Last Updated on October 3, 2023
GOP Rep. Kevin McCarthy has officially become the first Speaker of the House in American history to be removed by way of a Motion to Vacate, after Freedom Caucus Rep. Matt Gaetz introduced the motion, bringing McCarthy’s speakership up for a vote that ultimately led to his dismissal. Members of Congress will now be tasked with electing a new speaker, and the GOP establishment is already maneuvering to get McCarthy his job back.
8 Republicans and all Democrats voted in support of the Motion to Vacate Kevin McCarthy’s speakership.
Several “conservative” members of Congress, including Jim Jordan, Steve Scalise, and Thomas Massie, voted and spoke in favor of McCarthy.
Throughout the day of the vote, the corporate press ran wall-to-wall coverage in defense of McCarthy, using similar talking points to the GOP establishment as they accused Matt Gaetz and other McCarthy opponents of trying to sew “chaos” in the federal government by removing an unpopular speaker.
The end of McCarthy’s speakership arrived after he ran afoul of conservative members of the Freedom Caucus and a super-majority of GOP voters, having won the gavel in the first place by making a laundry list of promises and concessions to the conservative “rebels” who opposed his coronation, before reneging on virtually all of them.
Ahead of the vote, Freedom Caucus Rep. Bob Good addressed the Congress, confirming that he’d vote in favor of the Motion to Vacate.
“We need a speaker, ideally somebody who doesn’t want to be speaker and hasn’t pursued that at all costs for his entire adult life, who will meet the moment, and do everything possible to fight for the country,” said Good.
A moment later, Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) rose to speak on behalf of pro-McCarthy GOP’ers and begged Democrats for their support of McCarthy’s speakership.
“I have a lot of friends over there [on the Democrat side of the aisle],” Cole said. “And I recognize that my friends on the other side have a very complex set of partisan, personal, and political calculations to make…But I would say, think long and hard before you plunge us into chaos because that’s where we’re headed if we vacate the speakership.”
“My friend from Oklahoma says that my colleagues and I who don’t support Kevin McCarthy would ‘plunge the House and the country into chaos’,” said Gaetz a moment later when he himself rose to speak.
“Chaos IS Kevin McCarthy,” he went on. “Chaos is somebody who we cannot trust with their word. The one thing that the White House, House Democrats, and many of us on the conservative side of the Republican caucus would argue is that the thing we have in common, Kevin McCarthy said something to all of us at one point or another that he didn’t really mean and never intended to live up to.”
Perhaps best summing up both sides of the McCarthy speakership issue, at one point during the back and forth between McCarthy’s supporters and detractors, Rep. Matt Gaetz was booed by the McCarthy crowd for criticizing members of Congress who’ve sold America out to lobbyists.
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Related VIDEO: Kevin McCarthy Predicts His Own Removal as Speaker Ahead of Motion to Vacate Vote
Though McCarthy has been ousted as speaker, the GOP establishment is scheming to get him his job back and several Representatives have indicated that they intend to re-nominate and vote for Kevin McCarthy for speaker once again when voting begins.
This story is developing. Stay with National File for updates as they become available.
