Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy criticized Republican leadership in the lower chamber of Congress for fumbling its years in the majority in a new interview with The Daily Wire’s Ben Domenech.

McCarthy minced no words after being asked to name “three things” that “Republicans and the House in particular should be doing differently.”

“First, the use of discharge petitions. Now, a discharge petition is 218 people sign a discharge petition, your bill automatically comes to the floor. If you’re in the majority, that’s simply saying, ‘I’m going to turn the floor over to the Democrats.’ They should stop allowing that to happen. They have passed more discharge petitions in three weeks than happened in 30 years. They let a discharge petition authored by a squad member just pass. Too many retirements; we’ve now set a new record. So that’s another indication. You’re not just running for higher office; you don’t like the job. They’re fighting with the Republicans in the Senate too much. So what they’re doing in this is they’re setting every indication to the public that they can’t win or they can’t govern,” replied McCarthy, who continued:

They should stick together. They should put an agenda together and they should stop recessing. Now, the Senate stayed in when the Democrats shut down the government, but the members of the Republicans in the House left.

Think about this. The voters gave you 24 months to be in the majority, and you just took two months of that and didn’t use it. If I was in the minority and I stopped the majority from being able to govern, that’s a victory. You could be in there passing bills that are 80 / 20 every day of the week. You gave up your majority for two months when you only have 24 months of it. This is the part that upsets me. And then I watched, like the week before, they fought on things that were never going to fly in the Senate, and they took up so much time with that. I want to see things that shift in the voters’ minds that they want to have you be in the majority. So you know what? Focus on the economy, focus on crime, and you can divide the Democrats on this and really show the public who they want to be governing.

“The complaints that you said are all complaints that I’ve heard from members, particularly leaving town. Why does that happen? Who in the architecture of power thinks that’s a good idea?” followed up Domenech.

“I don’t know, because I would not have allowed that to happen,” answered McCarthy. “Because if you’re given this power for a short time, the public’s going to judge you on how you use it. If you’re in a sporting event, if you’re in a basketball game in the last seconds, are you going to quit? Are you going to set up and take that shot? You want to show the public that, even if the Democrats are doing derelict things, that if you’re in charge, you don’t walk away. You put them in their place, and then you go show simple bills out there, and the Democrats vote ‘no,’ you vote ‘yes,’ and show the public the difference. I give the Senate credit. They stayed in session.”

He went on to reject the House GOP’s complaints about their counterparts in the upper chamber:

Recently, I watched as the Democrats shut down the government, and when the Senate passed the bill over to the House, the House Republicans voted no, and then a month later voted for the exact same thing by voice vote. But what they did there was take the shutdown. It’s a difficult job and a hard job to lead, but if you only take advice from the Freedom Caucus, you’re only going to end up in one or two places: in a cul-de-sac or in the minority.

You’ve got to understand the rules of the House are different than the rules of the Senate, but that’s why you’ve got to work together, achieve as many conservative aims as you can, pass that, and come back for what you didn’t get the next day. But fighting with each other lets the Democrats sit back and say, “They’re the problem,” instead of highlighting and putting the Democrats in a weaker position, or having them vote against popular bills.

McCarthy served as the Republican leader in the House from 2019 through the fall of 2023, and as speaker for roughly the last nine months of his tenure. He became the first speaker in American history to be removed via a motion to vacate the chair  in October 2023, and was succeeded by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who continues to hold the position.

McCarthy credited President Donald Trump with saving Johnson’s job in early 2025 when his caucus had to choose whether to keep the gavel in his hands.

“Congratulations first to Speaker Johnson. Well done, but I think having such a big election  — real congratulations to President Trump. I was with him last night, he made the difference here. He united a conference that is tough to keep together,” he said at the time.

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