House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy plans to speak with Rep. Madison Cawthorn after the North Carolinian angered his GOP colleagues with claims that Capitol Hill is a decadent environment that includes invitations for orgies and cocaine use.
Mr. McCarthy said he would address the issue after Rep. Steve Womack, Arkansas Republican, stood in a party conference meeting to air his disgust, according to Politico.
Other Republicans also objected to comments Mr. Cawthorn made on the “Warrior Poet Society” podcast, during which the host asked if Washington was at all like the Netflix drama “House of Cards.”
“I look at all these people, a lot of them that I’ve looked up to through my life, I’ve always paid attention to politics,” said Mr. Cawthorn, 26. “Then all of the sudden you get invited to, ‘Well hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come.’”
“I’m like, ’What did you just ask me to come to?’” Mr. Cawthorn said. “And then you realize they are asking you to come to an orgy.”
He also said he saw people in Washington use cocaine in front of him.
Conservative commentator Meghan McCain, co-host of ABC’s “The View,” said Mr. Cawthorn should name names to demonstrate his comments are fact and not fiction.
“We have a right to know who Cawthorn is talking about,” Ms. McCain wrote in The Daily Mail. “This kind of behavior is also not only illegal, but it is beneath the dignity of the code of ethics that members of Congress take when they are elected to office.”
“Constituents have a right to know if the people they have elected to represent them are spending their time getting high and participating in orgies, like some kind of Stanley Kubrick movie, instead of trying to address the deeply alarming problems plaguing this country,” she wrote.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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