- The House voted on Wednesday to censure Rep.
Paul Gosar and remove him from two committees. - Only Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger voted to condemn Gosar over his violent
AOC anime video.
Just two Republicans broke with their party and $4
Only Republican Reps.
Censure refers to a formal condemnation of an elected official. The disciplinary measure comes after $4
Gosar became the 24th House member in history who has been censured. The last time the House voted to censure a member $4 when then-Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel was rebuked over ethics violations.
Cheney and Kinzinger, who both serve on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol, were unequivocal in their support for the resolution.
"We have to hold Members accountable who incite or glorify violence, who spread and perpetuate dangerous conspiracies," Kinzinger said in a $4 ahead of the vote. "The failure to do so will take us one step closer to this fantasized violence becoming real."
After days of silence from Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on the video, Cheney $4 "it's a real symbol of his lack of strength, the lack of leadership in our conference right now, and the extent to which he and other leaders seem to have lost their moral compass."
Kinzinger is not seeking re-election, while Cheney faces a primary challenger from former RNC committeewoman Harriet Hageman, who's been endorsed by former President Trump. The Wyoming GOP $4
Joyce, who serves on the House Ethics Committee, said his "present" vote was a matter of fairness.
"How can I be fair and impartial as a member of the ethics committee unless you listen to the evidence that's going to be presented to that committee?" he told reporters on his way to a meeting of that committee. "So I don't want to prejudge anyone."
'I think kicking people off committees is bad.'
The video, which Gosar posted on Twitter on November 7, featured an edited version of the opening credits of a Japanese animated series called "Attack on Titan," a show that is centered on a hero who fights giant creatures called Titans. In the 90-second clip, Gosar, along with fellow GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, are seen attacking the "Titan" characters. Gosar's face is superimposed over one character that kills a Titan with Ocasio-Cortez's face on it. Gosar's character also swings two swords at a Titan with Biden's face on it. The tweet was captioned: "Any anime fans out there?"
Gosar has also sought to defend himself amid the backlash, both $4 and via public statements. "The cartoon depicts the symbolic nature of a battle between lawful and unlawful policies and in no way intended to be a targeted attack against Representative Cortez or Mr. Biden," Gosar $4in which he misspelled Ocasio-Cortez's last name.
McCarthy, who first spoke publicly on the issue this week, has $4 And Republicans generally pointed out the precedent that would be set over committee removal in justifying their votes against the resolution.
"If they would have stuck to a censure or reprimand, I likely would have been there," Rep. Don Bacon told reporters after the vote. Bacon was one of the 13 Republicans to vote for President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill. "But I think kicking people off committees is bad."
Kinzinger and Cheney, for their part, are only likely to face more criticism from their own party. The GOP is roiling with tension after $4 voted for a bipartisan infrastructure bill last week, $4 voted to hold Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress, and $4 voted to impeach former President Donald Trump in February.
"We all know they're Democrats anyhow," Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia told Insider, referring to Cheney and Kinzinger. Greene also said she had asked McCarthy to kick the duo out of the GOP conference entirely.
"The excuse I was given by Kevin McCarthy is that we would lose committee seats," she told Insider. "But you know what, I got kicked off committees, and now Democrats are going to remove Paul Gosar so I don't think they really care about committee seats."
Greene was referencing when House Democrats $4 back in February over her past support for right-wing conspiracy theories and political violence on social media.
Greene reiterated that any Republican who voted for the censure resolution should be removed from the House GOP conference and have their committee seats revoked, while also taking aim at Republicans that voted for the infrastructure bill.
"There's no accountability for Republicans that are helping Joe Biden pass his agenda," she told Insider.
Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas, on the other hand, said Cheney and Kinzinger shouldn't be punished.
"This is all stupid, everything that is happening," Crenshaw told Insider. "What Paul Gosar did was stupid, the censure vote is stupid. All of these conversations are stupid locker room