Gaetz does not think highly of Republican effort to impeach Biden

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Laura Clawson

It’s emerging that Rep. Matt Gaetz really does not think highly of House Republicans’ drive to impeach President Joe Biden. This seems like the kind of thing Gaetz would be very excited about, but—like many observers—he can see that his fellow Republicans are not doing a very good job of it. That came out during the floor fight to oust Kevin McCarthy as speaker. Gaetz rebuffed House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan’s defense of McCarthy’s leadership by saying, “It's hard to make the argument that oversight is the reason to continue when it sort of looks like failure theater.” As it turns out, Gaetz had aired similar complaints days earlier at an online fundraiser with Rep. Matt Rosendale and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

“I don’t believe that we are endeavoring upon a legitimate impeachment of Joe Biden,” Gaetz said in the Bannon-moderated discussion. “They’re trying to engage in a, like, ‘forever war’ of impeachment,” he added. “And like many of our forever wars, it will drag on forever and end in a bloody draw.”

That’s not all. Gaetz also said, “I just don’t get the sense that it’s for the sake of impeachment. I think it’s for the sake of having another bad thing to say about Joe Biden.”

At the fundraiser, Gaetz claimed he wasn’t criticizing Jordan or House Oversight Chair James Comer, and when NBC News asked him about his comments at the fundraiser, he responded, “Kevin wasn’t serious. Jim Jordan is.” Apparently, the whole “failure theater” thing was not an accusation against the people conducting the failure theater; it was somehow McCarthy’s fault. That’s very convenient for Gaetz as he tries to move forward while many of his fellow Republicans are furious at him. He says Jordan is serious, but he obviously doesn’t think much of the overall effort—so how is he going to reframe his view of it going forward?

Now, this is Matt Gaetz. It’s not that he doesn’t want to attack the Bidens. His favored way that Jordan and Comer could show they were serious and not just engaged in “failure theater” would be to subpoena Hunter Biden, something he brought up both at the fundraiser and on the House floor. How would bringing Hunter Biden in to deny that his father had been involved in his business dealings move things along when several witnesses have testified that the president was not involved in his son’s business? It’s unclear. It kind of sounds like Gaetz just wants to torment the younger Biden in person.

If Gaetz thought Republicans had anything, he’d doubtless be sprinting in front of the cameras to loudly call for an impeachment vote. But right now, he’s not seeing it. He can talk all he wants about how McCarthy wasn’t serious and Jordan is, but Jordan and Comer have been leading the investigations that look like an illegitimate impeachment, failure theater, a forever war of impeachment. And he’s absolutely right in every one of those descriptions.

Sign the petition: No to MAGA impeachment. Focus on what matters.

Republicans turn on Gaetz: ED medication and energy drinks?

Posted on October 5, 2023 by Laura Clawson

Rep. Matt Gaetz engineered the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker this week, and while his fellow House Republicans are training most of their ire on Democrats for not bailing McCarthy out, there is some anger left over for Gaetz.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, some Republicans suggested Gaetz should be expelled from the party conference. Rep. Garret Graves said action against Gaetz would be “pursued in the conference,” while Rep. Mike Lawler told reporters he backed the move, and also that he’d like to have hit Gaetz “square between the eyes” with the speaker’s gavel. Rep. Don Bacon also backed expulsion, saying Gaetz is “not a Republican.”

Graves claimed, without evidence, that Gaetz “just got schooled by AOC and others; he was totally manipulated into doing this.” As if Republicans can’t manufacture their own disarray.

None of this was quite as startling as what Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin had to say about Gaetz, though.

Mullin, who overlapped with Gaetz in the House for several years, cited the investigation into Gaetz related to sex trafficking of a teenager and echoed the 2021 reports that Gaetz bragged about his sexual escapades on the House floor:

Mullin: Gaetz bragged about how he would crush E.D. Medicine and chase it with energy drinks so he could go all night pic.twitter.com/MbbG1nvryc
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 5, 2023

This is a guy that didn’t have, the media didn’t give the time of day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl, and there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him—because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with. He would brag about how he would crush [erectile dysfunction] medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night—this is obviously before he got married—and so, when that accusation came out, no one defended him and no one on the media would give him the time of the day.
All of a sudden, he found fame because he opposed the speaker of the House back in November, and he’s always stayed there. And he was never going to leave until he got this last moment of fame by going after a motion to vacate.

Those are some very specific allegations about the ED medicine and energy drinks. Gaetz, for what it’s worth, called it “a lie from someone who doesn’t know me and who is coping with the death of the political career of his friend Kevin.”

Mullin wasn't done. In a Newsmax interview, he again referred to “the stuff [Gaetz] would show on the floor and the stuff he would brag about on the floor,” and described Gaetz referring to now-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as a “fine ---- … and you can put the B-word in place there.” Mullin also wasn’t the only Republican pointing to Gaetz’s sexual habits. Former Mike Pence chief of staff Marc Short, who is also a former chief of staff for the House Republican Caucus, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Matt Gaetz, to say he came here as a fiscal crusader—it’s more likely he came here for the teenage interns on Capitol Hill, to be honest.”

The fact that these allegations and characterizations of Gaetz are bubbling up suggests that even if no one has the nerve to try to get him expelled from the Republican conference—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene warned against it earlier in the week—or if such an effort fails, he will face continuing rumors and digs. As many people commented on social media following the Mullin comments, Gaetz may be about to get the Madison Cawthorn treatment, with one rumor, allegation, or video after another emerging to damage a Republican who’s become inconvenient to his party. Gaetz should probably be trying to remember what he has told which Republicans about his sexual habits—and if his bragging might come back to bite him.

Sign the petition: No to shutdowns, no to Biden impeachment, no to Republicans

Evening Brief: Breaking Point—McCarthy out, Trump on the edge

Posted on October 4, 2023 by kos

The cold war between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and nihilist Freedom Caucus Rep. Matt Gaetz finally turned hot today, as the two faced off in an ouster vote.

McCarthy lost.

Democrats made it clear early in the day that they wouldn’t bail out McCarthy, pointing to his actions on Jan. 6, his sucking up to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago post-insurrection, his attempts to discredit the Jan. 6 committee, his sham Biden impeachment inquiry, his reneging on debt-limit deal, and his actions on national TV this past weekend, claiming Democrats wanted to shut down the government.

With McCarthy ousted (for now), we are in uncharted territory. Here’s what could happen. Unhappy House Republicans are reportedly already talking about expelling Gaetz from the House. Gaetz used Democratic votes to oust McCarthy, so it would be hilarious if Republicans then use Democratic votes to oust Gaetz. That would be bipartisanship we can all believe in! Democrats will happily assist Republicans in ousting any Republican they want, making the slim Republican House majority even slimmer.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump continued his unhinged tirades from a New York courtroom, where he continued to cry about the lack of jury trial. (His lawyers specifically didn’t request one. Was that a hilarious screwup, or was it done on purpose?) Trump also bizarrely claimed a courtroom clerk was Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer’s “girlfriend,” leading the judge to issue a gag order on Trump. Shockingly, Trump seems to have backed down! He removed the offending social media post, offering a good lesson to all the other judges in all the other Trump cases on how to handle his volatile theatrics. Separately, the judge had to clarify that Trump’s claims of an important courtroom win were false. Trump isn’t winning anything at the moment.

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Republicans ditch McCarthy, first speaker ousted in American history

Posted on October 3, 2023 by kos

Holy crap, did we really just watch that happen? In a historic first, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to oust the speaker via a vote of the chamber. In the past, endangered speakers like Paul Ryan and John Boehner opted to quit or not run for reelection rather than face the ignominy of losing a vote by their peers.

But not former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who dared rebel Rep. Matt Gaetz to oust him. As “The Wire’s” Omar Little said, “You come at the king, you best not miss,” and Gaetz’s aim was true. With the help of gleeful Democrats, happy to pay McCarthy back for a legitimate list of grievances, McCarthy narrowly lost the vote 216-210, two votes more than the magic number of 214. It was only the second time in American history such a vote was attempted, and the first time it was successful.

This is, in the end, the ultimate Leopards Ate Face story.

It was clear from the very beginning of this House term that the Freedom Caucus was a nihilist group intent on tearing down the institution. They were ungovernable from the beginning, yet McCarthy, in a Faustian bargain, surrendered to them in order to achieve his big dream of holding the speaker’s gavel. And he did! He even got to stand behind President Joe Biden for a single State of the Union. But in the end, all it bought him was a historic humiliation.

Was it worth it, Kevin?

We are now in uncharted territory. Joan McCarter wrote about what could happen next.

One likely outcome is a vengeful effort by the majority of House Republicans to expel Gaetz from the House. Gaetz used Democratic votes to oust McCarthy. It would be hilarious if Republicans then use Democratic votes to oust Gaetz. That’s bipartisanship we can all believe in! Democrats will happily assist Republicans in ousting any Republican they want, making the slim Republican House majority even slimmer.

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But before we get there, Republicans will need to figure out how to elect a new speaker. Will McCarthy make another attempt? He certainly can’t do it with Republican votes, and if he didn’t cut a deal with Democrats to save his skin on Tuesday, why would he do so to get elected a second time? Is there another Republican that can unite the two Republican factions that clearly loathe each other?

Given the slim Republican majority, can Democrats somehow engineer a coup, getting Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries elected speaker with the assistance of rebel Republicans? Over two dozen Republicans represent Biden-won districts. They wouldn’t even have to vote for Jeffries; they could just be unavailable for a day.

Jeffries is clearly open to the possibilities, as his latest statement shows.

And heck, it’s clear that the Freedom Caucus longs to be in the minority. Their grift is so much more effective when facing off against a Democratic speaker, and as a bonus to the racist MAGA base, Jeffries is Black. They can raise a ton of money off being in the minority. It might literally benefit them to engineer a Jeffries speakership.

As for McCarthy, good riddance. Republicans are unable to take responsibility for their own actions, so the likes of former Rep. Tom Cole, Rep. Patrick McHenry, and Republican operative Brendan Buck were sure to claim it was Democrats that were sending our nation into turmoil because they wouldn’t bail McCarthy out. Democrats had no reason to help McCarthy, and he never offered them a deal to protect him. It’s always someone else’s fault with them!

Still, all Democrats had to do was point to McCarthy’s actions on Jan. 6, and his sucking up to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago days later, at a time when Trump was at his most politically vulnerable. McCarthy worked tirelessly to discredit the Jan. 6 committee, and he’s been complicit in the sham Biden impeachment inquiry—ironically designed to placate the same Republican nihilist caucus that ultimately ousted him. McCarthy also reneged on the debt-limit deal he made with Biden earlier in the year, and this weekend, he went on national TV to blame Democrats for wanting to shut down the government.

McCarthy is a pathetic man, groveling to the worst of his party, all in the raw pursuit of power. And in the end, he got exactly what everyone expected.

Wild ride ahead as Matt Gaetz gets his chance to oust McCarthy

Posted on October 3, 2023 by Joan McCarter

UPDATE: Tuesday, Oct 3, 2023 · 3:32:51 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

“We are not voting in any way that would help save Speaker McCarthy … Nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy, and why should we?” — House Progressives Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) after the Democratic Caucus meeting pic.twitter.com/QG1jc3Velv
— The Recount (@therecount) October 3, 2023

UPDATE: Tuesday, Oct 3, 2023 · 3:31:29 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

All of the reporting this morning from the Democrats’ meeting is of a unified conference that isn’t going to sit this out, and is not going to support McCarthy. The reasons: “McCarthy’s actions on Jan 6, his trip to Mar a Lago, his attempt to discredit the Jan 6 Cmte, his reneging on debt limit deal and his actions this weekend are all the reasons.”

UPDATE: Tuesday, Oct 3, 2023 · 3:27:59 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Virginia, is one of the vulnerable Frontline Democrats, and often speaks for them. She’s definitely not going to help McCarthy.

“He’s a man who cannot be trusted. He’s a man who has excused the inexcusable time and time and time again. He is in this circumstance because he was willing to give up and negotiate anything to become speaker. So I think anyone who thinks it might be some sort of strategy for Frontliners to try and help McCarthy is kind of fundamentally misunderstanding the fact that to us, nothing is more important than our principles.’

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz finally made good on his threats Monday afternoon, quietly filing his motion to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The rules of Congress say that the issue has to be dealt with within two days, though there are a few ways that can go.

McCarthy was typically, inexplicably confident Tuesday morning going into a closed-door meeting of his whole conference, telling reporters he was ready to have the motion come up Tuesday and following through in the meeting by informing members the vote will happen in the first vote series early Tuesday afternoon.

This is the first time since 1910 that the motion will be considered on the floor. It’s been threatened a few times since but never deployed, in part because it’s hard to pull off. It’s a simple majority vote, and the numbers are everything today—how many of Gaetz’s hard-liner supporters will vote with him, how many members are on the floor at the time, and where the Democrats land.

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House Democrats also met Tuesday morning to decide whether they give McCarty any help on this one. McCarthy reached out to Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries Monday night but would not negotiate for his support. "They haven't asked for anything. I'm not going to provide anything," he said early Tuesday. McCarthy insists that the issue is not about him but about the institution, and that that should be enough for Democrats to help him out. “I think this is a question to the institution itself. I know in the past, the other leaders together believed that this should never be in play.”

In an MSNBC appearance Tuesday morning, Jeffries had no comment beyond saying, "We are in the midst of a Republican civil war and it is undermining the ability of the congress to solve problems on behalf of hardworking taxpayers.” Jeffries might ask for his members to vote—or abstain from voting—as a bloc, or tell them to vote their conscience. If it’s the latter, McCarthy should worry because Democrats have an extensive list of reasons why the man can’t be trusted, from his vote to overturn the 2020 election, to his reneging on the debt ceiling deal he made with President Joe Biden, to his capitulation to hard-liners on Biden’s impeachment. The capper happened Sunday, after Democrats saved his bacon by giving him the votes to avert a government shutdown. McCarthy went on “Face the Nation” and told host Margaret Brennan that Democrats “tried to do everything” to force a shutdown of the federal government.

So how will this go Tuesday afternoon? There are a few possibilities. They could put Gaetz’s motion immediately to a vote. From there, it’s up or down on McCarthy by a simple majority of those present and voting. Either he wins, or he loses. Or there could first be a motion to table Gaetz’s resolution, or to refer it to a committee that will bury it. If the motion to table passes, McCarthy survives. If it fails, they then vote on Gaetz’s motion, and we’re back to the simple majority to save him or boot him. He can afford to lose only four votes if every House member is present and voting.

As of Tuesday morning, Gaetz had three likely supporters: Reps. Bob Good of Virginia, Tim Burchett of Tennessee, and Eli Crane of Arizona. There were a handful known to be leaning toward booting McCarthy: Reps. Matt Rosendale of Montana, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

You can follow along with all the action this afternoon in live coverage at Daily Kos.

Chaos reigns in House as hard-liners plot McCarthy ouster

The Gaetz-McCarthy feud gets even nastier as shutdown looms

Will Democrats save Kevin McCarthy’s job?

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Joan McCarter

The day after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s astonishing capitulation that allowed Democrats to once more save the day and keep the government funded, Rep. Matt Gaetz was in front of the cameras promising that he would move to oust McCarthy this week. It’s not clear how much support the Florida man has among the other hard-liners in the Republican conference, but it could be a dozen or more, according to House conservatives. That means McCarthy’s fate is absolutely in Democrats’ hands. He can survive only if Democrats help him, and as of now, they’re not inclined to do that.

President Joe Biden isn’t going to go out of his way to help, telling reporters that it’s up to House Democratic leadership to decide if they want to bail McCarthy out again. Biden then turned the screws on McCarthy with a direct statement telling McCarthy to step up on funding for Ukraine, which was left out of the stopgap government funding bill.

While the majority of Congress has been steadfast in their support for Ukraine, the bipartisan bill has no funding to continue it. We can't allow this to be interrupted. I expect the Speaker to keep his word and secure the passage of support for Ukraine at this critical moment.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 1, 2023

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries remains noncommittal. Last week, he told reporters his team hadn’t “given any thought to how to handle a hypothetical motion to vacate, because we are entirely focused on making sure that we avoid this extreme MAGA Republican shutdown.” On Sunday, Minority Whip Katherine Clark sent a letter to all House Democrats, putting them on notice that as soon as Gaetz drops his motion on the floor, there will be a “Caucus wide discussion on how to address the motion to best meet the needs of the American people,” and telling them to keep their schedules flexible so they “may be present for these important votes should they occur.”

It’s likely many Democrats will take their lead from House Speaker-emerita Nancy Pelosi, who has reportedly warned Jeffries and other Democrats against helping McCarthy, saying he can’t be trusted. Her advice has been to make the Republicans figure this out on their own. Democrats will, however, have to do something, even if it’s doing nothing.

Here’s how it works: Once Gaetz makes the motion to vacate, leadership has two days to schedule a vote on it. The motion to vacate is a privileged resolution, which means that it doesn’t have to go through the Rules Committee to be scheduled, and that it has to be considered once it’s put on the floor. There is an option, called the “Question of consideration,” that could be used to kill the vote. Any member can call for it, and if a majority votes to kill Gaetz’s motion, that’s how they’d do it.

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At that point, Democrats would have the option of helping Republicans by voting for the question and killing the motion to vacate, not voting or voting “present,” or voting against the question and with Gaetz. The problem for Republican leadership with this option is that it doesn’t stop Gaetz from coming back again and again with his motion to vacate. Because of that, Republican leadership might just decide to go ahead with the vote on McCarty’s ouster.

So here’s where the potential dealmaking with Democrats comes in, and so far, Democrats are playing it pretty smart. Gaetz has reached out to members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and at least one of them—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—says she’d “absolutely” vote for the motion to vacate.

However, she continued, there’s room for negotiation for Democratic help bailing McCarthy out. “I certainly don’t think that we would expect to see that unless there’s a real conversation between the Republican and Democratic caucuses and Republican Democratic leadership about what that would mean, but I don’t think we give up votes for free,” she said.

Another progressive, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, told CNN that McCarthy has to be held to account for “pushing an extreme agenda and enabling extremists in his party” and therefore, “by refusing to support a motion to vacate, we are endorsing this extremism, and that is something that the residents in my district will not stand for. The American people are tired of the fact that the GOP is incapable of governing.”

That’s leverage—with enough of the progressives saying they’ll help Gaetz, McCarthy will need to negotiate. He’s opened the door on cutting a deal, saying, “I think this is about the institution. I think it's too important.” He’s also suggested that he’d consider changing the rules package to try to keep Gaetz from bringing the motion repeatedly.

Opening up the rules package could mean some significant changes to help the Democrats, including giving them additional seats on the powerful Rules Committee, where the Republicans have an outsized majority. They could argue for rules that allow more power-sharing.

That’s a start, since McCarthy has opened the door. But it’s not sufficient. Democrats should hold out for the maximum they can: funding for Ukraine, adherence to the budget agreement McCarthy and Biden agreed to earlier in the year, and ceasing the ridiculous Biden impeachment.

House Democrats saved the day on Saturday when 209 of them voted to keep the government operating. Just 126 Republicans stepped up to join them. Those competing numbers have to be thrown in McCarthy’s face every chance Democrats’ get—it’s leverage they have to use to the maximum.

Sunday Four-Play: Matt Gaetz vows to shiv Kevin McCarthy, and AOC says she may help

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Wait, so Congress actually managed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open for another 45 days? And here two of the Sunday shows had already booked Matt Gaetz. This should be fun.

Will Gaetz 1) complain that this is brutally unfair to hardworking American taxpayers like Donald Trump and his next-door neighbor Vladimir, erm, Peterson, 2) introduce the world to his next wife, whose ultrasound photo he recently favorited on OkCupid, 3) slurp Jonathan Karl up like a hunk of Fazoli’s linguine while pugnaciously humming “Flight of the Valkyries,” or 4) promise to take another go at ruining the lives of millions of Americans who depend on government paychecks?

Or maybe he’ll be grilled about the Republicans’ fake impeachment of President Biden. In case you missed it, they held a hearing on Thursday that proved Joe Biden unconditionally loves his son. Republicans also called a witness who admitted there was no basis for impeachment. In other words, it was the shittiest shitshow you’ll ever see, even if you survive past the heat death of the universe. But hey, this is a resilient bunch. They can restart their impeachment crusade at another time. Maybe they’ll launch seven separate impeachment weeks before they eventually get bored and forget any of this ever happened.

Also, Kristen Welker is taking some time away from the 24/7 grind of undermining Western democracy. She’ll have to both-sides Donald Trump’s backyard orphans vs. puppies fight club some other time. “Meet the Press” has been preempted by NBC’s Ryder Cup coverage.

And as the House Judiciary GOP knows, if you can’t make up impeachable crimes, at the very least you can blame Joe Biden for our nation’s increasingly concerning golf gap.

Joe Biden's America. https://t.co/hceMGeqgoq
— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) September 29, 2023

Finally, will any of the shows mention that Donald Trump gave a speech on Friday that made Ozzy Osborne biting the head off a bat look like Demosthenes' Third Philippic?

Oh, yeah. It was bonkers, yo. Here’s just one excerpt of the team coverage from “The Weekly What in the Ever-Living Fuck Is This Now, Gladys?”

“All the currently dry canals will be brimming and used to irrigate everything, including your own homes and bathrooms and everything,” Trump promised drought-beleaguered Californians as trillions of Filet-O-Fish particles from past lunches circled his head in a state of superposition waiting to be observed and become a sandwich. “You’re going to be happy, and I’m going to get it done fast.”

When asked for clarification, a Trump campaign spokesperson said the former president’s comprehensive 10-point plan for irrigating your bathroom will be released in two weeks.

And now on to the (un)usual nonsense.

1.

Speak of the devil! No, really. Please speak of the devil. Summoning Satan to feast on my steaming viscera as I claw my gobsmacked face off with my newly gargoylish Howard Hughes hands for the rest of eternity might be preferable to transcribing this clip.

Gaetz broke news on the Sunday shows this week, announcing that he plans to punish House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for working with Democrats to ensure that 1.5 million hardworking Americans don’t immediately lose their paychecks for no reason.

ABC News:

Hard-line Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz plans a vote this week to try and remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his role as punishment for McCarthy orchestrating a bipartisan stopgap government funding bill to stave off a shutdown, Gaetz said Sunday.

…

Removing McCarthy would essentially halt all legislative business in the House until a replacement is picked. It remains unclear if Gaetz currently has more than a handful of votes for such a dramatic move. McCarthy has dismissed the risk of a vacate motion.

"Bring it," he has said.

On Sunday, Gaetz responded, "Kevin McCarthy's going to get his wish."

Here’s Matt talking with Jonathan Karl of ABC’s “This Week” about his plans to shut down the House because Kevin didn’t agree to shut down the government:

“I am relentless and I will continue pursue this objective,” GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz tells @JonKarl of his push to vacate Kevin McCarthy as House Speaker. https://t.co/KInxWHwCkT pic.twitter.com/NOWDqfFwvA
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 1, 2023

KARL: “So you’re not accomplishing anything here.”

GAETZ: “That’s not true.”

KARL: “Well, you don’t have the votes to remove him.”

GAETZ: “Well, I—by the way, I don’t know until we have him, and by the way, I might not have him the first time, but I might have him before the 15th ballot. That’s the number of ballots Kevin McCarthy needed.”

KARL: “So are you going to do this every day like you suggested? Are you going to go through this process of voting over and over and over again?”

GAETZ: “I am relentless, and I will continue to pursue this objective. And if all the American people see is that it is a uniparty that governs them and that it is always the Biden-McCarthy-Jeffries government that makes dispositive decisions on spending, then I am seeding the fields of future primary contests to get better Republicans in Washington who will actually tackle these deficits and debts.”

First of all, Matt Gaetz is pretty much the last person I want to hear say “seeding the fields.” Coming from him it just sounds gross. I can’t put my finger on it—it just does. It’s not the phrase itself necessarily. It’s his association with it. It might sound marginally less gross coming from a farmer, of course—even if that farmer was Ed Gein.

Secondly, accomplishing nothing is kind of the whole point of Republicans, isn’t it? Matt is determined to hold the line on deficits when a Democrat is in the White House so he can choke the life out of the economy and return Dear Leader to his gilded throne. If he has to create unprecedented chaos to do so, that’s just gravy.

2.

Speak of this other devil! House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appeared on “Face the Nation” with host Margaret Brennan to respond to Gaetz’s perduring and performative Trump-humping. Brennan asked Evil Opie what he thought of Gaetz’s shoving-nerds-into-gym-lockers style of governing, and McCarthy did his best to project a sense of calm.

McCarthy: Gaetz is more interested in securing TV interviews than doing something. He wanted to push us into a shutdown… only because he wants to take this motion. Bring it on, let's get over with it pic.twitter.com/XtCxh2PKrO
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 1, 2023

BRENNAN: “There is a lot to get to with you. I want to start, though, on the news this morning from Congressman Matt Gaetz who says he is going to seek a motion to vacate. He’s going to try to oust you as speaker of the House.”

MCCARTHY: “That’s nothing new, he’s tried to do that from the moment I ran for office.”

BRENNAN: “Well, this time he says he’s going to keep going. May not get there before the 15th ballot, but it took 15 for Kevin McCarthy. He says he’s coming for you. Can you survive?”

MCCARTHY: “Yes, I’ll survive. This is personal with Matt. Matt voted against the most conservative ability to protect our border, secure our border. He’s more interested in securing TV interviews than doing something. He wanted to push us into a shutdown, even threatening his own district with all the military people there who would not be paid, only because he wants to take this motion. So be it, bring it on, let’s get over with it [sic], and let’s start governing. If he’s upset because he tried to push us in a shutdown and I made sure government didn’t shut down, then let’s have that fight.”

Oh, boy! This should be fun. I’m sure y’all remember January’s protracted House speaker vote. It was like watching two greased hippos trying to screw on an elevator. Well, now we get to watch two hippos trying to screw on an elevator in reverse!

BONUS CLIP!

McCarthy is still trying to blame Democrats for this 100% Republican-manufactured crisis.

McCARTHY: I wasn't sure it was gonna pass. You know why? Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let it pass. BRENNAN: Democrats were the ones who voted for this! pic.twitter.com/kCLKW9WSJK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2023

BRENNAN: “Were you confident we wouldn’t shut down?”

MCCARTHY: “I was confident I could get something on the floor to make sure the option that we would not ...”

BRENNAN: “But you weren’t sure it was going to pass.”

MCCARTHY: “Well, I wasn’t sure it was going to pass. You want to know why? Because the Democrats tried to do everything they can not to let it pass.”

BRENNAN: “Democrats were the ones who voted for this in a larger number than Republicans to keep the continuing resolution alive.”

MCCARTHY: “Did you watch the floor yesterday?”

BRENNAN: “Oh, yes, 90 Republicans voted against it.”

And … scene.

Thanks, Speaker McCarthy, and good luck. You’ll need it because …

3.

Gee willikers, Aunt Bee! Looks like Kevin isn’t going to get much help from Democrats! At least without having to give them something in return.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” and said she absolutely would vote to vacate the speaker’s chair. Because, you know, McCarthy really, really sucks.

AOC on CNN says she'd "absolutely" vote to oust McCarthy as speaker pic.twitter.com/Cl2ECx99jt
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2023

TAPPER: “So you just heard Congressman Matt Gaetz say he’s going to move to oust McCarthy as speaker this week. If a motion to vacate the chair comes to the floor, how would you vote?”

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Well, my vote beginning this term for speaker of the House was for Hakeem Jeffries. And I do not intend on voting for a Republican speaker of the House, but I believe that it’s up to the Republican conference to determine their own leadership and deal with their own problems. But it’s not up to Democrats to save Republicans—from themselves, especially.”

TAPPER: “Do you think that there will be any Democrats that might vote to save McCarthy?”

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “I mean, I certainly don’t think that we would expect to see that unless there’s a real conversation between Republican and Democratic caucuses and Republican and Democratic leadership about what that would mean, but I don’t think we’d give up votes for free.”

TAPPER: “But would you vote to vacate? Would you vote to get rid of McCarthy as speaker?”

OCASIO-CORTEZ: “Would I cast that vote? Absolutely. I think Kevin McCarthy is a very weak speaker. He clearly has lost control of his caucus. He has brought the United States and millions of Americans to the brink waiting until the final hour to keep the government open, and even then only issuing a 45-day extension, so we’re going to be right back in this place in November. And, you know, I think that our main priority has to be the American people and we’re going to keep our governance in a cohesive and strong place, but unless Kevin McCarthy asks for a vote, again, I don’t think we give something away for free.”

McCarthy should have learned this universal maxim long ago: If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. And now everyone hates him. And he might lose his job. And likely go down as one of the worst and weakest House leaders in U.S. history.

But hey, at least he got to be speaker! Much like Anne Boleyn got to be queen and Eva Braun eventually managed to wrangle a marriage proposal out of Hitler.

4.

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo, whose show is roughly the journalistic equivalent of drinking from a firehose of curdled Yoo-hoo.

But even Fox News journalists are starting to wonder WTF Republicans are trying to accomplish with their Biden impeachment push, and so Bartiromo must have felt empowered to ask a legitimate question for once.

Of course, no matter how many different ways Republicans try to answer the question at the heart of their efforts—i.e., what did President Biden actually do that’s even remotely impeachable?—they still whiff every time.

BARTIROMO: Have you been able to identify specific policy decisions Joe Biden made that he was paid for? NANCY MACE: I have not had the ability to research that pic.twitter.com/HXnXNrGyNp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2023

BARTIROMO: “Have you been able to identify specific policy decisions that Joe Biden made that he was paid for?”

MACE: “I have not had the ability to research that. I’ve been looking more at the LLCs, the bank records, all of the lies that Joe Biden has told, and what evidence we have so far in meetings, dinners, appointments, White House records, etc., phone messages, text messages, emails, etc., connecting the dots with Joe Biden.”

Oh, look! More nothing! Wait, this is the same nothing we’ve already reported on. Let’s find a fresh angle on this old pile of nothing and reintroduce it as a new pile of nothing! But don't rush us! It took us more than two years to dig up all this nothing, and nothing doesn’t grow on trees. You’ll just have to be patient. Like Job, that nice man from the Bible who did nothing wrong but was relentlessly harassed by Satan anyway.

For some reason that Bible story seems relevant right now. Much like the one where Jesus cast a legion of demons out of Donald Trump and into a nearby herd of pigs. Or maybe it was the other way around. I forget. It’s been a while since I darkened the door of a church, to be completely honest with you.

But wait! There’s more!

That’s all for now. Have a great, productive, and shutdown-free week!

Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Gaetz says he will seek to oust McCarthy as speaker this week. ‘Bring it on,’ McCarthy says

Posted on October 1, 2023 by Associated Press

Rep. Matt Gaetz said Sunday he will try to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a fellow Republican, from his leadership position this week after McCarthy relied on Democratic support to pass legislation that avoided a government shutdown. “Bring it on,” McCarthy responded.

Gaetz, a longtime McCarthy nemesis, said on CNN's “State of the Union” that McCarthy was in “brazen, material breach” of agreements he made with House Republicans in January when he ran for speaker. As a result, Gaetz said he would be filing a “ motion to vacate the chair,” as House rules permit.

McCarthy’s response: “So be it. Bring it on. Let’s get over with it and let’s start governing,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.

No speaker has ever been removed from office through such a move. Procedural votes could be offered to halt the motion or it could trigger a House floor vote on whether McCarthy, R-Calif., should remain speaker.

“I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid," said Gaetz, R-Fla. “I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.”

McCarthy has the support of a large majority of House Republicans, but because the GOP holds such a slim majority, he may need votes from some Democrats to keep his job.

“The only way Kevin McCarthy is speaker of the House at the end of this coming week is if Democrats bail him out,” Gaetz said.

Countering that, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., spoke of Gaetz’s “diatribe of delusional thinking.” Lawler told ABC’s “This Week” that Gaetz was acting for “personal, political reasons.”

The rules of the House allow for any single lawmaker — Democrat or Republican — to make a “motion to vacate the chair,” essentially an attempt to oust the speaker from that leadership post through a privileged resolution.

In January, McCarthy, hoping to appease some on the hard right as he fought to gain their vote for speaker, agreed to give as few as five Republican members the ability to initiate a vote to remove him. But when that was not good enough for his critics, he agreed to reduce that threshold to one — the system that historically has been the norm.

Proponents of allowing a lone lawmaker to file the motion said it promotes accountability, noting its long history in the House. The last use of the motion was in 2015, when then-Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a Republican who later became President Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, introduced a resolution to declare the speaker’s office vacant. Two months later, Boehner, R-Ohio, said he would be stepping down.

Editor’s note: Updated with quotes from Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Headline updated.

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Chaos reigns in House as hard-liners plot McCarthy ouster

Posted on September 29, 2023 by Joan McCarter

There can never be too much chaos for Rep. Matt Gaetz and his malignant cohorts. With this weekend’s government shutdown now seeming inevitable, the Florida Republican and some of his unnamed compatriots are plotting to try to oust House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as early as next week, according to The Washington Post.

A shutdown isn’t enough disruption, nor is their trainwreck of an impeachment inquiry inquiry, so these hard-liners want to make the House an even more ridiculously dysfunctional place. There’s a real underpants-gnome vibe to the endeavor, with phase two of the plot—whom they’ll replace McCarthy with—currently a mystery. The only name seriously floated to the Post is Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who told the Post, “I fully support Speaker McCarthy. He knows that and I know that. … I have zero interest in palace intrigue. End of discussion.”

The other question is whether they’re capable of pulling it off. The House procedure is called a “motion to vacate,” and it has been voted on only once in American history—and it failed. In 1910, Speaker Joseph Cannon survived the vote, though his leadership was weakened. Later, in 1997, rebels plotting against then-Speaker Newt Gingrich talked about using it, but they never filed the motion. The only other time the motion has been filed was in 2015, when then-Rep. Mark Meadows (yeah, that Mark Meadows) filed it against then-Speaker John Boehner, but it was never deployed. Boehner ultimately resigned.

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A successful motion to vacate is clearly not an easy thing to pull off. Is this the crew that will make history and be the first to succeed? It’s just possible that McCarthy and team are hapless enough that it could happen. But what the hard-liners should worry about are the potential consequences: empowered Democrats.

McCarthy has brushed off any suggestion of getting help from Democrats to save his speakership, and in turn, Democrats aren’t in a hurry to rush to his defense. "I cannot imagine him paying the price that it would take for us to bail him out," Rep. Jared Huffman of California told Axios.

That price would be steep. "We want to get disaster aid out, we want to continue our support for Ukraine, and we want them to end this sham of an impeachment inquiry," Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts told Politico last week. "If Kevin McCarthy chooses to ... get back to work for the American people, to do the right thing, we're going to be there to, you know, meet and compromise with him."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is playing it very cool. He rejected “the notion that any of us would be dealing with inside parlor games when we’re trying to stop the extreme MAGA Republicans,” according to Axios. “I haven’t given it any thought,” he added.

McCarthy needs 217 votes out of his current 221-seat majority to save his speakership. (There are two vacancies in the House.) Presuming Gaetz can count, he won’t bring the motion to vacate unless he’s got four Republican members on his side willing to abandon McCarthy so the ploy can potentially succeed. However, Gaetz can’t and shouldn’t count on Democrats to help him—they can sit this one out by voting “present,” or they can vote to keep McCarthy.

That puts a lot of power into the hands of the 212 Democrats and the “Biden 18”—the freshmen Republicans in districts President Joe Biden won in 2020. If just four of them play their cards right—and cross the aisle on a vote—they could find themselves in a fairly comfortable position with Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. At the very least, they wouldn’t be blamed for the next government shutdown.

It’s a long shot that any of this ends with a Democratic speaker, but the only thing that’s predictable amid the chaos in the House is the unpredictable.

Here’s what the ‘pissing match’ between Gaetz and McCarthy costs

New day, same chaos: House GOP argues with itself in face of shutdown

House Republicans vow shutdown won’t stop impeachment inquiry

Posted on September 27, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans are on the brink of shutting down the government. The Senate is moving forward with a bipartisan continuing resolution to keep the government open into November, but House Republicans are busy with a "pissing match" between Speaker Kevin McCarthy and obstructionist Rep. Matt Gaetz. That doesn’t mean the House isn’t doing anything, though. No, Republicans are getting their bogus impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden moving, saying they see no reason it couldn’t continue through a government shutdown.

“We’re going to keep going,” House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer told CNN on Tuesday, saying that a shutdown wouldn’t affect the members or staff involved in the impeachment inquiry. That would be a great look for Republicans—showing voters that they weren’t focused on keeping the government open, and offering a constant reminder that members of Congress were still being paid while government workers weren’t.

Comer has a hearing scheduled for Thursday, which his office told Fox News “will examine the value of an impeachment inquiry.” Apparently, even Comer isn’t confident that he and his fellow Republicans have made that case to the public. The hearing will rehash the findings of Comer’s months of investigations—investigations that notably haven’t turned up any real evidence that Biden has engaged in corruption or profited from his son’s business dealings.

Like Comer, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan told CNN a government shutdown wouldn’t stop him. “Every week there’s a whole roster of folks” scheduled for committee interviews, he said.

The committee staff conducting the interviews wouldn’t be paid in the event of a shutdown, but could be deemed “essential” by Congress members and forced to work. A source told CNN, though, that there was still question about whether a court reporter, necessary for transcribing interviews, would be considered essential, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene noted that a shutdown could affect the ability of government agencies to respond to subpoenas. (Take note: Greene seems to be more clearheaded about the outcomes of a shutdown than Comer or Jordan.)

Going ahead with a baseless impeachment inquiry while shutting down the government out of sheer spite would be an impressive one-two punch, even by Republican standards. What could they possibly do that would more clearly display how far their priorities are from what voters want Congress to deliver?

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