Early on in his media battle against the Republicans who toppled his speakership, outgoing Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California branded the GOP opposition to him retaining the gavel as the “crazy eight.”
One would be forgiven for believing that McCarthy, who is known for a bit of verbal blandishment every now and then, was employing a rhetorical device. After all, “The Crazy Eight” sounds more like a Quentin Tarantino flick than an actual claim that a vote against him constituted a mental disorder in the DSM-5.
But nope. In an “exit interview” with Beltway-centric news outlet The Hill, McCarthy — who announced Dec. 6 that he would retire from Congress before the end of the year — insisted that at least one of the “crazy eight” legitimately had a mental illness: namely, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, widely seen as the impetus against the conservative-led revolt.
“He was psychotic,” McCarthy said of Gaetz in the interview.
While The Hill noted that the former speaker was “referring to when the Florida Republican demanded that the threshold to bring a motion to vacate be brought down to one member — a request McCarthy gave in to, which led to his ultimate ejection,” this seemed to represent a wider belief on McCarthy’s part that Gaetz was in the throes of some kind of episode.
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“People study that type of crazy mind, right? Mainly the FBI,” McCarthy said.
Nor indeed was this the first time that McCarthy had said Gaetz was something other than nasty political opposition.
In a November interview with Politico, the California congressman implied that Gaetz was a criminal – or, at the very least, that if someone made McCarthy a dictator for a day, he’d put the Florida representative in the slammer.
“You have a cross-section,” McCarthy said of the House GOP caucus.
Should Kevin McCarthy have resigned?
“You have Gaetz, who belongs in jail, and you have serious members,” he said.
It’s not entirely clear why he believes his Florida colleague belongs in prison, although it seems likely he’s referring to a House ethics investigation against Gaetz regarding misuse of funds and sexual misconduct allegations.
Even though this ethics complaint has been ongoing since the spring of 2021, according to The New York Times, and has yet to yield any solid evidence of wrongdoing — the Department of Justice, no friend of Gaetz’s under President Joe Biden, publicly declined to bring charges in February after concluding it didn’t have enough evidence to win in court — McCarthy suggested during an appearance on Fox News that this could turn up evidence similar to that which led to New York Republican Rep. George Santos being only the sixth representative to ever be expelled from the House.
“Matt Gaetz ethics complaint; I think once that ethics complaint comes forward, he could have the same problem as Santos has,” McCarthy told host Maria Bartiromo on Dec. 3.
Well, Gaetz is still in the House, Santos is gone, and McCarthy is going, so how’s that working out?
As for Gaetz, one can detect a soupcon of sarcasm in his response: “Thoughts and prayers for the former congressman,” he told The Hill.
“We had a process. He was removed,” the Florida congressman added.
“He then chose to take his ball and go home, reducing our majority. Kevin’s premature departure shows it was only ever about personal power to him,” Gaetz said.
And that’s the thing: Everything McCarthy has done since he lost the speaker’s gavel indicated this never had anything to do with the Republican caucus and everything to do with Kevin McCarthy.
Between his resignation (leaving the GOP with an even slimmer majority than it had after Santos’ removal) and his outré behavior (which has included everything from his wild accusations of criminality and/or mental illness levied against Gaetz to an allegation he gave one of the “crazy eight,” Tennessee GOP Rep. Tim Burchett, an elbow in the kidneys while Burchett was giving an interview), everything McCarthy has done is very on-brand for McCarthy since this process began — which is to say, self-centered, petty, grudge-carrying and done without regard for the wider consequences.
I’m no psychiatrist, but I think there’s at least one word that mental health practitioners might use to describe this kind of behavior: narcissistic. Which, you know, is sometimes part of the “crazy mind” that the FBI, more than occasionally, finds itself studying.
Just saying.
