After days of complaining that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) hasn’t “fought” hard enough for her or for fellow censured Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Friday night claimed that she had a “good call” with McCarthy amid his ambitions for House speaker if the GOP retakes the majority next year.
Shortly before the House voted to censure Gosar earlier this month after he posted a video depicting violence against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and President Biden, Greene complained that the House minority leader hasn’t “fought” hard enough for her or for Gosar even after she claimed to reporters that McCarthy “guaranteed” that she would get “better” committee assignments if the party wins back the House next year (which McCarthy later confirmed).
Despite McCarthy’s vow to give her and Gosar their committee seats back if the GOP retakes the majority next year, Greene continued to threaten her support for McCarthy’s bid for House speaker last week.
“We know that Kevin McCarthy has a problem in our conference. He doesn’t have the full support to be speaker,” Greene said on an episode of Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-FL) podcast that aired Thursday morning. “He doesn’t have the votes that are there, because there’s many of us that are very unhappy about the failure to hold Republicans accountable, while conservatives like me, Paul Gosar, and many others just constantly take the abuse by the Democrats.”
Listing out her demands for McCarthy to earn her speaker vote, Greene told Gaetz that she wants Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY), both of whom voted for former President Trump’s impeachment for “incitement of insurrection,” to be kicked out of the House GOP conference for serving on the Jan. 6 select committee — a demand that the House minority leader hasn’t acted on.
In addition to Kinzinger and Cheney, Greene also took swipes at Rep. John Katko (R-NY), who supported the bipartisan infrastructure bill, voted to impeach Trump and backed the Democratic-led effort to strip Greene from her committees earlier this year after the resurfacing of her social media posts in which she approved of calls for the execution of Democratic lawmakers.
Greene, however, appeared to take on a different tone toward McCarthy on Friday night, claiming in a tweet that she had a “good call” with the House minority leader.
It is currently unclear what “plans” Greene claims McCarthy has.
Despite Greene’s complaints about the House minority leader’s so-called lack of “leadership” in defending GOP lawmakers who have espoused violent rhetoric, McCarthy has defended Gosar, accusing Democrats of an “abuse of power” before the House voted to censure the Arizona Republican.
McCarthy has also threatened that if the GOP were to retake the majority, the party would consider removing Democrats from committees because of their move to censure Gosar and Greene.
“Pelosi has set new policies. Those same members that I talked about in my speech voted for this new policy,” McCarthy said earlier this month, referring to a speech he gave a day before the vote to censure Gosar in which he named various Democrats who had made comments that McCarthy cast as controversial.
“This isn’t about threats, but it’s about holding people accountable,” McCarthy added.
