Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) accused Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) of bragging about chasing down erectile dysfunction medicine with an energy drink to prolong his sexual escapades.
“He would brag about how he would crush ED medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night,” Mullin told CNN on Wednesday. “This is obviously before he got married.”
Mullin’s accusation comes the day after the Florida Republican spearheaded a successful push to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his role as Speaker.
In the wake of the allegations, a number of people claimed Gaetz was getting “Cawthorned,” a reference to the numerous salacious leaks about former Rep. Madison Cawthorn that came after he accused Republicans of using drugs.
While eight Republicans sided with Gaetz to do so, the vast majority of Republicans—210—voted in favor of McCarthy keeping his role.
Gaetz is facing backlash and criticism from several Republican lawmakers over the ouster, with some calling for Gaetz to be expelled from the party’s conference.
“I’d love to have him out of the conference,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told reporters Tuesday. “He shouldn’t be in the Republican Party.”
Others said he should be exiled out of the country.
In the CNN interview, Mullin indicated that much of the Republican conference already had disdain for Gaetz due to allegations related to his sexual behavior, including child trafficking and showing nude photos of women to other lawmakers.
The Department of Justice dropped its sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz without bringing any charges in February. The Floridian lawmaker, who has firmly denied the reports, is still under investigation by the House Ethics Committee.
“This is a guy that the media didn’t give the time of day to after he was accused of sleeping with an underage girl and there’s a reason why no one in the conference came and defended him because we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor that all of us had walked away, of the girls he had slept with,” Mullin said before talking about the alleged ED usage.
“So when that accusation came out, no one defended him and then no one in the media would give him the time of day,” Mullin added. “All of a sudden, he found fame because he opposed the Speaker of the House back in November and he’s always stayed there. And he was never going to leave until he got this last moment of fame by going after a motion to vacate.”
In January, Gaetz and a handful of other Republicans forced McCarthy to go through 15 rounds of voting to become speaker as they sought concessions from him—including lowering the threshold needed to file a motion to remove the Speaker to just one person.
In response to Mullin’s claims, Gaetz told CNN in a statement that he didn’t think the two of them “have said 20 words to each other on the House floor,” calling the allegations “a lie from someone who doesn’t know me and who is coping with the death of the political career of his friend Kevin.”
Mullin began his tenure as a senator in January. Prior to that, he served as a representative from Oklahoma’s second congressional district for ten years. Gaetz assumed his congressional office at the beginning of 2017.
