Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) has stated that House Republicans will force House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to choose between either House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) or the House Freedom Caucus.
Gaetz's statement comes amid growing frustrations between House Republicans and McCarthy, with many Republican lawmakers criticizing the House speaker's handling of the recent debt ceiling deal. The Florida congressman said that McCarthy has to be "monogamous" with whom he chooses, he said in an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast.
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"We're gonna force him into a monogamous relationship with one or the other," said Gaetz, who was joined by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO). "What we're not going to do is hang out with him for five months and then watch him go jump in the backseat with Hakeem Jeffries and sell the nation out and underwrite $4 trillion in debt."
The Freedom Caucus has thrown up several roadblocks for McCarthy and other former Republican speakers, as many members in and aligned with the group put McCarthy through a historically unprecedented 15 votes to become speaker at the start of this year. Recently, Gaetz was one of 12 Republicans who banded together with 208 Democrats to scuttle advancement on four pieces of legislation pertaining to gas stoves, marking the first time in 21 years a vote for a rule failed.
On Saturday, President Joe Biden signed the debt ceiling bill into law, suspending the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit until January 2025. The debt ceiling agreement between the president and McCarthy was criticized by Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who claimed that Republicans "totally got rolled" over the deal.
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There were more Democrats, 165, who backed the debt ceiling deal than Republicans, 149, when it passed last week. McCarthy has stood by the deal, arguing there wasn't a win for Democrats in it.
The American Action Network, a conservative nonprofit group aligned with McCarthy, is launching a campaign that tries to portray Biden as the one who actually got the raw end of the debt ceiling deal while Republicans received exactly what they wanted. The 30-second ad features comments from several high-profile Democrats describing the debt ceiling bill as a bad deal while also highlighting a number of provisions in the bill, such as a clawback of unspent COVID-19 money and a rescission of funding originally meant to go toward the Internal Revenue Service.