The feud between former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) continued on the floor of the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, with Gaetz trying to provoke his former colleague.
Gaetz approached McCarthy while he was speaking with others at the convention in Milwaukee. The Florida Republican tapped him repeatedly on the shoulder and asked, “What night are you speaking? Tonight?”
Apparently someone tried to chase Gaetz away, but he didn’t back down.
“Hey, if you go on stage, you’re going to get booed off,” he said. “You’re going to get booed off the stage.”
As Gaetz left, another man in the room could be heard saying, “Shut up, Gaetz. Don’t be a jerk.”
Later in the interview, NBC News’ Tom Llamas asked McCarthy about the conflict with Gaetz that led to McCarthy being fired as chairman last October.
“I think that really says a lot about who Matt Gaetz is,” the former speaker said, adding, when asked if he expected to be booed off the stage, “Absolutely not.”
McCarthy said Gaetz had behaved that way toward him because “there was an ethics complaint made four years ago about him making payments to an underage girl, and that girl then changed her ethics.”
“And he tried to use me to thwart an ethics investigation,” McCarthy said, “which is illegal. I would not do that. If I had to go through this and lose my job, he tried to use the law.”
The House Ethics Committee announced last month that it was investigating allegations of misconduct against the Florida congressman, who Gaetz denies.
Gaetz’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Asked whether he thought Republicans were aligned with him or Gaetz, McCarthy said, “I hope we never see a Matt Gaetz in the Republican Party.”
He added: “Everybody has different people in their party. Unfortunately, Matt happens to be here. At the end of the day, I don’t think he should be out on the streets.”
