Kevin McCarthy Says Rep. Madison Cawthorn ‘Lost My Trust’ Over Cocaine Comments

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) met with Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina) to address his claim that he was invited to orgies and saw his colleagues do cocaine in front of him.

McCarthy reported that in the meeting, Cawthorn allowed that he may have exaggerated the cocaine story, but said that he “doesn’t know what cocaine is.” In the original claim, Cawthorn had alleged that he watched a colleague “do a key bump of cocaine,” to which some pointed out that he probably does know what cocaine is since “key bump” is not a well-known phrase for people who stay away from the drug.

Cawthorn's claim is, verbatim, that he "watched [an unnamed person] do a key bump right in front of [him]"

this shouldn't require pointing out, and people should live how they like, but: people who don't do key bumps are very, very seldom people who know the term "key bump"

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“I just told him he’s lost my trust, he’s gonna have to earn it back, and I laid out everything I find is unbecoming,” McCarthy told reporters after the meeting. “And, you can’t just say, ‘You can’t do this again.’ I mean, he’s, he’s got a lot of members very upset.”

Cawthorn fired back his own response, blaming the left for using his comments to divide the Republican party.

“Corruption and unethical activities exist in Washington. It’s an indisputable fact. If you don’t think that’s true, you’ve not witnessed the Swamp,” Cawthorn wrote in a Friday statement. “My comments on a recent podcast appearance calling out corruption have been used by the left and the media to disparage my Republican colleagues and falsely insinuate their involvement in illicit activities.”

Cawthorn has come under fire lately after calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a “thug” and being charged with driving with a revoked license.