Former House speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he had made a deal with Democrats to stave off his ouster from House leadership — as Speaker Mike Johnson did this week.
The House dismissed a motion to oust Johnson on Wednesday night after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) triggered a floor vote on her resolution. A motion to table Greene’s measure won support from 196 Republicans and 163 Democrats.
Some Republicans have claimed Johnson won Democrats’ support by negotiating the passage of foreign aid to Ukraine, a move that was unpopular with anti-interventionist Republicans on Capitol Hill who are skeptical of U.S. engagement overseas.
McCarthy was removed from the speakership in October after Representative Matt Gaetz (R., Fla.) brought forward a motion to vacate, which was backed by eight Republicans and all Democrats.
“I couldn’t live with myself if I’d done a deal with Democrats,” McCarthy told Politico‘s Power Play podcast on Thursday. “If you can’t sustain being speaker by your own majority, should you sustain it? No.”
Still, he said voting against Greene’s motion to vacate was the right decision. “It’s different than a Matt Gaetz. [Greene] wants to have a policy discussion.”
McCarthy later went on to take another subtle dig at Johnson.
“I think the experience of removing the speaker has not been positive for anybody. I mean, what legislation has passed since that originated in the House? Nothing,” McCarthy said. “And so I think it’s a lesson learned in the process of not doing it again. Unfortunately, I’m the person they had to learn the lesson.”
Gaetz has said McCarthy’s work with Democrats over the debt ceiling was the reason for his motion to vacate.
“I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid. I think we need to move on with new leadership that can be trustworthy,” Gaetz said at the time. “Look, the one thing everybody has in common is that nobody trusts Kevin McCarthy.”
But McCarthy said Thursday the move was driven by a personal disagreement between the pair over an ethics complaint into Gaetz.
“If you wanted me to break the law and stop the ethics complaint, I could still be speaker,” he said. “But I’d rather stand on the merit of doing what is right.”