The embattled speaker of the US House, Mike Johnson, should not be “fearful” of the motion to remove him filed by the far-right extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene, said Kevin McCarthy – who last year became the first speaker ejected by his own party when another extremist, Matt Gaetz, moved against him in the same way.
“Speaker Johnson is doing the very best job he can,” McCarthy told CBS on Sunday, two days after Greene filed her motion. “It’s a difficult situation, but the one [piece of] advice I would give to the conference and to the speaker is: do not be fearful of a motion to vacate. I do not think they could do it again.”
“They” – the Trumpist far-right of a far-right party – did it to McCarthy in October. Gaetz, from Florida, filed a motion to vacate the speakership – a move made possible by concessions won when the right put McCarthy through 15 votes to secure the speaker’s gavel nine months before.
McCarthy, from California, told CBS Gaetz had been “trying to stop an ethics complaint”.
“It was purely Matt coming to me trying [to get] me to do something illegal to stop the ethics committee from moving forward in an investigation that was started long before I became a speaker.”
Gaetz was investigated by the House ethics committee over allegations of sexual misconduct also subject to investigation by the US Department of Justice. The congressman denies wrongdoing.
Gaetz’s motion to eject McCarthy was supported by seven other Republicans and succeeded when Democrats declined to vote to keep the speaker in place.
Johnson succeeded McCarthy after three Republican leadership figures – Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer – failed to gain sufficient support, in a more-than-three-week process that left the House leaderless.
Johnson has now passed two spending bills with Democratic support, keeping the federal government open but committing what was McCarthy’s chief sin in the eyes of the right.
Greene was not among the Republicans who moved against McCarthy but on Friday she moved against Johnson. Rightwing Republicans expressed frustration with Johnson but many also reproved Greene. Congress left Washington for a two-week recess without Greene bringing the motion up for a vote.
Republicans have a two-vote majority, soon to dwindle to one. Democrats are seen as likely to support Johnson should Greene press ahead and try to remove him but also likely to extract concessions for doing so, most prominently including Johnson allowing a vote on new funding for Ukraine in its war with Russia.
In line with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president seeking a second term in the White House, Johnson has refused to bring to the floor a Ukraine aid package which passed the Senate with bipartisan support.
McCarthy, who left Congress last year, told CBS: “I don’t think the Democrats will go along with [Greene’s motion]. Focus on the country. Focus on the job you’re supposed to do, and actually do it fearlessly. Just move forward.
“We watched what transpired the last time. You went three weeks without Congress being able to act. You can’t do anything if you don’t have a speaker. I think we’ve moved past that. We’ve got a lot of challenges.
“Those are the issues the country is actually looking [at], on the economy and others. If we focus on the country and what the country desires, I think the personalities can solve their own problems.”
