Rep. Madison Cawthorn says his orgy, cocaine remarks were ‘exaggerated’

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) admitted suggestions that his colleagues have done cocaine and invited him to orgies were “exaggerated” in a tense meeting with Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the House GOP leader told Axios.

McCarthy told reporters that he may take further action over Cawthorn’s comments, which caused an angry outcry among Hill Republicans.

The issue started when Cawthorn, at 26 claimed he had seen evidence of “sexual perversion” in Washington during an interview with John Lovell for the “Warrior Poet Society.”

“I look at all these people, a lot of them that I’ve looked up to through my life, I’ve always paid attention to politics,” Cawthorn said. “Then all of the sudden you get invited to, ‘Well hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get together at one of our homes, you should come.’”

“I’m like, ‘What did you just ask me to come to?’” Cawthorn added. “And then you realize they are asking you to come to an orgy.”

McCarthy said he had had a tense meeting with Cawthorn. “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 Axios and other outlets. “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.”

And McCarthy said Cawthorn admitted he had exaggerated his claims. “In the interview, he claims he watched people do cocaine. Then when he comes in he tells me, he says he thinks he saw maybe a staffer in a parking garage from 100 yards away,” McCarthy said.

“It’s just frustrating. There’s no evidence behind his statements. And when I sit down with him … I told him you can’t make statements like that, as a member of Congress, that affects everybody else and the country as a whole.”

“Madison’s stuff irritates me because it’s not true,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told Axios’ Andrew Solender. “He’ll have to either name names or retract it.”