Despite days of headlines highlighting divisions among House Republicans over Rep. Liz Cheney keeping her leadership role and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene losing her committee posts, a high-profile freshman lawmaker, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, isn’t concerned about bad perceptions.
“Our party has never been more united,” Cawthorn, a North Carolina Republican, told the Washington Examiner in an interview capping his first month in Congress.
It’s a period that has included the impeachment of then-President Donald Trump by the Democratic-majority House, with his Senate trial beginning Tuesday, along with the Jan. 6 siege of the Capitol.
House Republicans voted to keep Cheney, a representative from Wyoming, in place Wednesday as the House Republican Conference’s chairwoman despite her vote to impeach Trump. The next day, the bulk of GOP members opposed a measure passed by House Democrats stripping Greene, a representative from Georgia, from her committee assignments over a swath of violent conspiratorial statements made before her election to Congress.
Cawthorn has a unique vantage point for the historic time period, which has also included the less-than-warm handover of power from Trump to President Biden on Jan. 20. At 25, Cawthorn is the youngest House member, only five months ahead of the constitutional minimum age to be a representative. His western North Carolina seat was previously held by Mark Meadows, who was Trump’s final White House chief of staff.
Since his upset win in the Republican primary last summer, Cawthorn has been among the highest-profile members of the new GOP class of House members. The party in November 2020 defied predictions to pick up House seats. It’s within striking distance of being the majority party, with only about six more seats needed to turn Democrats out of power.
And that political momentum is what gives Cawthorn optimism about getting past disputes such as the ones surrounding Cheney and Greene. House Republicans of different ideological and temperamental stripes are united around the common cause of fighting the radical Left, Cawthorn said.
After the hourslong House Republican Conference meeting on Wednesday, Cawthorn recalled: “I made a statement that I think surprised a lot of my fellow colleagues. I said, ‘What just happened in that room tells me that the Republican Party has never been more united.’ Because we had the back of Liz Cheney, and we had the back of Marjorie Greene. And that is because, no matter the faults of either of those women, we are here to fight against something that is so evil, and both of them are fighters, and we are here to go against this radical state of liberalism that has taken root in our country.”
Cawthorn opposed pushing Greene off of her committees Thursday, saying her northern Georgia constituents knew what they were getting when they elected her. Holding members responsible for statements they made before entering Congress is a dangerous precedent, he added.
When pressed on the matter and asked at what point the GOP should draw the line even if the comments said were made before a person’s time in office, the congressman did not say.
“If whatever is being reported about Marjorie Greene is true, you know, obviously I condemn whatever those statements are,” he added. “They’re frankly bizarre. But, you know what, I am here to fight something much more evil. I am here to fight radical socialism that’s trying to take root in our country.”
“There are people like Congresswoman [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who have said very dangerous things. There’s a lot of double standard going on here in Washington,” Cawthorn said. “I think that once somebody does something after they’ve been elected, that puts it in a different category.”
As for Cheney, his office declined to say how he voted in the secret ballot. But it’s the end result that matters, he said.
During the multi-hour Republican meeting, reports emerged that some participants gave Greene a standing ovation following her remarks on the matter. Cawthorn, though not specifying the amount of participation, confirmed the standing ovation and said he joined in the clapping. He said he was “very moved” by the “honesty that she spoke with.”
“What she said, I absolutely denounce. Implying that she wanted the killing of Speaker Pelosi, I think, is despicable, but she really has apologized for that. She’s condemned that herself. I condemn it myself. Our entire party does,” he said. “But what’s important here is, I was not elected to come and pass judgment on my fellow Republican colleagues. I was sent here by western North Carolina to pass policy.”
Cawthorn has received criticism among fellow conservatives and liberals alike, who feel he is more focused on media appearances than the business of legislating.
Cawthorn had emailed fellow Republicans on Jan. 19, “I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation,” Time reported Jan. 27.
Cawthorn felt the quote was not properly contextualized but acknowledged, “That is what we said.”
“The problem is, being in the minority, I see little use in devoting the overwhelming majority of my staff to the legislative side, whereas I think it is much more beneficial to be serving the constituents in my district and helping them with their casework,” he said. “I have more staff in the district than most people would have in D.C.”
When asked about rounding out his first month in Congress, Cawthorn said, “I would describe it as uneventful.”
