A ‘lawmaker in TEARS’, Republicans praying together and lining up to hug a defeated Kevin McCarthy: How the historic and extraordinary vote to oust the Speaker unfolded and ended in utter despair

Kevin McCarthy is known on Capitol Hill for being drawn like a magnet to TV cameras.

But on Tuesday night, with the eyes of the world on him, he walked into his office without a word.

Surrounded by his closest aides, he just smiled wryly as the magnitude of the disaster that had just befallen him dawned on him.

The resistance he had shown for days to an uprising by conservatives in his party quickly disappeared as he became the first chairman in history to be voted out by his colleagues.

Less than three hours later, he announced that he would not run for Speaker again, a move that stunned his allies.

The last time Congress tried to remove its president was in 1910, and failed.

When the first of the eight Republicans supported the motion to vacate the seat, his tension and the dire situation he found himself in began to show.

‘The office of Speaker of the United House House of Representatives is hereby declared vacant,” said Representative Steve Womack as he presided over this extraordinary and unprecedented moment.

When the gavel fell and McCarthy’s fate was sealed, colleagues came up to him and began to hug him.

A group of his colleagues prayed on the floor and one Republican, Rep. Ann Wagner, was reportedly seen in tears after the 216-210 vote to remove him as speaker.

It threw the Republican Party deeper into chaos and marked a low point in Republican unrest fueled by infighting.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, who led the rebellion against McCarthy, was booed when he accused the chairman of siding with Democrats and violating his promises in the package to avoid a government shutdown.

They also said he had not pushed hard enough for cuts and was too willing to send money to Ukraine.

He criticized the Republican leadership for being “owned by lobbyists and special interests.”

“I am not preaching a sermon about asking patriotic Americans to intervene and contribute to this struggle by those who would kneel before the lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership.”

It was a scene reminiscent of nine months earlier, when McCarthy and Gaetz faced off in the House of Representatives during the 15th brutal vote to elect him speaker.

“It is to the benefit of this country that we have a better Speaker of the House of Representatives than Kevin McCarthy,” Gaetz added as he left Capitol Hill after the vote.

“Kevin McCarthy is a hallmark of the swamp,” he said as he plunged the knife into his nemesis.

It was unclear Tuesday evening who would succeed McCarthy as chairman, with Republicans in the House of Representatives in disarray.

McCarthy’s allies have pushed for him to run again, and have refused to give Gaetz a “scalp.”

But their hopes were dashed when McCarthy told his colleagues at a conference that he was ruling himself out.

The drama unfolded after the Florida Republican filed his motion to kick out McCarthy on Monday evening.

On Tuesday morning, Democrats emerged from the talks saying they would not help the Speaker escape, and that they would all vote to impeach him.

Things went downhill quickly for McCarthy from then on.

The humiliating end for McCarthy sent shockwaves across Capitol Hill and secured his title as the shortest-serving Speaker since 1875 after a rollercoaster nine-month stint.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina stunned her colleagues by voting to remove McCarthy from leadership.

The freewheeling congresswoman said her vote was about “trust.”

‘It’s not ideological. What matters is that we have a leader in our country who tells the truth, who you can trust,” she told DailyMail.com. ‘I’m looking for a speaker who tells the truth.’

But in January she tweeted that Gaetz is a “fraud” for his McCarthy opposition.

Former President Trump, who spent the day in a New York court, appeared to decry the drama unfolding in the House of Representatives of Congress.

“Why are Republicans always fighting among themselves, why don’t they fight the radical left Democrats who are destroying our country?”

In 2010, McCarthy wrote a book with former Speaker Paul Ryan and ex-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor called Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders.

For McCarthy, his term as leader ended in extremely shabby scenes.