But let me be very clear with you.
Matt is upset about an ethics complaint.
I don't care what they threaten against me.
I am not gonna inject into an independent committee like Essex,
and I'm not gonna put Swalwell back on the Intel Committee so
they can do whatever they want.
>> Speaker 2: Ooh, look at the big boy pants that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy
finally decided to put on and
essentially push back against his fellow Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz,
who has been very critical about Kevin McCarthy, has been threatening
Kevin McCarthy's leadership role in the House of Representatives.
And in that video, McCarthy accuses Matt Gaetz of working
with Democrat Eric Swalwell to undermine his leadership.
What?
Now, what's behind that?
What is he referring to?
According to mediaite, McCarthy was referring to a probe currently being
conducted by the House Ethics Committee into Gaetz.
The investigation centers on possible sexual misconduct,
illicit drug use, and lobbying violations.
Regarding Swalwell, house Republicans removed him from
the Intelligence Committee this year, along with Representative Adam Schiff.
And as we know, Gaetz has in fact, been very critical of Kevin McCarthy,
especially after he was given his leadership role back in January.
But most recently, Gaetz was upset over the lack of urgency that
McCarthy was showing in regard to impeaching Biden.
Now, if I were a sane person, I would look at the fact that there is absolutely no
evidence of wrongdoing by Biden, and I would also decide maybe the matter isn't
so urgent and we shouldn't push forward with an impeachment inquiry.
But McCarthy listened to him, okay?
After all the pressure, McCarthy announced an impeachment inquiry, or
at least how he's encouraging an impeachment inquiry just this week.
And when it comes to Gaetz, it's not the only threats we've seen from Gates.
Okay, yesterday, Gaetz threatened to cut or
to out McCarthy from his position as speaker of the House, which, by the way,
could happen because of a deal that McCarthy made with some House Republicans.
Threats from individual lawmakers to remove a House speaker hold more
weight now.
And why is that?
Well, McCarthy agreed earlier this year
to House Freedom Caucus demands to allow a single member to call for
a vote known as a motion to vacate to oust the leader of the lower chamber.
The vote needs a simple majority in the House to pass.
And Matt Gaetz said that the path forward for
the House of Representatives is to either bring you into immediate total
compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair.
This also comes as the government basically approaches
a looming September 30 shutdown date.
They need to pass legislation to fund the government to avoid that shutdown.
But it seems pretty clear to me that Republican lawmakers are dead set on
ensuring that a shutdown happen happens.
But I'm curious what you think about all of this was and
what do you think about McCarthy finally pushing back a little bit against Gaetz.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, they've been smacking this guy upside his head and
essentially since he ran for the speakership.
And it's one of those things where I guess he feels like, all right,
enough is enough.
I'm tired of getting bullied here.
But guess what?
Because he was so desperate to gain this speakership role, like,
it's obviously been a dream of his.
He made these compromises and people like Matt Gaetz and the sort of, I don't know,
more strident corners of the Republican caucus in the House, they know that they
got this guy by the balls and they can jerk him around anytime they want to.
And this is just the latest example of that.
Kevin McCarthy knows that he doesn't have a single leg to stand on because he,
quote unquote, negotiated with terrorists to begin with, and
now this is his lot in life, and we all get to laugh at him in the process.
>> Speaker 2: I mean, what is the point of having a leadership role which-
>> Which you can't lead.
>> Right, exactly.
If you can't lead when you're being bossed around by the scrubs in your caucus?
And that's essentially what's happening.
And to be fair, there is something admirable about the fact that you
have Republican lawmakers fighting for what they want.
I mean, I wish we saw that with some of the they're not freshmen at this point,
but some of the newer progressive lawmakers who got elected into
office after Bernie ran for president in 2016.
And the whole idea was that they were going to fight the corporate Democrats,
but we're not really seeing any of that happen.
In the beginning, there was a little bit of rhetoric.
Now there's none of it, [LAUGH] there's no action at all.
Whereas you look at the other side, you look at the Republicans and yeah,
I mean, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Green and all of those people are fighting for
things I disagree with, but it's stuff that they want, and so
they're going to keep fighting.
And again, there's something admirable about that.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, 100%.
I mean, just think about the Reprisals that were handed out
to the likes of Ilhan Omar or even AOC when she even slightly
remember when she was up there crying about the vote.
>> Yes. >> We see how heavy handed the Reprisals
are to what in the Democratic Party quite frankly,
as much as it pains us, Anna, they're the fringe element of that party,
the progressives, the sort of left of the party.
And when the establishment comes down on them,
they come down pretty hard and there's no recourse.
So it's actually quite the opposite.
They have absolutely zero power, zero say so.
Yeah, as you say, it'd be nice to see the people who we more closely align with
politically within the Democratic Party actually have some level of bark and bite,
but that's not quite the case, and I don't even see a path forward for those folks.
>> Speaker 2: I totally agree with you on that,
which makes this potentially fun story a little bit of a downer.
Didn't mean to go in that direction, but
I'm very curious to see how this all develops between McCarthy and
Gaetz, again it only takes a single member of Congress in this case,
it would be Matt Gaetz to call for a motion to vacate.
Call for a vote.
All you need is a simple majority.
I don't know if they're going to get that majority.
I think that some Democrats might actually vote in favor of keeping McCarthy
in place, but we'll see.
We'll see how this all plays out.
But it is an interesting story developing even after McCarthy, in my opinion,
made the mistake of encouraging an impeachment inquiry when they have
no evidence of Biden engaging in any wrongdoing.