The feud between former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., continued on the Republican National Convention floor Tuesday evening as Gaetz tried to taunt his former colleague.
Gaetz approached McCarthy on the convention floor in Milwaukee as McCarthy seemed to be speaking with other people. Gaetz repeatedly tapped his shoulder and said: “What night are you speaking? Are you speaking tonight?”
Someone seemed to shoo Gaetz away, but he didn’t back down.
“Hey, if you took that stage, you would get booed off of it,” he said. “You would get booed off the stage.”
As Gaetz walked away, another man on the convention floor could be heard saying: “Shut up, Gaetz. Don’t be an a–hole.”
NBC News’ Tom Llamas later asked McCarthy in an interview about the confrontation with Gaetz, who was responsible for his ouster as speaker in October.
“I think it shows exactly who Matt Gaetz is,” said McCarthy, who, when asked whether he thinks he would get booed, off the stage, said, “Not at all.”
McCarthy said Gaetz acted that way toward him because “he had an ethics complaint four years ago that he paid an underage girl, and she has come to ethics.”
“And he came to me to try to leverage me to stop the ethics investigation,” McCarthy said. “That’s illegal. I’m not doing that. If I had to lose my job over all the hump, the law — he tried to utilize it.”
The House Ethics Committee said last month that it was reviewing allegations of misconduct against Gaetz, who has denied any wrongdoing.
Gaetz’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Asked whether he thinks the Republican Party is more aligned with him or Gaetz, McCarthy said, “Well, I would hope there wouldn’t be another Matt Gaetz in the Republican Party.”
He added: “Look, everybody has different people in their party. Unfortunately, Matt happens to be here. I think at the end of the day, he probably shouldn’t be on the streets.”
Rebecca Shabad
Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC News based in Washington.
