After two Republican members of Congress spoke at a white nationalist event last month, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called it “appalling.” This week, he expanded on that, saying, “There’s no place for what has gone on with that organization. There never will be in this party. It will never be tolerated.” There’s just one small thing here. At the same time McCarthy said “It will never be tolerated,” he signaled that it absolutely will be and is being tolerated. Maybe even rewarded.
After Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar spoke at the America First Political Action Conference, it took McCarthy 10 days to get around to having a chat with Greene. He’s still playing phone tag with Gosar. Clearly it wasn’t urgent to McCarthy to address two members of his conference associating with white nationalists at an event at which the organizer led the crowd in cheers for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. It was an issue important enough for McCarthy to tell the press that he was upset and would be talking to his members who had cozied up to white nationalists. But it wasn’t an issue important enough for him to do that.
Before McCarthy got around to talking to Greene, some Republican House members defended him by saying there wasn’t much he could do about Greene and Gosar, since by stripping them of committee seats, Democrats had also stripped McCarthy of his leverage over them. After he spoke to Greene, though, McCarthy let reporters know that he was more interested in putting them back on committees than finding a harsher sanction.
Gosar and Greene “have the ability to be able to get committees based upon that time when it comes,” McCarthy told reporters. In other words, if Republicans retake the House, the punishment Gosar and Greene have faced will end and they will be unleashed on committees.
McCarthy said Greene “will not go again” to the white nationalist event, though he obviously gave her no reason not to break her word on that. This year was Gosar’s second time speaking at the event; he faced no consequences for his previous appearance.
As a reminder, Gosar was censured and removed from committees because he posted an edited video showing himself murdering Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden. Greene liked social media posts calling for the assassination of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others and embraced conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook and Parkland school shootings having been staged. After she’d been stripped of committee assignments, Greene made comments about the Holocaust that later necessitated an apology tour of the Holocaust Museum.
Now both Green and Gosar have spoken at an event put on by someone prone to saying things like, “We can’t play this game of, ‘We disavow white supremacy.’ Notice how the claws come out,” and:
“You can call us racists, white supremacists, Nazis, & bigots. You can disavow us on social media from your cushy Campus Reform job. But you will not replace us. The rootless transnational elite knows that a tidal wave of white identity is coming. And they know that once the word gets out, they will not be able to stop us. The fire rises!”
And in response, Kevin McCarthy has pledged that they can get back on committees if Republicans win the House.
That’s McCarthy making clear that he cares much more about his own chances of being speaker—for which he needs the votes of the far-right Freedom Caucus—than he does about separating the Republican Party from white nationalism and assassination fantasies.
In 2019, then-Rep. Steve King had his committee assignments stripped by Republican leadership, of which McCarthy was the head, for saying, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization—how did that language become offensive?” In 2021, McCarthy declined to act against Gosar for appearing at a white nationalist event or posting assassination fantasies, or against Greene for conspiracy theories and assassination fantasies. In 2022, McCarthy is affirmatively saying that their place in the Republican Party is secure despite it all, very much including their white nationalist associations. This isn’t about Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar being disgusting trolls. It’s about the Republican Party and the direction people like them are pushing it, with the approval—in deed if not in words—of its leaders.