Moving to remove House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from his position would be a waste of time, Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Ga., told Newsmax on Sunday.
McCormick appeared on "Sunday Report" and was asked about Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz's stated intention to file a motion to vacate the chair, which would remove McCarthy from the speakership.
"There's always going to be a certain number of people who are going to be dissatisfied. Calling for his ouster isn't helpful," McCormick told host Jon Glasgow. "He's not going to be ousted. That's just not realistic.
"Of the 20 members that may vote for him to be removed as the speaker, there's no replacement. There's no alternative."
Glasgow said lawmakers' time would be better spent trying to get bills passed.
"It's a bit hypocritical to say we're going to spend time on replacing the speaker we can't replace," he said. "We're supposed to be doing our job."
McCormick on Saturday voted against a 45-day funding bill, later approved by the Senate, that avoided a government shutdown.
Despite voting against the continuing resolution (CR), McCormick said he understood why other GOP colleagues voted for it.
"The Republicans would have suffered [if the government shut down], in my opinion. I think [President] Joe Biden would have made it absolutely as painful as possible," McCormick told Glasgow.
"They [the administration] would have controlled the discretion of the budget at that point, what's left over, and I think that they would have closed down military spending … would have made sure that the elderly and poor suffered as much as possible and blamed it on us."
McCormick, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was asked whether financial aid to Egypt should be paused pending an investigation into the country's behavior toward Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC).
Menendez recently resigned as SFRC chair after being charged with illegally using his position to peddle influence seeking to protect and enrich New Jersey businessmen, and benefit the government of Egypt.
"Right now, there's a movement inside the Republican Party that we shouldn't aid anybody outside the United States until we fund our southern border," McCormick said. "Of course, as a part of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I don't believe that. As a matter of fact, I think it's very dangerous to start isolating certain countries.
"We have to really take a step back and realize the effect that that takes whether it be Ukraine, Israel, Egypt. Each one of those countries has to be individually looked at based on what that country's doing, if they're corrupting the money … that they're using from us and if it's used against us, especially. So those things have to be considered on the individual case by case basis."
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Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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