Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) labeled the Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Tuesday as “traitors,” saying they should face primary challenges in 2024.
“Ninety-six percent of the Republicans voted for McCarthy; 4 percent voted against him. From my position as a longtime Republican activist, they’re traitors,” Gingrich said on Fox News. “All eight of them should, in fact, be primaried. They should all be driven out of public life.”
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) led the effort to remove McCarthy from the Speakership on Tuesday afternoon, after months of threatening to bring a motion to vacate the chair. The House voted to oust McCarthy as Speaker in a 216-210 vote, with all Democrats and eight Republicans joining forces to remove him.
Speaking on Fox News’s “Hannity,” Gingrich, who served as Speaker from 1995-99, ripped the Republicans for teaming up with the Democrats to “cause total chaos.”
“We ought to be focusing on Biden, we ought to be focusing on the economy, we ought to be focusing on the border,” he said Tuesday. “Instead, you’re going to get a week or 10 days of the media focusing on Republican disarray.”
“It’s an astonishingly destructive behavior by a handful of egocentric people who think they’re superior to 96 percent of the conference,” he added.
In a scathing op-ed published in The Washington Post on Tuesday, Gingrich called on the House to expel Gaetz, saying the Florida Republican was engaging in “childish behavior” and “has become actively destructive to the conservative movement.”
“Gaetz’s motion to remove McCarthy should be swiftly defeated, and then he should be expelled from the House Republican Conference. House Republicans have far more important things to do than entertain one member’s ego,” Gingrich wrote.
“Gaetz has gone beyond regular drama. He is destroying the House GOP’s ability to govern and draw a sharp contrast with the policy disasters of the Biden administration,” he said.