Senior Republican says he’ll ‘miss the clowns,’ not ‘the circus’ as he eyes life after Congress

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, believes there are just four ways people end their time on Capitol Hill.

“You can die, you can lose, you can get indicted, or you can go out on top, and that’s door number four,” he told Fox News Digital. “And I think door number four looks attractive.”

And for McCaul, going out on top means ending a career of over two decades serving Texas’ 10th congressional district. He’s served two three-term stints as the top Republican on the committees on Foreign Affairs and Homeland Security, respectively – the maximum allowed time for members of the House GOP conference. He is not running again in the November midterms.

The Texas Republican, who will be 64 when he leaves Congress at the end of 2026, is still hoping to have an impact on the U.S. national security sphere when he’s gone.

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He told Fox News Digital that he’s expressed interest to the Trump administration about potentially serving as U.S. ambassador to Australia.

“Being ambassador to Australia, I think would be a very good fit for me – after AUKUS, do what I did there, AI, advanced weapons systems – stuff I’ve worked on could play well both as ambassador, but also on a board of directors of a company that does that,” McCaul said.

AUKUS refers to a trilateral security agreement between the U.S., U.K. and Australia, widely seen as a response to China’s encroachment in the Pacific.

McCaul was one of AUKUS’s lead champions in Congress both as Foreign Affairs Committee chair and co-chair of the Friends of Australia Caucus.

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“I think I’d be good at it. I mean, I know all the players,” he said of a potential ambassadorship. “I know their issues. But in the meantime, these offers are coming in – I’ve got a year and a half still around. I’ll figure it out.”

He said of other post-Congress possibilities, “Most of the offers, they’re in the national security space.”

“I’ve had several offers in the intelligence space as well. So I’d still be in it. There are a couple of think tanks where you still get on television. I could still be a relevant voice on the issues I care about. And in a way, I can focus more about what I’m passionate on, and be a voice for that, rather than being bogged down with a lot of other stuff.”

He’s worked on a lot of those issues that he cares about over his 20-plus years in Congress, as well.

“It’s been an honor of a lifetime – chairing Homeland Security during one of the most dangerous times with the rise of the ISIS caliphate and all the external operations that we want to stop, establishing the cybersecurity agency. I did TSA PreCheck and Global Entry – those were fun things to work on. But then, as the chairman of Foreign Affairs, working on very big foreign policy issues like the fall of Afghanistan,” McCaul said. 

“Everything I’ve done with Ukraine after [Russian President Vladimir Putin] invaded – that emergency wartime supplemental bill was probably the highlight, because had we not passed that, I think Russia would be occupying Ukraine today, and they’d be in Moldova and Georgia and maybe threatening the Baltic States and Poland.”

The senior lawmaker has been a leading voice on foreign policy in a Republican Party that’s seen a growing isolationist streak – something McCaul said concerned him.

“I think it’s a very dangerous mentality. It didn’t work in 1939, and there are a lot of parallels to 1939 today. Now, I think burden sharing, that’s real. I think, you know, having NATO standing up – I think [President Donald Trump] is right about that. I think he wants other NATO countries to do secondary sanctions, and it should be a team effort,” he said.

“But I think there are certain people in the administration that are very much – the America First I agree with, but it’s not at the expense of abdicating our responsibility to lead the world. And I think that’s dangerous if that’s what they think America First is all about.”

Asked if he had any regrets over his time in Congress, McCaul said he was proud of his work on Capitol Hill. 

“There was a time when, you know, there was a Senate possibility, but I wouldn’t trade what I have done for anything,” he said. “I feel very at peace with this, because I feel like I’m going out on top. I’ve chaired two major committees. I’ve been effective. There’s a good expression – I’ll miss the clowns, but I won’t miss the circus.”