Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) appeared to give an explicit-filled challenge to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) during a Tuesday night interview after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was voted out as Speaker of the House before the Texas congressman walked back his comments during a Wednesday interview.
After the House voted 216 to 210 to remove McCarthy as Speaker of the House Tuesday, Roy made an interview appearance on The Blaze with Steve Deace where he appeared to be referencing Gaetz and the other Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy from his position.
“Some of our brothers and sisters – particularly in the, you know, MAGA camp, I think – particularly enjoy the circular firing squad,” Roy said. “You wanna come out me and call me a RINO? You can kiss my a-s. Look, I’ve spent a lifetime fighting for limited government conservatism. I have laid it all on the line. I have not seen my family for two days in the last 30 days. You go around talking your big game, and you thumping your chest on Twitter? Yeah. Come to my office. Come have a debate, mother.”
Continuing his apparent rebuke of his fellow House Republicans, Roy claimed that he was going to continue fighting for what he believed to be right because American patriots have historically given their lives and “deserve us to stand up for what they fought for.”
“So that’s what I’m gonna do,” he said. “And all of you f–kers out there who are out there saying what you’re saying out on social media, you stick it! I’m gonna go down to the floor and do my job, and I’m gonna stand up for the people who fought for this country.”
While Roy did not initially mention Gaetz by name, he later said that he respected what Gaetz and other Republicans were doing to try to change things in the United States.
Blasting the current state of government, Roy described the difficulty of navigating “a world in which Democrats control the Senate,” the Senate Republican Conference “is garbage,” and the House Republican Conference is split over multiple differences between members.
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Roy added, “But if people wanna play this out in real-time and deal with this every single minute and every single day on social media, don’t think that that’s somehow going to change the game because what we gotta do is we have to actually define the fight.”
After rebuking his fellow Republicans on Tuesday, Roy appeared to walk back his comments during an interview with Dana Loesch on her radio show “The Dana Show with Dana Loesch.”
“My reaction there wasn’t really to Matt,” Roy claimed. “It wasn’t to any of my friends who had a good faith belief that we weren’t getting the job done through the speaker, and they called the question. So, now we gotta go choose another speaker. I didn’t agree with the play call, but I don’t fault them for it.”
Roy also explained that he should not have used the type of language he used Tuesday to describe other Republicans. The Texas representative said that while he would not apologize for his passion, “I do apologize for the language.”
