Rep. Madison Cawthorn, the Republican provocateur from North Carolina, claimed in an interview last week that his colleagues in Congress have invited him to orgies and used cocaine in front of him.
The outrageous remarks drew the ire of fellow lawmakers within the Republican Party. POLITICO reports:
During a closed-door House GOP conference meeting on Tuesday, multiple Republicans in the room said lawmakers stood up to air their anger and frustration over Cawthorn portraying his own colleagues as bacchanalian and sexual deviants.
In one case, Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) stood up and addressed his colleagues, telling them that he rarely speaks during the closed-door weekly meetings but felt he must address the topic because he’s now getting questions about participants in Cawthorn’s alleged orgies and drug use. Womack remarked that many lawmakers go to bed at 9 p.m. and still use fax machines and flip phones, stating that it was inappropriate to paint them with a broad brush, as Cawthorn did.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said he’d sit down with Cawthorn to discuss the matter, according to POLITICO.
Last week, Cawthorn told a conservative podcast that his lifelong admiration for lawmakers was diminished when he first took office.
“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,” Cawthorn said.
“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?’” Cawthorn added. “And then you realize they are asking you to come to an orgy.”
The Hill adds:
Cawthorn also claimed to have seen other people “leading” anti-addiction efforts doing cocaine in front of him.
“Or the fact that, you know, some of the people that are leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country and then you watch them do, you know, a key bump of cocaine right in front of you and it’s like, wow, this is wild,” he [continued].
POLITCO reports:
Many GOP lawmakers privately expressed disbelief at Cawthorn’s claims, particularly of orgies. Some wondered if he made the comments consciously in a bid to portray himself above such acts — past media reports have addressed sexual misconduct allegations against him before his election. There’s a desire among fellow Republicans for Cawthorn to identify the colleagues involved to prove the truth of his comments, but that desire to name names could also cause new headaches for a conference that’s already faced an array of controversies this Congress.
