House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) rebuked North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn on Wednesday saying the freshman lawmaker “lost my trust” following comments he made about being invited to orgies in Washington D.C at his colleagues’ homes and watching lawmakers do drugs.
Cawthorn met with McCarthy and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) for roughly 30 minutes, according to Politico.
“There’s a lot of different things that can happen. But I just told him he’s lost my trust. He’s going to have to earn it back,” McCarthy said when asked if Cawthorn could face consequences for his actions, including losing his committee positions. “I mean, he’s got a lot of members very upset.”
The meeting comes one day after some GOP lawmakers expressed frustration with Cawthorn over the comments portraying them as sexual deviants and drug users.
Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) reportedly stood up in the meeting on Tuesday to address the comment. He claim many lawmakers go to bed by 9 p.m. and still use fax machines and flip phones. Womack said it was inappropriate of Cawthorn to paint them with a broad brush.
Asked if a rebuke from House Republican leadership is enough, Womack said: “Depends on what the outcome of the meeting was,” adding, “If it’s: ‘Hey, don’t do that, again,’ we’ve been there. That hasn’t worked. Frankly, if western North Carolina is not going to fix the problem, then leadership will have to.”
House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) also says he plans to discuss the matter with Cawthorn, as more than one of the group’s ultra-conservative members float a measure as drastic as kicking him out, according to Politico.
Cawthorn, 26, the youngest member of Congress told Warrior Poet Society host John Lovell last week that Washington, D.C. is like real-life House of Cards and he has had his own experiences with “the sexual perversion that goes on in Washington.”
“Being kind of a young guy in Washington with the average age of probably 60 or 70, and I look at all these people, a lot of them that I, you know, I’ve looked up to through my life. I’ve always paid attention to politics guys that, you know, then all of the sudden you get invited to like, well, hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get together at one of our homes. You should come there, like… What, what did you just ask me to come to? And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy,” Cawthorn said.
