Matt Gaetz Says He Won’t Desecrate the Constitution Despite Doing Just That

Gage Skidmore | Flickr.com

Congressman Matt Gaetz says he won’t support “twisting and torturing” the Constitution to temporarily empower Speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry, despite infamously wanting to twist and torture the Constitution to allow then-Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally overturn the 2020 election so Donald Trump could assume an unelected second term.

Earlier today, Republican Congressman Jim Jordan was reportedly expected to pause his third scheduled vote for the Speakership after learning he would lose more votes than he did between the first and second attempts. Instead, he was to back a bipartisan effort to briefly empower McHenry so the House could reopen and take up key legislation.

This widely-reported plan was scuttled in a matter of hours by hardliners like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Gaetz himself, who triggered the chaos which has consumed the House of Representatives in the first place.

Gaetz quipped that he’s “against speaker-lite” as well as “Bud Light.” He further described the notion to enhance McHenry’s authority until January a “constitutional desecration” that he would “do everything possible to stop.”

He got his wish when Jordan publicly declared the effort to “lower the temperature and get back to work” failed because Republicans “decided that wasn’t where we’re going to go.”

The irony of Jordan’s admission that Republicans have no interest in lowering political temperature and getting back to work notwithstanding, Gaetz’s words ring hollow given his enthusiastic support of an absurd interpretation of the Constitution which allows for the sitting Vice President to unilaterally reject the results of a presidential election.

(Assuming that Vice President is Republican, of course.)