Patrick McHenry Unleashes Criticism on the Republican Rebels He Abandoned

When Patrick McHenry, then 29 years old, made his entry into Congress in 2005, few anticipated that this figure branded as the GOP's “attack dog-in-training” would eventually retire two decades later as a symbol of pragmatism.

Initially, McHenry devoted his early terms to confrontational politics with limited success. However, he underwent a transformation, leading him to take his role more seriously. The North Carolina Republican's journey culminated in his position as chair of the House Financial Services Committee and, for three chaotic weeks, as the temporary speaker of the House.

In his exit interview with PMG Magazine, he described the “out-of-body experience” he felt after assuming leadership following Kevin McCarthy's ousting. McHenry also reflected on the evolution of the Republican Party during his tenure, noting that it often felt like he was “going upstream from the traffic.”

Yet, his departure isn't solely about the changes in the party or Congress. He stated that after twenty years, it was time to move on, particularly since his chairmanship ended due to committee term limits, something he still believes is a beneficial policy.

In his final years, McHenry had potential to advance through party leadership, with former Speaker John Boehner even suggesting he would one day be speaker. Instead, he opted to concentrate on shaping financial policy, including transformative cryptocurrency legislation—an approach he does not regret.

“[After] that crucible in October, when all the dust settled, and I could kind of get my wits about me, I was in complete peace,” he remarked. “I knew it was the right thing. That I was done.”

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

You came into Congress as a bomb-thrower and left a pragmatist. How do you explain what changed?

Let me just rewind here. I ran for state House when I was in college and lost. I worked in the Bush campaign, worked in the Bush administration, went home. And I thought, “I’m going home, and I’m going to come back to politics. Once I have some financial stability, I’ll come back sometime later, you know, 10, 20 years later.”

I set up life in my hometown in the suburbs of Charlotte. And six months in, a state House seat comes open. There’s a piece written about me as if I had designed this thing — fantastic and insanely not true — that I had this sort of set up. And I’m like, “No, no, when I left D.C., I was firmly done.”

So, state House seat opens up; I get elected to the state House. And one year into my service in the state House, Cass Ballenger, 10th [congressional] district, announces he’s retiring. And my consultant and I sat down and said, “Well, if no one else from the state legislature gets into the race, there’s this path.”

So I just turned 28, and I started my campaign for Congress.

What the electorate was telling me, and then what they responded to, was that I knew something about legislating — which I knew just a little bit — and I wanted to change D.C.

So I get elected to Congress a week after my 29th birthday. I came here with the intention to light things up.

What was motivating you to light things up?

I wanted to pass conservative policy.

A couple of things about my district: At that period of time, in the first five years from the 2000 tech bubble until 2005, we had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. My key MSA [metropolitan statistical area] in that district had more unemployment than Flint, Michigan. Nobody paid attention. Textiles, furniture, fiber optic cable — those are the three industries of the district. It’s a very different time. You can’t even put it as a prelude to Trump because it’s so far before this Trump “Let’s get tough on China” stuff. I was talking about this stuff in my primary in 2004 about how bad trade deals connected to bad economics.

So the response was, we want somebody who has energy and wants to go fight. And I did, and I fought.

You can either be on all the shows and in all the floor fights, or you can actually be in the right rooms where the decisions are made.

So my first two terms were a learning experience about how the institution worked — touching the hot burner, right? In my second term, I discovered that I wasn’t being effective, that this was not moving my colleagues to vote with me. It was not building capacity internally. It was not helping me move legislation. It wasn’t helping move policy. And that’s when I stopped.

The turn was reading about the institution, reading about how you make decisions, reading about how you get down into the specifics and how you affect outcomes.

Did you have a mentor at that point?

I’ve had a variety of mentors in the place that have been hugely helpful, but the reading about it was enormously useful. And then in my second term, I had some members that were trying to teach me lessons.

There’s a nurturing aspect to that, and then somebody teaching somebody a lesson is like, trying to trip them — trip them up or punish them or create pain. And that was useful.

They wanted to help you or they were annoyed by you?

Annoyed by me.

I would say it wasn’t a warmhearted interest to help me learn. It was definitely a more bare-knuckle way to teach me. And I know who they are, and they deserve their credit, but not in your publication.

Were there people, historically, when you were doing your studying that you thought had valuable lessons?

The rise and fall of [former House Speaker] Jim Wright is a fabulous explanation of this institution. There are a couple of different books on the ingredients that brought Churchill to power, which are instructive for our institution — like, what are the mechanics of legislative bodies, and how you affect things. Caro is the great studier of power, utilization of power. That’s not specific to the institution, but it’s specific to how you count votes, the capacity and need for an accurate vote count, which is not an easy thing.

And I got the tail end of Tom DeLay’s leadership for House Republicans, and his capacity to count votes was the thing I looked at deeply, and how he built that capacity and how he’s able to deliver — and if he gave you his word, he did deliver, absolutely fundamentally.

I had a variety of people that were my mentors in this institution. And early on, Tom Reynolds and Eric Cantor were key, key folks.

The hardest thing was to stop. Once you’re on a path here, it’s very difficult to stop that trajectory. And then I started pivoting and trying to get into the right circles in the right rooms where decisions were happening and start figuring out the ways that I can be productive. The NRCC on the campaign side of things, with candidate recruitment; with all those things internally, with the whip operation; with the leader circle, with how leadership makes decisions and on committees, how that was done. Effective committee chairs, ineffective committee chairs.

Then, class of 2010 comes in, and I’m in a very different position. I’m younger than them but I’ve got more seniority and experience in the place, and I’ve learned what not to do, which helped me build relationships with people that had the same sincere purpose that I had coming in and were doing things equally as dumb or dumber — or sometimes a little smarter than me — and the people who wanted coaching, wanted to understand this, to be meaningful to them.

That’s been the gift of this, which is being mentored by members and staff and the ability to do the same. That’s the stuff that looking back right now, that’s what I’m most proud of, is the interaction with people. Everybody tries to have this flourish at the end, like, “I’ve got to get these 18 things done.” That’s not how the institution works. You just get it along the way.

How have you seen the House GOP change as you’ve changed as a lawmaker?

It’s the dynamic of, you’re leaving the concert, and everyone’s trying to go out one door, and you’re trying to go out the other door. You’re going upstream from the traffic. That’s what it feels like.

What I was doing in my first and second term, some people never pivoted away from that, because they thought, “That’s how you’re effective.” And you’re spending your time on the outside rather than anything internal.

The people that are outside of positions of authority in the House — they’re the most frequent guests on media, your most ample quotes and most active online — are not meaningful players internally, almost to a person, in this institution. The rewards, the incentives, have shifted in my 20 years to attention and people assuming that this place is a platform for that attention.

To what extent did that change play into your decision to retire?

Not at all. It was a completely personal thing. And I leave the place thinking we’re going to see in the coming terms — this is what I believe to be true — we’re going to have institutional reform for the House. Budgeting and process reforms, how the calendar works.

We’re at an inflection point for the institution, and there’s going to be a significant shift, and it’s going to happen in the next couple of years. This is the next great turning of the institution. We saw it in ’74, we saw it in ’94 — those are the two big shifts. You saw evolution on that in ’10, you’ve seen a little evolution [since] — but you’re seeing it now. You can see it on the Democratic side, where you now have a churn of who are the leaders on the committee. They have not done this since ’74.

I love this place. I was fighting about policy up until like 3:00 p.m. on Monday [Dec. 16]. And at the end of that phone call on Monday, I knew I was done.

But I had to make the decision. I think 20 years is a significant number. That’s No. 1.

No. 2, term limits. Term limits matter. And if the Republican Party screws this up, we’re going to permanently screw up this institution and the benefits of having the best of the best lead committees, and a beneficial churn so new members can reinvigorate these committees.

You mean committee chair term limits?

Absolutely. Chair term limits have made all the difference since 1994 for House Republicans.

So I knew I was going to honor that [as chair of House Financial Services]. What I did not know is how I was going to exit. Was there a position in leadership?

And in October of ’23, I made the decision that I did not want to be speaker. That was not a decision I came to lightly, but it was the final testing of the decision I had made before: that I did not want to be speaker. And [after] that crucible in October, when all the dust settled, and I could kind of get my wits about me, I was in complete peace. I knew it was the right thing. That I was done. There’s no productive good I could offer this institution next Congress that would be greater than what I did this Congress.

I leave with nothing but gratitude; just complete gratitude.

I hear you on the gratitude, but you did tell us how you felt when you became interim speaker after Kevin McCarthy was ousted: “pure anger.” How do you look back at that episode now?

It’s like an out-of-body experience looking back at that now, because it was pure anger. It was a terrible situation.

The one thing the Founding Fathers proactively decided was that you had to divide power, and you had to make each one of these branches a little dysfunctional, so that no one could have perfect power. They wanted to make them insanely hard. What Congress has done since the Progressive Era is hand away power to agencies in the executive branch — and what we’ve done since ’94 is diminish Congress’ power, which is actually completely out of alignment for what the Founding Fathers wanted. They wanted a strong legislative branch to counter the executive branch.

We’re Article One, right? This is not some mistake, some drafting error. We’re Article One, so we’ve got to assert our authorities. OK?

I actually am answering the question.

What we’ve formulated is a strong speakership on behalf of the House. So the opening day of Congress, we give a majority of the power of the institution to the speaker. That’s the reason why it’s such a difficult damn vote because you give the speaker so much power. And so we’re in this situation where we have a whole group of people that want to diminish the powers of the speaker and think that it’s going to lead to more conservative outcomes, and I think that’s absurd. I think it’s dumb. I think it’s wrong-headed and historically inaccurate.

Diminishing the role of the speaker, the motion to vacate — that has been fully weaponized. It’s been fully weaponized by people that are quite selfish in their views, that are not institutionalists and don’t actually get more conservative policy as a result of it. And history will show that.

That year was success after success after success for McCarthy, stuff that was rabbit-out-of-the-hat stuff. He’s dead man walking, and he’s like Houdini. Kevin’s a friend, and as a friend, I know his greatest attributes and his worst attributes.

You gotta believe in magic sometime. To watch him get through this whole year and to be punished for doing something that was the next rabbit out of the hat, which is government funding, it’s a CR [continuing resolution], for heaven’s sake, a clean CR.

So he’s punished for that. I think this is the dumbest thing I’ve seen. And then I think, “Wait a second, the institution’s trapped.” And there’s also this feeling that I’m signed up for Hotel California, right? You can check out, but you can never leave. And that also dawned on me when I’m on the dias.

You talk about the importance of separation of powers, and we’re seeing looming attempts by the coming Trump administration to test the limits of that. To what extent are you concerned that congressional Republicans are going to relinquish too much power to Trump?

Every president wants what they want. It’s just in the nature of the president. This president has the highest marks for his party of anyone that I’ve seen, just stepping back, which yields massive power and influence over other electeds. It’s completely natural, completely natural. So in that way, that is just a standard part of it.

But do you think Republicans should push back at all, given that you have a trifecta and a popular president?

Well, yeah, you have a popular president — popular with the base, popular wide Electoral College result and the popular vote victory, which is like a nice bonus — but you had Democrats follow an unpopular, weak Democratic president. This is a problem for Congress if we don’t assert our authorities, and that requires real leadership in both the House and the Senate. Yes, it should be done, where you stand up for the institution and the institution’s prerogatives, regardless of who the president is. For sure.

Did you vote for Trump?

I’m a Republican. I always vote for the Republican.

Did you have any qualms about doing so?

Look, at the end of the day, you get a choice in these elections, and the president that Biden was is not anything like what he ran on, which is a grave disappointment. Harris left no space for anybody that is right of center to support her.

And what this president [Trump] has done is say that he wants a strong America and national security, which was a massive differential between the two parties, and bring stability to this chaotic world. With tax policy and with financial regulatory policy, he was a fantastic president, absolutely fantastic president. And on those policies, that’s in complete linkage with the last Trump administration and this Trump administration. On taxes and the regulatory stuff I care about, complete alignment.

You’ve been the top Republican on House Financial Services since 2019. What did you learn in that process?

Caliber and cadence are the most important powers of the chairmanship. What’s on the calendar, when.

Two, the environment is always shifting and changing, and legislating in this Congress was a wholly different beast than any of the previous Congresses I’ve served in, and you need to be adaptive to that changing environment.

What we’ve done for financial services policy is they’ve ridden on [defense authorization measures] and end-of-year spending packages. That’s always been traditional. That was denied to us this Congress, which is different than anything we’ve had since the financial crisis. I didn’t expect that, and I didn’t expect it in the way that it came about.

Three, relationships on the other side of the aisle will dictate your success. Your colleagues will dictate your success. In that order. The other side, and then the total committee, will dictate your success.

What is your No. 1 accomplishment leading the committee? No. 1 regret?

I think the accomplishment we’ll see next Congress, and we’ll see it in public law.

You mean digital assets?

There’s been a fair basket. Updating our data privacy standards; that will happen. Our capital formation package; and digital assets — those are the big three. We have corporate governance, which was probably number four, the big corporate governance package. I think we’ll see some of those turn into law.

But I think my primary success was a reset for this committee, that we are focused on policy, not what’s outside the four walls of the committee. We’re doing our policy set, and we need to have the most nerdy set of engineers work on the stuff. If you want to do that, we’re open for business.

The committee needed that reset, and we needed that since the financial crisis, and I think this was the reset so we can get back to, “Actually, we’re going to try to hear each other and try to work on policy where there’s alignment.” I didn’t expect that — that that would be a piece of my contribution — but I think it was my contribution.

What do you mean by keeping stuff out? Culture wars stuff?

Yes. I’m not going to engage in that. I’m not.

Because you’re under pressure to?

Absolutely. To highlight it, to emphasize it, for me to engage in it, to stir it, to inflame it. I don’t want to do that.

Regret? I haven’t spent time on that. Like I said, you need to make your impact all along the way. There’s not this thing that happens at the end that’s some great gift. You do your work along the way. I’ve had a few fingerprints on public policy. Had a few fingerprints on the institution of the House, and a few fingerprints on the institution of the committee. That’s what I get.

What kind of work are you interested in doing next?

The stuff that’s most interesting to me is technology and that interplay with the world of finance. Absolutely fascinating for me. I think that is a societal good. I think giving greater access to average folks is so important.

My motivation with all this stuff is my father, who started a small business in the backyard mowing grass.

What I’m talking about for my dad is getting a bank loan so you can go buy another lawn mower, so you can hire a few more people, to buy a truck to put the lawn mower in the back of. That’s what I’m thinking of. And other people are thinking about, how do you have the next Facebook? And I’m like, actually, there’s everything in between, and there’s massive good when you can unlock that economic potential. That’s the stuff I’m interested in, which sounds a lot like what I’ve been doing.

Navid Kalantari for TROIB News