Flame-throwing Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz made US history on Tuesday by bringing down House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The coiffured 41-year-old seemed not even to break a sweat as he led the charge to remove his Republican Party colleague from one of the most powerful roles in the United States government.
With a puckish grin and immaculately tailored suits, Gaetz looks every inch the professional politician. He is the son of a state senator and grew up in a house that was used as the setting for Jim Carey’s “The Truman Show.” But he has built his career on railing against the establishment, first in Florida’s state house, and — after a cakewalk in the deeply conservative First District of Florida in 2016 — in recent years as a US Congressman.
“I’m not running for Congress because I want to go to Washington,” Gaetz said during the campaign. “I’m running for Congress because we can’t trust Washington.”
It was in Washington, as part of the wave of anti-establishmentism that swept Donald Trump to the presidency, that he made his name. Just months into his freshman term, he began casting himself as a “tireless defender” of the former reality TV star, and was soon running with the House Freedom Caucus, a Republican Party awkward squad that routinely rails against the very notion of government.
With his leonine mane, a Hollywood smile and a sense of showmanship, Gaetz quickly became a household name among his Fox News-watching natural constituency. Whether that was his nomination of Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize, his barging in to a House Intelligence Committee meeting or his wearing a gas mask during a vote on Covid-19 funding measures.
Few of his colleagues came to his defense when in 2021 he faced a Justice Department investigation into claims he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl, and that he paid for her to travel — a federal crime. He has denied the claims, and has not been charged.
– ‘Ripping off the Band-Aid’ –
But if these stunts were aimed at stealing a few rays of political limelight, 2023 has been the year he bundled the whole lighting rig into the back of a pick-up and tore through the National Mall in the center of the US capital.
In January he humiliated McCarthy as the elder statesman tried to secure the speakership, forcing an unprecedented 15 rounds of voting and extracting concession after concession for support that he was never going to give.
“He handed McCarthy a blunt knife and forced him to castrate himself on national television,” one political activist said.
With a tiny minority over the Democrats and reliant on his Republican Party tormentors, McCarthy was compelled to construct his speakership with an in-built mantrap, one that would allow a single member of the House to initiate his removal.
This week by working with Democrats to pass a budget-funding bill, McCarthy tripped the wire and Gaetz became that single member, tabling a motion to vacate the speakership.
“I think that this represents the ripping off the Band-Aid,” he told reporters after the 216-210 vote Tuesday, the first time a sitting speaker has ever been ousted.
“Kevin McCarthy is a feature of the swamp. He has risen to power by collecting special interest money and redistributing that money in exchange for favors. We are breaking the fever now.”
