Last night Matt Gaetz was on with Tucker Carlson while in Wyoming to campaign against Liz Cheney after she voted to impeach Trump:
Gaetz is asked by Tucker why Kevin McCarthy would back Cheney in her leadership role, and Gaetz responded:
Well of course to be able to maintain power. I don’t think there’s any love lost between Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney. But if you’re a member of the establishment and the leadership, the most dangerous concept in the world to you is that anyone in the leadership could be removed by virtue of a vote of the membership.
He then went on to call McCarthy out for backing Cheney and refusing to hold a vote:
Kevin McCarthy needs to hold a vote on Liz Cheney and if he doesn’t, the Republican conference is a total joke. More than half of the Republican conference says that this person doesn’t speak for us.
Republicans basically have no power in Washington DC right now. The only power we have is to communicate. And if the person we’ve designated to communicate for us as the conference chair doesn’t have the support of the majority of the conference, it is a total fiction that’s been created regarding the entire structure of leadership.
This comes after reports that McCarthy told Republicans to stop attacking each other:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy privately made a blunt appeal to his colleagues in the aftermath of the divisive fight to impeach former President Donald Trump: Stop attacking each other and instead focus on Democrats.
“Cut that crap out,” McCarthy told his members, according to two sources on the call. McCarthy said he’s had personal discussions with individual members and warned that a continued GOP vs. GOP battle will only benefit Democrats as his party aims to recapture the majority in next year’s midterms.
“No more attacks to one another,” he said, including over Twitter.
One GOP lawmaker, who asked not to be named, said that McCarthy’s message overall was upbeat and hopeful. “He said the only thing that can stop us from taking the majority is us.”
I understand McCarthy’s desire to unite Republicans win back the majority. We all want that. But when you have someone like Liz Cheney, who just joined Democrats in an ugly and phony impeachment vote accusing Trump of inciting this so-called insurrection, it calls into question what’s really motivating her. Nobody says she has to love Trump or be loyal to him. But if she can’t at the very least give him a fair shake, then she’s no better than the Democrats running the House right now who have treated Trump like their sworn enemy from day one.
If Cheney wants to cut ties with Trump then fine, she should do it legitimately. Proclaim it from the rooftops so that everyone knows. But don’t do it with some some phony impeachment vote designed by Democrats to destroy Trump.
Gaetz is right here, McCarthy needs to cut Cheney loose from leadership and let the Republican caucus decide with a vote. I like McCarthy and he’s gotten a lot of praise in the past from Republicans in the past two years as minority leader in the House for standing with Trump. He shouldn’t let Cheney drag him down into the mud like this. Let the conference decide so the party can move on and unite.