HYGO News McCarthy: Pelosi Burns Down House, Boebert: Pelosi Censorship, Swalwell, Omar, Waters 11/17/2021
McCarthy: “Pelosi Is Burning Down the House”; Boebert Raises Swalwell Spy Scandal, Omar Payments, Waters Incitement in Gosar Censure Debate
On November 17, 2021, the House of Representatives voted to censure Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and strip him of his committee assignments over an animated video he posted depicting violence against Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Biden. The debate produced some of the most fiery floor speeches of the 117th Congress, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accusing Speaker Nancy Pelosi of “burning down the House on her way out the door” and Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) using her time to catalog what she called the Democratic double standard — raising Representative Eric Swalwell’s relationship with a suspected Chinese spy, Representative Ilhan Omar’s campaign payments to her husband, and Representative Maxine Waters’s calls for confrontation during the Derek Chauvin trial. McCarthy framed the entire proceeding as an exercise in selective enforcement, repeatedly invoking the phrase “rules for thee, but not for me.”
Boebert: Swalwell, Omar, and “Sleeping with the Enemy”
Boebert’s speech was the debate’s most incendiary moment. Rather than defending Gosar’s video directly, she used her floor time to enumerate what she argued were far more serious offenses by Democratic members that had gone unpunished.
She opened by dismissing the entire proceeding: “Democrat policies are so pathetic and have done so poorly that the left has nothing else to do but troll the internet looking for ways to get offended and then try to target members and strip them of their committees. This is a dumb waste of the House’s time.”
Then she pivoted to her attack: “But since the Speaker has designated the floor to discuss members’ inappropriate actions, shall we?”
Boebert’s first target was Representative Ilhan Omar: “The Jihad Squad member from Minnesota has paid her husband — and not her brother-husband, the other one — over a million dollars in campaign funds. This member is allowed on the Foreign Affairs Committee.”
She then turned to Swalwell with a line that drew audible reactions: “My colleague and three-month presidential candidate from California, who is on the Intelligence Committee, slept with Fang Fang, a Chinese spy. Let me say that again. A member of Congress who receives classified briefings was sleeping with the enemy.”
The reference was to the 2020 revelation that Swalwell had been targeted by a suspected Chinese intelligence operative named Christine Fang, who had developed relationships with several American politicians. Swalwell was not accused of wrongdoing by intelligence officials, but Republicans argued that his continued service on the Intelligence Committee — where he had access to classified information — represented a security risk that Democrats had chosen to ignore.
McCarthy: “The Speaker Is Burning Down the House”
McCarthy delivered the longest speech of the debate, running over eight hours including procedural interruptions. His central argument was that Democrats were weaponizing the censure process while refusing to hold their own members accountable for conduct he argued was objectively worse than posting an animated video.
McCarthy focused on three Democratic members in particular. He cited Maxine Waters’s comments during the Derek Chauvin trial in Minneapolis, when she told protesters to “stay on the streets, get more active, get more confrontational.” McCarthy noted that the trial judge had singled out Waters’s comments as potentially creating grounds for appeal. He added that Waters had previously told supporters at a Los Angeles rally: “If you see anyone from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them that they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
McCarthy noted that when Republicans asked Democrats to hold Waters accountable, they did not seek removal from committees but merely requested an apology. Democrats voted to table the motion. Speaker Pelosi compared Waters’s Minneapolis comments to Dr. King’s civil rights movement, and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer described Waters as “passionate.”
McCarthy’s refrain throughout the speech was: “Rules for thee, but not for me.” He applied it to every example — Waters’s incitement, Swalwell’s spy connection, Omar’s statements about Israel, and the Steele dossier’s principal source being arrested for lying to the FBI.
He built to his central charge against Pelosi: “The Speaker is burning down the House on her way out the door.” McCarthy argued that the censure vote, combined with Democrats’ earlier decision to strip Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, had permanently changed House norms by allowing the majority party to punish minority members and remove them from committees — a power that had historically been reserved for each party to exercise over its own members.
”A Broken Congress”
McCarthy cataloged what he called the defining failures of the Democratic majority: “Absolute chaos on the southern border. Record-breaking gas prices and inflation. A broken supply chain. A historic labor shortage. A failing education system. And of course, the humiliating surrender in Afghanistan.”
He argued that rather than addressing these challenges, the 117th Congress would be remembered as “the broken Congress” that had systematically dismantled institutional norms. He cited the elimination of the motion to recommit, the two impeachments of President Trump, and the stripping of minority members’ committee assignments as evidence of a pattern.
McCarthy’s institutional argument went beyond the Gosar case. He warned that the precedent being set would have consequences when the majority changed hands: “Under the Pelosi precedent, all the members that I have mentioned earlier will need the approval of a majority to keep those positions in the future.”
The warning was prescient. When Republicans took control of the House in January 2023, they used the same precedent to remove Representatives Adam Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar from their committee assignments, citing the Democrats’ earlier actions as justification.
The Gosar Video and the Vote
The censure resolution stemmed from an anime-style video Gosar’s office had posted on social media showing a character with Gosar’s face attacking a character with Ocasio-Cortez’s face and confronting a character representing President Biden. Gosar deleted the video and said it was not meant to depict violence against anyone.
Democrats argued the video was a direct threat and that any member who posted content depicting the murder of a colleague and an attack on the president should face consequences. The resolution passed 223-207, with only two Republicans — Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — voting in favor.
The censure required Gosar to stand in the well of the House as the resolution was read — a punishment that had not been imposed on a member since Representative Charlie Rangel was censured in 2010 for ethics violations.
Republicans largely declined to defend the video itself, instead focusing their arguments on the process, the double standard, and the institutional damage of the majority stripping a minority member of committee assignments. McCarthy made this explicit: “Have you seen the video? No. I haven’t seen it, but they knew exactly what they wanted to do.”
The Double Standard Debate
The core of the Republican argument was that Democrats had established a standard they refused to apply to their own members. Boebert and McCarthy each cited different examples, but the thrust was the same: if posting an animated video warranted censure and committee removal, then a member sleeping with a suspected foreign spy, a member calling for confrontation during an active trial, and a member paying campaign funds to a spouse should trigger at least equivalent consequences.
Democrats responded that the cases were not comparable and that the Gosar video depicted specific violence against a specific colleague. They argued that the duty to protect members from threats of violence transcended partisan considerations and that the censure was a necessary response to the normalization of violent political imagery.
The debate exposed a deep institutional divide over whether the House majority should have the power to determine committee assignments for the minority party’s members — a question that would continue to shape congressional politics for years afterward.
Key Takeaways
- Boebert used the Gosar censure debate to call out Swalwell for having “slept with Fang Fang, a Chinese spy” while serving on the Intelligence Committee, Omar for paying her husband “over a million dollars in campaign funds,” and Waters for telling protesters to “get more confrontational” during the Chauvin trial — arguing each was more serious than posting an animated video.
- McCarthy accused Pelosi of “burning down the House on her way out the door” by weaponizing committee removals against minority members, warned the precedent would be used against Democrats, and delivered a speech cataloging what he called “rules for thee, but not for me” across multiple Democratic double standards.
- The House voted 223-207 to censure Gosar and strip his committee assignments, with only Cheney and Kinzinger joining Democrats, establishing a precedent that Republicans would use in 2023 to remove Schiff, Swalwell, and Omar from their committees.