Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) says Congressman Matt Gaetz is chasing fame, and that he found it by opposing now-former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy last November — and “he’s always stayed there.” (Gaetz led the Motion To Vacate that saw McCarthy voted out of the Speakership this week.)
Mullin notes how “no one” in the Republican conference came to Gaetz’s defense when he was accused of dating a woman under the legal age, asserting that the lack of support was because the charge seemed plausible given that — as Mullin tells it — he and other lawmakers often walked away from Gaetz in the Capitol when he was “showing pictures of the girls that he’d slept with.”
Mullin says Gaetz would “brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin on Matt Gaetz: “We had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor … of the girls that he had slept with. He’d brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 5, 2023
Gaetz responds: “This is a lie” pic.twitter.com/h55hj0ag29
Reached out to by CNN, Gaetz replied that he hardly knows Mullin, having exchanged fewer “20 words” on the House floor in the past. Before being elected to the Senate in a special election to replace Jim Inhofe in 2022, Mullin served as the U.S. representative for Oklahoma’s 2nd congressional district for a decade — from 2013 to 2023. Gaetz has been in the House since 2017.
In his response, Gaetz posited that Mullin was just reacting to “the death of the political career of his friend Kevin.” In a snarky coda, Gaetz added “Thoughts and prayers.”
