Interview With Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)

Interview

"Speaker McCarthy made an agreement with House conservatives in January. And, since then, he has been in brazen, repeated material breach of that agreement.

This agreement that he made with Democrats to really blow past a lot of the spending guardrails we had set up is a last straw. And then, overnight, I learned that Kevin McCarthy had a secret deal with Democrats on Ukraine.

So, as he was baiting Republicans to vote for a continuing resolution without Ukraine money, saying that we were going to jam the Senate on Ukraine, he then turns around and makes a secret deal.

Now, I know you and I probably have different views on U.S. involvement in Ukraine, but however you think about that question, it should be subject to open review analysis and not some backroom deal.

So, I do intend...

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I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week.

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I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy.

Look, the one thing everybody has in common is that nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy. He lied to Biden. He lied to House conservatives. He had appropriators marking to a different number altogether. And the reason we were backed up against the shutdown politics is not a bug of the system. It's a feature.

Kevin McCarthy's goal was to make multiple contradictory promises, to delay everything, back us up against shutdown politics, and, at the end of the day, blow past the spending guardrails he had agreed to.

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Well, enough so that, when you host this show next week, if Kevin McCarthy is still the speaker of the House, he will be serving at the pleasure of the Democrats. He will be working for the Democrats.

The only way Kevin McCarthy is speaker of the House at the end of this coming week is if Democrats bail him out. Now, they probably will.

I actually think that, when you believe in nothing, as Kevin McCarthy does, everything's negotiable. And I think he will cut a deal with the Democrats.

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Well, absolutely, I will make no deal with Democrats and concede no terms to them.

I actually think Democrats should vote against Speaker McCarthy for free. I don't think I should have to deal them anything.

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Absolutely not. And I don't think that any Republicans that share my view on Speaker McCarthy would cut deals with Democrats.

But here's the thing. I'm done owning Kevin McCarthy, right? We made a deal at the end of Jan -- or in January to allow him to assume the speakership. And I'm not owning him anymore, because he doesn't tell the truth.

And so if Democrats want to own Kevin McCarthy by bailing him out, I can't stop him. But then he will be their speaker, not mine.

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Well, I think what's really stupid is sitting atop a $33 trillion debt, facing $2.2 trillion annual deficits, while the world is de-dollarizing.

Just in August, you saw the BRICS system that is moving away from the dollar add six new countries, including Gulf monarchies, including even some of the G20 economies in our own hemisphere.

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Yes. Yes.

And they are moving away from the dollar. You're seeing the African Union move away from the dollar. "U.S. News" just last month said that de-dollarization was the economic trend of our day.

And so some people try to make policy disagreements personal because their own policy failures are so personally embarrassing.

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But this isn't personal, Jake.

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This is about spending. This is about the deal Kevin McCarthy made.

If Kevin McCarthy didn't want to keep the deal to return to pre-COVID spending, if he didn't want to keep the deal to have single-subject spending bills, not vote for government spending all up or down at once, then he shouldn't have made that deal.

So, this is about keeping Kevin McCarthy to his word. It's not about any personal animus or...

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Well, that argument presupposes that the Senate was going to take up or conference that bill that McCarthy wanted.

You already had Schumer speaking on the floor saying that they weren't even going to take that up.

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That's not true. First of all, that's never happened.

So, what you're saying is that something would have occurred that has never occurred, to negotiate a continuing resolution. I have never seen a conference committee in my seven years in Congress, and I don't think one has occurred since the mid-'90s, where a continuing resolution has ever been conferenced.

So, you're asking your viewers to believe something that has never once happened. What has happened when the House has passed a continuing resolution is, the Senate merely negotiates the feature of that continuing resolution by sending back what they want to send back, which is what they did. So, we were always ending up here.

Here's what I want to -- here's why I want to break the fever. Since the mid-'90s, this country has been governed by either continuing resolution or omnibus spending.

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Well, I'm five years sober voting for continuing resolutions.

And I should note that, during those years, President Trump was growing the economy. But January marked a difference.

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Yes. And you know what?

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I regret...

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But we were growing the economy.

And, look -- look, you're talking about the national debt.

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And, by the way, I voted against 10 continuing resolutions under Donald Trump. I did not stand with Donald Trump on all of his spending priorities.

I voted against it way more than I voted for it.

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What shut -- what shutdown?

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OK, so there wasn't a shutdown.

... do anything.

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We have to break the fever. We have to move to single-subject spending bills.

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No, we didn't, unfortunately.

That's why we have to now move to vacate, because we have to get a system where the House and Senate will negotiate over each of these agencies of government independently.

And I understand that, in divided government, that means that you have to take into account the views of Senate Democrats, the views of the White House. But what I want to...

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Of course.

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Of course.

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That's not true.

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Well, Jake, let me explain to you...

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Well, I -- you might want to check FOX. I haven't been hitting there as much recently.

What I can tell you is that the way the legislative process works, as a 12-year lawmaker in the state and federal level, the House passes legislation, the Senate passes legislation, and then you work to iron out those differences.

I believe the best way to advance the interest of the American people is for the House to take the most conservative position and then engage that negotiation. Where that negotiation has failed all Americans of all stripes is when it centers around what ornament you're going to hang on a continuing resolution or an omnibus bill.

The responsible, sober, adult way to handle this is with individual spending bills open to amendment. And, by the way, if people don't want to vote for the amendments that reduce salaries or cut spending or engage in programmatic analysis, they can vote no. And then the voters can hold people accountable.

But the reason we set atop a $33 trillion debt is because a system has been designed...

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... in Washington, D.C., where no one is responsible for the spending.

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I want to force the votes.

And here's what you're missing. McCarthy agreed to this. So, you may not like this deal. You may think that it's too many votes and too much governing. But McCarthy agreed to it in January. And his breaching that agreement is a problem.

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Welcome aboard.

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Yes, we spend $7 trillion and take in 5.

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Sure.

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Well, I have talked to several of them. I go over to the Senate as much as many House members. I have talked to Senator Manchin, talked to Senator Sinema.

She and I served together in the House. The -- we have had a number of folks go from the House to the Senate...

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But, by the way -- but really important you get this point. I'm OK with bipartisan negotiation.

I just want it to be on single-subject spending bills, not on a global deal...

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... that funds the whole government or doesn't.

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At a snail's pace, until I held a political gun to McCarthy's head and forced the Congress to stay until midnight to take these votes and move these bills.

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Well, by the way, the Appropriations chairman left the meeting we were having to iron these things out to go to a lobbyist fund- raiser, lobbyist fund-raiser, Jake.

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Not at all.

Jake, I am the most investigated man in the United States Congress. I have been cleared by the DOJ, the FEC by a 5-0 vote. And the people who spread criminal lies about me are sitting in federal prison right now. So, I'm fine being investigated by anyone and everyone.

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Well, when Kevin McCarthy went out publicly and said, this

isn't about me breaking my word, it's because Gaetz has ethics problems, certainly, that was him gaslighting the Ethics Committee.

But here's the thing, Jake. I'm not alone. People can say this is a party of one. I have tens of millions of Americans who stand with me on this. And I have a requisite number of House Republicans, a sufficient number, to ensure that we don't own Kevin McCarthy anymore.

By week's end, he will either not be speaker or he will be speaker serving at the pleasure of House Democrats.

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Thanks for having me."

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