Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) waved off House Speaker Mike Johnson‘s (R-LA) plea to cease campaigning against fellow Republicans in primaries.
At the House Republican retreat in West Virginia last week, Johnson warned party members not to campaign against each other. Gaetz, who is leading efforts to primary Reps. Mike Bost (R-IL) and Tony Gonzales (R-TX), indicated that he would ignore the complaint.
“I would love nothing more than to just go after Democrats,” Gaetz told CNN. “But if Republicans are going to dress up like Democrats in drag, I’m going to go after them too. Because, at the end of the day, we’re not judged by how many Republicans we have in Congress. We’re judged on whether or not we save the country.”
Johnson was adamant about the need to cease primaries against each other, saying the infighting wasn’t productive.
“I’ve asked them all to cool it,” Johnson told CNN. “I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it’s not productive. And it causes division for obvious reasons, and we should not be engaging in that.”
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“So I’m telling everyone who’s doing that to knock it off,” he added. “And both sides, they’ll say, ‘Well, we didn’t start it, they started it.’”
House Republicans have been plagued by infighting for the entirety of this Congress, beginning in the first days of the historic fight for the House speakership. Gaetz led the effort to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year.
