GOPer set straight by reporter as he blames Dems for House mess: 'Matt Gaetz started this'

Following the defeat of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in a GOP conference secret ballot and his removal as nominee for Speaker of the House, Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA) tried to blame the whole speakership mess on Democrats — only for CNN correspondent Manu Raju to remind him it was in fact a renegade band of far-right Republicans who started the crisis.

"You guys can't even get behind a speaker nominee," said Raju. "Republicans are so badly divided about this. Why?"

"We're upset about what happened, right?" said Scott. "Because 208 Democrats voted with 8 Republicans to remove the Speaker of the House and put us in the current position that we are in. That's what happened. They took out the largest Republican fundraiser that House Republicans have ever had. So it did a tremendous amount of damage to our party, did a tremendous amount of damage to our conference, there is a tremendous amount of resentment among the different groups in the conference.

"The resentment is something we have to work through, hopefully we have a nominee on Tuesday and can go to the floor and hopefully we can get that person across the..."

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"Who is that person?" Raju inerrupted.

"It will be up to the conference to make the determination on who is going to represent us on the floor," said Scott.

"How does it make the Republican Party look like now?" asked Raju.

"I think it makes Congress as a whole look very bad," said Scott. "The Democrats have had a lot of fun with it, but the fact of the matter is 208 Democrats voted with 8 Republicans. the Democrats are not innocent this. They're not."

"Matt Gaetz and the Republicans started this," Raju corrected him.

"But Matt Gaetz has very personal differences with Kevin McCarthy," said Scott. "So it was very personal differences not legislative differences that led to this, and when he brought the motion and he was — he was the person that brought the motion, you know, the end result of it is a very dangerous position that we are in as a country. So we're going to have conference on Monday, we will have different candidates running and then we will have a vote Tuesday morning inside the conference to come up with a Republican nominee and then hopefully we will be on the floor shortly after lunch."

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