Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) claimed that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s motion to vacate his Speaker’s chair was done for vastly different reasons than the one filed against him by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) last October.

McCarthy told Margaret Brennan with CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday that he didn’t believe Greene would put the motion up for an actual vote. Further, he suggested that Greene was a policy-driven pragmatist who would be able to sort out her differences with current Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

“Look, the one thing I’ve always found, when you sit down with a member and talk to them, find out what their concerns are, especially when it’s based upon policy, you can solve that problem,” McCarthy said, continuing:

And I watched that with Marjorie from the vote to Speaker to the vote for the Fiscal Responsibility Act. There’s times she was a difference of opinion and you sit down and find common ground.

Matt’s case was much different. It’s about a personal thing that he had done and that’s what he was trying to get something illegally stopped. This is not the case here. So I would not be afraid of a motion to vacate. This is about policy. And you remember, our government is designed to find common ground.

Brennan asked McCarthy if he had “evidence to back up” his allegation against Gaetz.

“Well, I think the Ethics Committee — it was purely Matt coming to me trying me to do something illegal to stop the Ethics Committee from moving forward in investigation that was started long before I became a Speaker —

“Something illegal?” Brennan asked.

“I don’t know what the facts are there. It’s a personal issue of what he’d done as a member of Congress. I simply would say the Ethics Committee has the right to look at whatever they’re going forward and I’m not going to get in the middle of it one way or another,” McCarthy said.

Gaetz reportedly told colleagues that he led the charge to oust McCarthy over the ongoing ethics investigation into his alleged relationship with an underaged girl. The Department of Justice declined to bring charges against Gaetz and the congressman has denied all wrongdoing.

He may still have to testify about the allegations against him however, since he was subpoenaed as a witness in a related civil defamation case.

Watch the clip above via CBS News.

The post Huh? Kevin McCarthy Paints MTG as a Policy-Driven Pragmatist: She’s Willing to ‘Sit Down and Find Common Ground’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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