- Kevin McCarthy reportedly told House Republicans that he will give a talking-to to Rep. Madison Cawthorn.
- Cawthorn recently suggested that "House of Cards" was accurate in how it depicted sex and drugs in Washington.
- McCarthy has already had to publicly rebuke the North Carolina Republican in recent weeks.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy privately said on Tuesday that he will speak with Madison Cawthorn about the North Carolina Republican's suggestion that orgies and cocaine use are commonplace among DC's elite, according to multiple reports.
Politico reported that McCarthy told Republican lawmakers in a closed-door meeting that he would talk to Cawthorn after some of their colleagues expressed consternation over Cawthorn's implication about sex and drugs.
"I look at a lot of these people, a lot of them that I've looked up to through my life — I've always paid attention to politics — guys, that, then all of a sudden you get invited to, 'Oh hey we're going to have a sexual get together at one of our homes, you should come," Cawthorn recently said on a podcast. "'What did you just ask me to come to?' And then you realize they're asking you to come to an orgy."
He also said he witnessed prominent figures doing "a key bump of cocaine" in front of him.
McCarthy publicly rebuked Cawthorn on March 18 for a separate brouhaha over Cawthorn calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "thug." Cawthorn's office later said he did not mean to imply that he didn't support Ukraine. McCarthy said also at that time he would support Cawthorn's reelection. Neither McCarthy nor Cawthorn's office responded to Insider's request for comment.
He also said that he witnessed prominent figures "on the movement to try and remove addiction in our county" doing "a key bump of cocaine" in front of him. Cawthorn did not name any of the officials in question nor did he provide any further details about the alleged incidents.
Rep. Steve Womack, Politico reported, stood up during the meeting and said that some lawmakers go to bed at 9 p.m. and still use fax machines and flip phones.
Cawthorn comments to the "Warrior Poet Society" podcast came in response to a question about how realistic Netflix's "House of Cards" is to life in Washington. The freshman Republican also referenced the show's star Kevin Stacey's comment that former President Bill Clinton joked to him that the drama full of murder, sex, betrayal, and drugs was only inaccurate in how quickly it depicted major education legislation becoming law.
"Kevin, 99% of what you do on that show is real. The 1% you get wrong is you could never get an education bill passed that fast," Spacey told Gotham Magazine in 2015, recounting Clinton's comment. Spacey was later written off the show in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal.