Gaetz tells Newsmax: McCarthy falls short on keeping his promises

Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., went off on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on the floor of the House on Tuesday and later that night, he explained why in an interview with Newsmax.

Earlier Tuesday, Gaetz threatened McCarthy with a motion to vacate the chair in an impassioned speech — after McCarthy directed committee chairmen to open an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden.

Gaetz told “Rob Schmitt Tonight” that in essence, he’s getting ahead of the “pattern recognition” of McCarthy to ensure he keeps this promise.

“Why is it that Kevin McCarthy only seems to do the right thing when he has a political gun to his head? And even after he makes promises, he doesn’t always fulfill them,” Gaetz told Schmitt. “McCarthy promised that if he could just get the speaker gavel, there would be an impeachment of (DHS Director) Alejandro Mayorkas and that never came to bear.

“So, the pattern recognition here is Kevin McCarthy fails to deliver on his promises. Then he gaslights the prospects of an impeachment,” Gaetz continued. “But I would ask you this: What’s really changed today? Did we send out subpoenas to Hunter Biden? Did we schedule dates to bring these folks in to answer our questions? Was there a new round of document requests? No, all they did was rebrand what was already occurring, and frankly, what was already occurring was not sufficiently rigorous to get to the bottom of this and to ensure that there’s fulsome accountability.”

Schmitt asked Gaetz if he was being a little too hard on McCarthy, given the GOP’s slim majority in the House and some moderate Republicans still not ready to support impeachment.

“Here’s a way to make your job easier: Don’t say that you’re going to do stuff that you’re not going to do,” Gaetz said. “So maybe like in Washington, everyone’s used to making commitments that they never fulfill. But that’s not gonna be the business I’m in.

“He’s either going to fulfill the commitments or we’re going to use every enforcement tool in the book.”

And that, Gaetz said in his speech earlier in the day, is “total compliance or remove you pursuant to a motion to vacate the chair.”

“The work ahead remains,” Gaetz told Schmitt. “Don’t judge us by our press conferences and our tweets, judge us on whether or not we actually get these people before the Congress to answer questions, and I’m champing at the bit to ask him.”

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