GOP Rep Roasts McCarthy for 'Sucker Punching' Him, Compares Him to Childhood Bully
First, former House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy went from holding the gavel to getting a seat with the rank-and-file.
Now, if the details of multiple reports are correct, the California Republican is going back to high school — in terms of attitude and maturity, anyhow.
And Republican Rep. Tim Burchett isn’t letting him get away with it.
According to NPR, McCarthy “had an altercation in the Capitol Tuesday” where he “shoved past” Burchett, who’d voted to oust him in October.
Ordinarily, one would be loath to trust such loaded language from NPR. But considering that Burchett was being interviewed by NPR’s Claudia Grisales when the shove allegedly occurred, the report has a little more credibility than usual.
This is how our favorite tote-bag-dispensing propagandists/public radio broadcast entity described the incident:
“McCarthy shoved past Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., as he was speaking with NPR’s Claudia Grisales in a hallway.
“Burchett stumbled forward and yelled after McCarthy, ‘Why’d you elbow me in the back, Kevin?! Hey, Kevin, you got any guts?!’
“Burchett then called McCarthy a ‘jerk’ and chased him down the hallway. When he caught up to him, he said, ‘What kind of chicken move is that? You’re pathetic, man. You are so pathetic.’”
While no video exists of the incident, Grisales posted a social media thread that backs up Burchett’s version of events, and audio is making the rounds that at least caught Burchett’s comments:
While McCarthy has had plenty to say about Burchett to the media — Burchett was one of the GOP dissenters McCarthy discussed in an interview with CNN’s Manu Raju that aired Sunday — Burchett told NPR the hallway incident was the first time he’d actually interacted with McCarthy since the vote to oust the speaker.
“That was it,” he said. “I think that just showed what he’s about and it’s unfortunate.”
McCarthy, meanwhile, denies that any elbow to the kidneys took place, as Burchett alleges, telling CNN it was a “tight hallway.” Right. That’s the kind of excuse the garden-variety high-school bully always uses to get out of trouble.
The plot thickens. Kevin McCarthy denies delivering a “clean shot to the kidneys” on Rep. Tim Burchett as alleged payback over Speakership ouster:
“I guess our shoulders hit. I did not run and hit the guy. I did not kidney punch him.” pic.twitter.com/zQSXXn1O2m
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 14, 2023
Funny how, of all the people McCarthy manages to run into in the “tight hallways” of Congress, it’s one of the handful of Republicans McCarthy called out during his interview with Raju. What. a. coincidence.
Burchett was having none of it. And in his own interview with Raju, conducted Tuesday in front of the Capitol, he roasted McCarthy and his behavior.
Burchett described the attack as a “sucker punch” and said McCarthy was “the type of guy that, when you’re a kid, would throw a rock over the fence and run home and hide behind his mama’s skirt.”
“I got elbowed in the back, and it kind of caught me off guard, because it was a clean shot to the kidneys,” Burchett told Raju. “And I turned back, and there was — there was Kevin. And I — for a minute, I was kind of, ‘what the heck just happened?’
“And then I chased after him, of course,” Burchett said. “As I’ve stated many times, he’s a bully with $17 million and a security detail.”
Burchett said that after the verbal confrontation, “I just backed off, because there wasn’t any — I saw no reason. I wasn’t gaining anything from it. And, then, everybody saw it, so it didn’t really matter.”
The interview is below. McCarthy and his supporters have to be cringing at every word:
News — Rep. Tim Burchett accuses Kevin McCarthy of a “sucker punch” to the kidneys and describes heated scene as he chased the former speaker down the hallway.
Said he’s the type of the guy who as a kid would “hide behind his mama’s skirt.”
McCarthy denies it was intentional pic.twitter.com/fBvOUxMb5z— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 14, 2023
Look, I understand there have been good speakers and there have been bad speakers. But there hasn’t been any speaker — current or former, Democrat, Republican or Whig — who’s been accused of elbowing a colleague in the kidneys while said colleague was giving an interview. So, you know, there’s that.
And it’s worth noting that this came after McCarthy went on CNN to whine about the eight Republicans who ousted him and suggest they should be primaried and defeated.
“I’m a conservative who loves to govern,” McCarthy said during the interview, according to a network transcript, adding “I don’t believe them to be conservatives.”
He particularly cited Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, the public force behind the vote that led to McCarthy losing the speakership.
“I just — there’s a different rationale. It’s driven by Gaetz who was all based upon an ethics complaint that happened in the last Congress. He would throw his country away to try to protect himself from what would come out as the truth. For those others to go along, I don’t quite understand,” McCarthy said.
He doesn’t quite understand. And a few weeks later, after reportedly elbowing Burchett in the back in the presence of a reporter, McCarthy is claiming it all happened because it was a “tight hallway.”
Somehow, Burchett is more believable.
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