Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) slammed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) on Tuesday after The New York Times released a report that featured recorded comments from the two congressmen expressing concern about the Florida Republican’s comments following the January 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill.
Gaetz in a statement published in Twitter he called McCarthy and Scalise “weak men.”
“Rep. McCarthy and Rep. Scalise had opinions about President Trump and me that they shared in tearful calls with Liz Cheney, not us,” Gaetz wrote. “This is the behavior of weak men, not leaders.”
Earlier on Tuesday, the Times reported that McCarthy, during a call with Republican leaders on Jan. 10, 2021, said Gaetz was “putting people in harm’s way.” He was particularly concerned about comments the Florida Republican made that attacked Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) after the Jan. 6 riots, according to the Times.
“And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do on Capitol Hill, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else,” McCarthy said on the call while discussing Gaetz.
Scalise also expressed concern about Gaetz’s comments, suggesting that the comments might be illegal.
“This is serious stuff. It has to stop,” Scalise said. “It’s potentially illegal what you’re doing.”
Also on the Jan. 10 call, McCarthy denounced Republicans by calling his colleagues, saying “it has to stop.”
“These members calling other members, that has to stop,” McCarthy said.
“The tension is too high. The country is too crazy. I don’t want to look back and think we caused something. … I don’t want to play politics with any of it,” she added.
McCarthy said he received a report of Gaetz calling people out and calling them “anti-Trump,” adding that “this is a serious thing that people are doing and it has to stop.”
Gaetz said Tuesday that McCarthy and Scalise were “shielding Liz Cheney from criticism” while he was shielding Trump from impeachment.
“They considered it inflammatory or illegal to call Cheney and Kinzinger ‘Anti-Trump,’ a label both proudly announce today,” he added.
The Florida Republican also suggested that the new recordings illustrate the true thoughts of McCarthy and Scalise.
“On the plus side, you no longer have to be a lobbyist with a $5,000 check to know what McCarthy and Scalise really think. You just have to listen to their own words as they disparage Trump and the Republicans in Congress who are fighting for him,” he said.
The Hill has reached out to McCarthy and Scalise for comment.
The audio recordings reported by the Times were obtained for the upcoming book “This Shall Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” written by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, both reporters for the newspaper.
Tuesday’s report was the second article to feature McCarthy’s private comments following the Jan. 6 riots. In the first batch, McCarthy was heard saying that he would recommend that Trump resign from his position. He initially called the report “totally false and incorrect”, but audio recordings later backed up the comments.
Gaetz hit McCarthy Twitter after the first report, again accusing him of “defending” Cheney.
Reference-thehill.com