The Florida Republican representative Matt Gaetz has issued an apology over a fundraising email sent out allegedly without his team’s approval.
On Wednesday, Gaetz apologized for an email “sent by a vendor without my team’s approval” and said that “it should have never been sent”.
The email in question read: “Michael – It’s Matt Gaetz. We are inches from electing Speaker Jim Jordan. But RINOs are working with RADICAL DEMOCRATS like AOC, ILHAN OMAR and RASHIDA TLAIB to BLOCK JIM JORDAN FROM BECOMING SPEAKER!!!”
It triggered criticism from the New York Republican congressman Mike Lawler, who was one of the 22 Republicans who voted against Jim Jordan on Wednesday. Lawler instead voted for Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker.
Lawler responded to a screenshot of the email – which criticized “Republicans in name only” for working alongside progressive Democrats – and wrote: “Does someone want to tell Matt Gaetz that he worked with RADICAL DEMOCRATS like @AOC, @IlhanMN and @RashidaTlaib to remove @SpeakerMcCarthy, a REPUBLICAN SPEAKER.”
Gaetz, who led a historic motion to oust McCarthy following his cooperation with Democrats on a bipartisan bill to avert a federal government shutdown earlier this month, apologized for the email.
“I sincerely apologize to Mike Lawler and anyone else who felt targeted by this ill-conceived email message. I will make changes to ensure this does not happen again,” Gaetz said.
“I intend to heed Speaker-Designate Jordan’s call to not attack fellow Republicans as we work through this,” he added.
This is not the first time Lawler has been critical of Gaetz.
Last week, following hours of closed-door meetings amongst Republicans in attempts to decide on a speaker, Lawler told CNN’s Manu Raju: “Matt Gaetz is frankly a vile person. He’s not somebody who’s willing to work as a team. He stands up there and grandstands. He lies directly to folks.”
McCarthy also chimed in on Gaetz’s latest fundraising email, with the former House speaker telling Raju shortly before Wednesday’s second round of votes: “We’re going in, we want to elect Jim Jordan, and if Jim’s numbers drop, it’s a lot of that is due to Gaetz’s email that he put out last night.”
He added: “Did you guys see that, the fundraising email he put out, accusing Republicans of working with certain Democrats when he had worked with every Democrat and then the crazy eights worked with him? That is infuriating.”
