Rep. Matt Gaetz engineered the historic ouster of Kevin McCarthy as House speaker this week, and while his fellow House Republicans are training most of their ire on Democrats for not bailing McCarthy out, there is some anger left over for Gaetz.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, some Republicans suggested Gaetz should be expelled from the party conference. Rep. Garret Graves said action against Gaetz would be “pursued in the conference,” while Rep. Mike Lawler told reporters he backed the move, and also that he’d like to have hit Gaetz “square between the eyes” with the speaker’s gavel. Rep. Don Bacon also backed expulsion, saying Gaetz is “not a Republican.”
Graves claimed, without evidence, that Gaetz “just got schooled by AOC and others; he was totally manipulated into doing this.” As if Republicans can’t manufacture their own disarray.
None of this was quite as startling as what Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin had to say about Gaetz, though.
Mullin, who overlapped with Gaetz in the House for several years, cited the investigation into Gaetz related to sex trafficking of a teenager and echoed the 2021 reports that Gaetz bragged about his sexual escapades on the House floor:
This is a guy that didn’t have, the media didn’t give the time of day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl, and there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him—because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with. He would brag about how he would crush [erectile dysfunction] medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night—this is obviously before he got married—and so, when that accusation came out, no one defended him and no one on the media would give him the time of the day.All of a sudden, he found fame because he opposed the speaker of the House back in November, and he’s always stayed there. And he was never going to leave until he got this last moment of fame by going after a motion to vacate.
Those are some very specific allegations about the ED medicine and energy drinks. Gaetz, for what it’s worth, called it “a lie from someone who doesn’t know me and who is coping with the death of the political career of his friend Kevin.”
Mullin wasn't done. In a Newsmax interview, he again referred to “the stuff [Gaetz] would show on the floor and the stuff he would brag about on the floor,” and described Gaetz referring to now-South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as a “fine ---- … and you can put the B-word in place there.” Mullin also wasn’t the only Republican pointing to Gaetz’s sexual habits. Former Mike Pence chief of staff Marc Short, who is also a former chief of staff for the House Republican Caucus, told CNN’s Jake Tapper, “Matt Gaetz, to say he came here as a fiscal crusader—it’s more likely he came here for the teenage interns on Capitol Hill, to be honest.”
The fact that these allegations and characterizations of Gaetz are bubbling up suggests that even if no one has the nerve to try to get him expelled from the Republican conference—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene warned against it earlier in the week—or if such an effort fails, he will face continuing rumors and digs. As many people commented on social media following the Mullin comments, Gaetz may be about to get the Madison Cawthorn treatment, with one rumor, allegation, or video after another emerging to damage a Republican who’s become inconvenient to his party. Gaetz should probably be trying to remember what he has told which Republicans about his sexual habits—and if his bragging might come back to bite him.
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