Kevin McCarthy is Doing Just Fine. No, Really. He is. Stop That.

All of his friends are just out of frame, laughing too.

(Composite / Photos: Joe Perticone / Scott Olson, BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

When Kevin McCarthy walked onto the Republican convention floor yesterday afternoon during the lull between speech sessions, he had the distinct vibe of a popular high school kid returning to campus after he graduated.¹ 

McCarthy gave handshakes, accepted the occasional selfie request, and even took questions from reporters meandering the red carpet. He didn’t look quite as down as he did the day he was removed as speaker. But he didn’t exactly exude high-spiritedness, either. 

Last year, I described the look on McCarthy’s face during his defenestration as a “blank, blood-rushed stillness that comes over you when you run into an ex for the first time after a bad adolescent breakup.” Yesterday, his facial expressions brought to mind the classic Nathan Fielder tweet about having a great time with your friends, who are all just slightly off camera. (Arguably, this is better than having a bad time in front of your friends and then running to get off camera, as happened to Mike Johnson following a teleprompter failure.)

McCarthy’s current place in Republican politics is hard to define. He is the embodiment of the maxim that no one survives their time with Donald Trump unscathed. But unlike others who suffered that fate, McCarthy has not left the political scene. Instead, he’s stuck around in a weird quasi-involved state. He does TV appearances and goes to political functions. And he’s open about seeking revenge against those who orchestrated his demise.

On the floor Monday, he ran into one of the people who was helping him with that task: John McGuire, who recently beat Rep. Bob Good to become the Republican nominee in Virginia’s 5th congressional district. This time, it was McCarthy requesting a selfie.

After I caught this exchange, McCarthy greeted me with a slap on the shoulder. I asked him what McGuire’s win over Good, who voted to oust him as speaker, meant on a personal level. He said the following:

It sent a clear message to those who just want chaos and wanna work with the Democrats: that doesn’t work. There’s people that’ll take their place. Bob Good’s place. It was one of the best elections yet.

But McGuire’s success is McCarthy’s only win so far in his revenge tour against the eight conservatives whose votes to strip him of the gavel tipped the scale last October. And a selfie with the guy on the convention floor is a cold comfort for a person who was once second in line for the presidency. He’ll have to settle for it, though, because he doesn’t have much else going on. McCarthy was not granted a speaking slot at the convention, despite being both a member of Republican leadership for the better part of the past decade and, until recently, a major fundraiser for the Republicans, who took back the House of Representatives thanks in part to money the former speaker brought in.

McCarthy continued walking up and down the aisles alongside a uniformed U.S. Capitol Police officer while onlookers snapped pictures of him and shouted “Kevin!” I heard his first name far more often than “Mr. Speaker,” the honorific he spent so much of his life chasing. Eventually he departed, and I didn’t see him again for the rest of the night.

The convention floor is a caricature of the modern GOP

Not everyone on the floor is a big name like McCarthy. Rank-and-file lawmakers are constantly walking through the crowd to greet colleagues, constituents, and political operatives. Some of them have been getting up to things, sometimes literally. For example, I watched as Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) jumped to grab a ledge and muscled himself up to peek over it into the Fox News mini studio booth above the floor. He was accompanied by Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas), the legislator with whom he was recently reportedly caught having an affair.

As for the delegates, they are divided into easily identifiable groups. Not just by the pylons marking their respective states and U.S. territories, but by the way they dress. It’s a bit like the Game of Thrones houses if they were populated with the student cheering sections from state university football games. The Texans wore cowboy hats, the North Carolinians were all in matching seersucker suits, and so on. Beyond that, the dominant menswear trend among Republicans was everywhere in evidence: a cobalt-blue suit, white shirt, and red satin tie that mimics Donald Trump mimicking the U.S. flag.

Graphic t-shirts are big as well, but there’s no consensus on a definitive slogan. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” is the most common inscription, of course, but some have updated the classic to account for Trump’s 2020 loss and future prospects. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN AGAIN” is competing with “MAKE AMERICA GREAT ONCE AGAIN” in the merch market. MAGAA or MAGOA? The people shall decide.

As for sartorial missteps, there was no shortage of dress sneakers, comically large hats, and excessive displays of pins and campaign buttons. (“The hallmark of Camp is the spirit of extravagance,” Susan Sontag wrote.) I also noticed Ohio Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted failed to remove the thread in the vent of his suit jacket—a major no-no.

Let me in

When I was heading into the arena this afternoon, I noticed Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) in a heated conversation with an on-site uniformed Secret Service officer who informed the lawmaker he was not allowing any more members of Congress through the media entrance.

Mills, who was with former North Carolina Rep. Mark Walker, was livid. “I can call the chairman of the RNC!” he declared before launching into a tirade about his military service. (Mills deployed to Iraq with Army’s 82nd Airborne and later went on to work for defense contractor DynCorp, as well as other roles advising on anti-piracy security in the maritime industry.) 

The officer repeatedly said that he was just doing his job. Walker told me they both had scheduled interviews in the building and were concerned about being late to them. He was a lot calmer than Mills.

I was waved in through the same entrance before I could see how the standoff was resolved.

“Unity” is about the party coming together, not the country.

Those are just superficial observations, though. 

The more substantive matter of the convention is the question of what images and themes it seeks to project. And the theme for the first day was clear: It was pitched as a unifying moment in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. 

But as I spoke to some of the delegates, it became clear that the “unity” Republicans have in mind is more about party unity than creating a more harmonious country. 

Nikki Haley is now slated to speak at the convention. Trump’s former primary opponents have been brought on side or pushed back into irrelevance, and Republicans here are extremely united (not to mention bullish on the election), which hasn’t always been the case. 

Joy Greggo, a delegate from Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, said this new unity is centered on wide agreement with the Trump agenda. She went so far as to claim she would happily ditch the former president if he adopted more liberal policies:

If people say to me, oh, Trump called stuff like that, Donald Trump started espousing Biden regime platforms and ideas, I would want him out of office and on to the street. So this is about the platform. This is about ideas. This is about going forward.

Greggo can probably sleep soundly knowing that won’t happen. Her larger point remains valid: there is very little ideological disparity here in Milwaukee. 

Speak with any lawmaker, delegate, or attendee and you’ll be able to find a minor policy disagreement here, a pet project they think should headline the GOP agenda there. But these are minor differences. 

There is another form of unity that Trump stans are pushing these days: For the sake of bringing the nation together, all criminal investigations into the former president should be dropped. This is, naturally, self-serving. But for her part, Greggo said she opposed the widespread promises of retaliation Republicans have made against those Democrats who have cheered on Trump’s prosecutions. 

No, it's not a good look. It's not a good look. If someone has clearly broken the law, then they should be brought to trial and hear the arguments and then have a jury decide. But no, we don't play that. We don't play that, and it's sometimes, I think it's been to our detriment, because we tend to try to play nice.

1. The actual circumstances of McCarthy’s departure—getting unceremoniously tossed out the door by enraged colleagues—notwithstanding.