Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia Republican, claims that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy lacks the votes to be speaker if the GOP recaptures the lower chamber next year.
Mrs. Greene joined fellow Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on his “Firebrand” podcast, posted on Thursday morning, and she blasted Mr. McCarthy, California Republican, for the “failure of our leadership.”
“We know that Kevin McCarthy has a problem in our conference. He doesn’t have the full support to be speaker. He doesn’t have the votes that are there,” she said.
“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,” Mrs. Greene explained.
She specifically accused the GOP minority leader of failure to back her and Rep. Paul Gosar, Arizona Republican, when House Democrats decided to use their majority to strip both lawmakers of their committee posts over separate incidents this past year.
“Everyone saw me get stripped of committees as a brand new member of Congress, robbing my district of the ability to have representation working on committees. There was no action taken,” she said. “As a matter of fact, our leader did nothing to defend me, did nothing to stop it.”
“We saw Paul Gosar censured and then we saw him lose a committee. And this is another failure, but what do we see happening?” Mrs. Greene asked.
The Washington Times reached out to Mr. McCarthy’s office for comment and did not immediately hear back.
She also noted in contrast that Republicans who back Democratic legislation are not disciplined by the caucus.
“Thirteen traitor Republicans helped Joe Biden pass his agenda handing their voting card over to Nancy Pelosi, and nothing happens to them,” she said, referring to House lawmakers who voted for the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure legislation.
Their support enabled the bill’s final passage, despite the opposition of a handful of progressive Democrats, which would have killed the bill had all Republicans voted “no.”
The House last week censured Mr. Gosar and removed him from his committee posts because he posted online an anime-style video depicting a sword fight in which he appears to kill Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat.
Democrats supported the punishments for Mr. Gosar in a near party-line vote, with support from just two Republicans — Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Mr. Gosar became the second member of a minority party to be stripped of his committee posts by the majority after Democrats took the same action against Mrs. Greene in February over social media posts she made before she joined Congress.
The posts disparaged a number of Democratic lawmakers.
