Kevin McCarthy



Kevin McCarthy is the current speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, having served as a representative from California since 2007. He has represented a district that encompasses Bakersfield, a city commonly referred to as the armpit of California due to its geography frequently trapping air pollution. After former House Speaker Paul Ryan resigned when Republicans were crushed in the 2018 midterm elections, he took over as the Republican minority leader and four years later would become House speaker after a protracted voting period. Overall, he's been very pro-Donald Trump and holds all of the stances that would imply; despite this, he's still not right-wing enough for some members of the Freedom Caucus.

House tenure
When he first became House Majority leader in 2014, he was the least tenured House party leader of all time, so as you can tell, he was already off to a great start. Shortly afterwards, he made a major gaffe when he basically admitted that the Benghazi investigation was politically motivated against Hillary Clinton, which jeopardized his chances of becoming the speaker of the House at that time. Oops. Once Donald Trump became president, McCarthy was fully supportive of him and defended him during his first impeachment. He supported Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and while he was initially critical of Trump over the 2021 U.S. coup attempt, he quickly fell in line. After 15 ballots (the most for a speaker since before the American Civil War) and making all sorts of concessions to the extreme right-wing members of his narrow majority, he was finally elected as speaker of the House in 2023.

As Speaker, McCarthy decided to hand over thousands of hours of footage of the 2021 U.S. coup attempt to none other than Tucker Carlson.

Stances
They are basically what you'd expect from a right-wing Republican. He was a supporter of DOMA while voting against the more recent Respect for Marriage Act that would codify the federal legality of same-sex marriage. He opposes abortion and is a climate change denier. Additionally, he has taken a page from Jack Thompson's book and has blamed mass shootings on video games.