Former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy, who will go down in congressional history as the only speaker ever impeached, announced Wednesday, December 6, that he would leave Congress in the coming weeks.
“I have decided to leave the House at the end of this year to serve America in another way. I know my work has only just begun,” he wrote in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, in which he defended his record in the corridors of power. His departure will further reduce the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives, after the expulsion of his party member George Santos last week.
“I will continue to recruit our country’s best and brightest to run for office. The Republican Party grows bigger every day, and I am committed to putting my experience to work for the next generation of leaders,” added Mr. McCarthy, who was elected to Congress seventeen years ago.
“We did the right thing.”
“To all those who have supported me over the years (…), thank you from the bottom of my heart. We have done our part of the job. And when the stakes were highest, we rose to the challenge. We were ready to risk everything (…), whatever the personal cost. To put it simply, we did the right thing,” he said in a video on X.
In October, the fall from the perch of Mr. McCarthy, 58, was orchestrated by the Trumpist fringe of his own camp. The members of this clan had already done everything to prevent him from becoming speaker nine months earlier. The elected official from California had fought for fifteen rounds, and swallowed more than one snake, to finally be elected to the post.