On Monday evening, as House Republican rebels moved to oust him from the speaker’s chair, Rep. Kevin McCarthy posted three defiant words on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
Less than 24 hours later, McCarthy had been removed as speaker by an odd but effective coalition of eight House Republicans and every single House Democrat present to vote — and history had been made. McCarthy became the first speaker to be defenestrated. The California Republican’s tenure is now the third-shortest of all time.
The California Republican’s tenure is now the third-shortest of all time.
Personally, I consider McCarthy to be the second-worst speaker of my lifetime — and that’s only because Republican Dennis Hastert, who served as House speaker from 1999 to 2007, turned out to be a literal child molester.
On Tuesday evening, a chastened and defeated McCarthy announced he would not run for speaker again.
Embarrassing. Mortifying. Humiliating. None of these words fully encapsulate what the now-former speaker has endured this week. His overthrow on Tuesday was obviously a career low point for McCarthy, who has served as an elected representative for more than two decades.
Still, I couldn’t help but wonder: What was McCarthy’s previous low point, prior to his ouster? Because there are just so many to choose from.
Was it in 2015, when McCarthy had to drop out of the race for speaker after going on Fox and bragging how “everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi Special Committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”?
Was it in the summer of 2016, when McCarthy told his fellow Republican leaders on a conference call that there were “two people I think Putin pays: [GOP Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.” And then later claimed he was only joking, when the recording was leaked?
Was it in late 2017, when McCarthy bought “a plentiful supply of Starbursts and asked a staffer to sort through the pile” and pick out only the strawberry and cherry flavors in order to deliver them as a gift to a “grinning Trump” at the White House?
Was it on Jan. 6, 2021, when McCarthy joined 138 other House Republicans voting to try to overturn the 2020 election result, after — I repeat, after — an armed mob of Donald Trump supporters had laid waste to the Capitol? Was it on Jan. 28, 2021, when McCarthy made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, Florida, to bend his knee to Trump, and then released a photo of the two of them smiling together, just weeks after he had publicly declared that the former president “bears responsibility” for the attack on Congress? Was it on Jan. 7 of this year, when McCarthy finally secured the speaker’s gavel on the 15th House ballot, “more rounds of voting than any other time since before the Civil War”? Was it on Sept. 12, when McCarthy unilaterally announced an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, without any hard evidence, just days after telling Breitbart that such an inquiry would only occur “through a vote on the floor of the People’s House and not through a declaration by one person”? I could go on and on and on. That Kevin McCarthy has endured so many scandals, controversies and crises tells us everything we need to know about his own long-standing unfitness for high office. He spent years sucking up to Trump, only to lose the job of his dreams after just nine months at the hands of very Trumpian forces. To borrow a line from former Republican consultant Rick Wilson: “Everything Trump touches dies.” So farewell Kevin … thankfully, we hardly knew ye.
Mehdi Hasan
Mehdi Hasan is host of "The Mehdi Hasan Show" on Peacock and an MSNBC political analyst. He is a former senior columnist for The Intercept, for which he launched the "Deconstructed" podcast. He was also the presenter of "UpFront" and "Head to Head" on Al Jazeera English. He is the author of two books and the winner of the Society of Professional Journalists' 2018 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Online Column Writing. 
