‘I won’t bow to the mob’: Madison Cawthorn says he ‘won’t stop fighting’ amid scrutiny of orgies and cocaine comments

26-year-old Republican says ‘radical left, establishment, and media want to take me down’ with ‘relentless’ attacks

Republican North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn has said that he “won’t stop fighting” and that he “won’t bow to the mob” amid scrutiny of his comments in which he alleged that other politicians have done cocaine in front of him and invited him to orgies.

“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. I’m not going anywhere,” Mr Cawthorn tweeted on Thursday.

The congressman also published a campaign video, in which a narrator says that “the entire left-wing establishment has targeted Madison Cawthorn as public enemy number one. Their smears and attacks are relentless and they’ve tried everything to take him down”.

“But Madison Cawthorn cannot be stopped, and that’s why they are terrified of him because he’s effective. Despite all the adversity, Madison Cawthorn continues to stand up and fight to represent the people of North Carolina in the DC swamp. He is our champion for faith, family and freedom and will never stop putting America first,” the narrator adds.

Mr Cawthorn told the Warrior Poet Society podcast that “the sexual perversion that goes on in Washington… 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, all of a sudden you get invited to like, ‘well hey, we’re gonna have a kind of sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come!’ And you realise they’re asking you to come to an orgy,” he said.

“You know, some of the people leading the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and they watch them doing, you know, a key bump of cocaine right in front of you,” he added.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise met with Mr Cawthorn on Wednesday. While Mr Cawthorn, 26, refused to answer questions from reporters after the meeting, Mr McCarthy, 57, said “he’s lost my trust is gonna have to earn it back. And I laid out everything that I find is unbecoming”.

“This is unacceptable. There’s no evidence to this. He changes what he [says] and that’s not becoming of a Congressman...He did not tell the truth,” he added, alleging that Mr Cawthorn changed his story when confronted by members of Republican House leadership.

Mr McCarthy said Mr Cawthorn “thinks he saw maybe a staffer in a parking garage maybe 100 yards away” doing drugs. He added that Mr Cawthorn told him that “he doesn’t know what cocaine is”.

Mr McCarthy said Mr Cawthorn “very well could be” disciplined for his statements.

Former Trump advisor and longtime Republican operative Roger Stone posted on right-wing social media site Gab that “Cawthorn just told me (he) has NOT retracted his claims about drug fuelled orgies among DC elites”.

“Why would anyone believe a statement by Kevin McCarthy or anything reported on CNN? McCarthy is a corrupt RINO and CNN lies about everything,” he added.

Stone was pardoned by former President Donald Trump before he left office after Stone was convicted in late 2019 of seven felonies including obstructing a congressional inquiry, lying to investigators under oath, and witness tampering.