Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA) told CNN's Jake Tapper on Wednesday that after Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was ousted as House Speaker, the Republican House caucus meeting nearly came to blows as members vented their fury.
"Jake, I'll be candid," said Graves, who voted against removing McCarthy. "If we had stayed together in the meeting last night, I think that you would have seen fists thrown, and I'm not being dramatic when I say that. There is a lot of raw emotions right now. I think it was best to let folks go back home and decompress and come back together."
"You were very passionate on the floor yesterday, expressing some of your disgust," said Tapper. "Let's roll that clip."
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"What is going on in this country today?" said Graves in the clip. "What is going on in this body where you have FreedomWorks, Heritage, Chip Roy, and Jim Jordan say something's conservative, and these folks say it is not and they're right. And all of a sudden my phone keeps sending text messages. Text messages saying, give me money. Look at that. Oh, look, give me money, I just filed the motion to vacate. Using official actions, official actions to raise money. It's disgusting. It's what's disgusting about Washington."
"And this afternoon, your fellow Republican congressman, Mike Lawler of New York, said he supports removing Congressman Matt Gaetz from the Republican House conference," said Tapper. "I assume that is who you were talking about on the House floor in that clip. Do you agree? Do you want to remove Matt Gaetz from House Republican conference?"
"I think that would be one of the most unifying actions of this House," said Graves, to chuckles from Tapper. "However, I also think it is really important to not just think about step one, to think steps two, three, four and five and in this case with the slim majority, while there are people drooling for that to happen, that just isn't a viable path forward right now." He added that he does support "some type of penalty or punishment for what [Gaetz] did."
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