- Madison Cawthorn is set to appear at a Trump rally this weekend.
- Cawthorn's appearance comes amid a week of drama in Washington following the lawmaker's comments about orgies and cocaine.
- Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy previously said Cawthorn has "lost my trust."
Rep. Madison Cawthorn is set to speak at former President Donald Trump's rally in North Carolina this weekend, a sign that Trump isn't deserting the far-right freshman lawmaker even as other top Republicans reach their breaking point in the wake of Cawthorn's recent comments.
Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Selma, North Carolina, on Saturday. Trump's Save America PAC listed Cawthorn as a speaker, just days after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy publicly rebuked Cawthorn for his suggestion that DC elites propositioned him to join an orgy and that he saw someone else "do a key bump of cocaine."
"I just told him he's lost my trust, he's gonna have to earn it back," McCarthy told reporters after he and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise privately met with Cawthorn for 30 minutes on Wednesday. "And I laid out to him everything that I find is unbecoming."
McCarthy said after the meeting that Cawthorn admitted to him that he exaggerated some of his statements. Cawthorn's office has not responded to repeated requests for comment.
Sen. Thom Tillis, another North Carolina Republican, also took the rare step of endorsing one of Cawthorn's primary challengers, arguing that the state deserves better leadership. Sen. Richard Burr, the state's other senator who is retiring, has also called Cawthorn "an embarrassment."
"It comes down to focus on the district, producing results for the district, and in my opinion, Mr. Cawthorn hasn't demonstrated much in the way of results over the last 18 months," Tillis told CNN of his decision to endorse state Sen. Chuck Edwards in his primary against Cawthorn.
Trump is in a precarious situation with Cawthorn. He endorsed a different candidate, who Cawthorn defeated en route to winning his seat in 2020. Cawthorn then tried to move to another district as North Carolina was redrawing its Congressional maps, which Trump endorsed. But that move failed and now Cawthorn is largely back where he started.
Cawthorn has sparked a series of controversies before and after being sworn into office. Recently, he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "thug," which McCarthy also admonished him over. He has sparked even more drama with his recent comments suggesting that Netflix's "House of Cards" was closer to real-life in Washington, particularly in its depictions of sex and drug use.
"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 told the "Warrior Poet Society" podcast last week.
Insider has reached out to Trump's team for comment.