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Both of North Carolina’s Republican senators blasted GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn this week — with one publicly endorsing his primary challenger — after the freshman lawmaker faced scrutiny over claims that his colleagues regularly snort cocaine and throw orgies.
“Unfortunately, Madison Cawthorn has fallen well short of the most basic standards Western North Carolina expects from their representatives, and voters now have several well-qualified candidates to choose from who would be a significant improvement,” Sen. Thom Tillis said in a Thursday statement obtained by The Hill.
“I believe [state Sen.] Chuck Edwards is the best choice,” Tillis added, saying that Edwards “puts his constituents first” and is a “hardworking conservative leader.”
Cawthorn will face off against Edwards and six other candidates in the May 17 Republican primary to represent the district, which covers the far west of the state. The district is considered solidly Republican, with the primary winner a heavy favorite in the November general election.
Tillis’ endorsement of Edwards comes as Cawthorn faces heavy backlash from Republican leadership over his claim that fellow lawmakers have invited him to take part in sex parties and done drugs in front of him.
“The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington. I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 — [you] 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 during an interview with the “Warrior Poet Society” podcast last week.
“Then all of a sudden you get invited. ‘We’re going to have a sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come.’ ‘What did you just ask me to come to?’ And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy.”
He later added: “You watch them do a bump of cocaine right in front of you. And it’s like, this is wild.”
On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters that Cawthorn had admitted that some of his statements were untrue or “exaggerated.” At one point, McCarthy said, Cawthorn had told him that “he thinks he saw maybe a staffer in a parking garage from 100 yards away” doing cocaine.
It is unclear whether Cawthorn told McCarthy that the orgies claim was untrue as well.
“It’s just frustrating,” McCarthy said. “There’s no evidence behind his statements. And when I sat 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.’”
In his endorsement of Edwards, Tillis made a point of saying Cawthorn’s challenger will “never embarrass Western North Carolina with a consistent pattern of juvenile behavior, outlandish statements, and untruthfulness.”
“Chuck Edwards has demonstrated he serves with honor and integrity, and he always makes conservatives proud,” the senator continued.
Tillis’ fellow North Carolinian Richard Burr also slammed Cawthorn on Wednesday, telling CNN that “on any given day, he’s an embarrassment” — though Burr added that he would not get involved in the primary.
Cawthorn recently caused another uproar by referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “a thug.” Last year, he also berated a staffer for Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) for accidentally listing Cawthorn as a bill sponsor.
McKinley has since asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate Cawthorn’s conduct.
While Cawthorn’s office did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment, the congressman posted a 30-second video on Twitter Thursday saying he “continues to stand up and fight for North Carolina.”
“The radical left, the establishment, and the media want to take me down. Their attacks have been relentless. I won’t stop fighting. I won’t bow to the mob. They want to silence the America First movement,” he said in the accompanying tweet.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
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