand, said "chaos is never America’s friend" while onstage at an event while news of McCarthy's ouster broke.
“I’m deeply disappointed that a handful of Republicans would partner with all the Democrats in the House of Representatives to oust the speaker of the House,” Pence said.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said Tuesday that the removal of McCarthy as speaker "only reinforces the importance of a red wave in November of next year, so that we expand our majority in the House and eliminate the possibilities of more history-making days in the House of Representatives."
Businessperson Perry Johnson said in a statement Tuesday night that the House hasn’t had a speaker “in the last several decades who has taken our debt crisis seriously.”
“I don’t care who the Speaker is, but whoever is up next better start taking our spending and debt seriously,” Johnson said.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said the ousting of McCarthy “is a gift to Democrats.”
“It sets off alarm bells as the 2024 election nears,” Hutchinson said Tuesday on X. “There is hope across America but Washington is broken. And today the GOP illustrated the dysfunction. Let’s now pull together to elect leaders who can change things.”
The campaigns of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former Rep. Will Hurd did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum declined to comment.
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