Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday calmly walked up to and physically shoved Tennessee MAGA Congressman Tim Burchett and ran away whilst Burchett was speaking to NPR Capitol reporter Claudia Grisales, who writes Kev “walked by with his detail and shoved Burchett, [who] lunged towards me. I thought it was a joke, it was not. And a chase ensued…”
Per Grisales, Burchett caught up and at first tried to play it off like a joke with “Sorry Kevin didn’t mean to elbow -” then seriously started yelling, “Why’d you elbow me in the back Kevin?! Hey Kevin, you got any guts!?” McCarthy then said “I didn’t elbow you in the back” as he continued walking
“You got no guts, you did so… The reporter [Grisales] said it right there, what kind of chicken move is that? You’re pathetic man, you are so pathetic,” Burchett yelled before turning back to Grisales and telling her this was the first “communication” he had with McCarthy since voting with Matt Gaetz and six others to remove the cowardly Californian from the speakership. “That’s just it” as in their first and only exchange since ouster vote. “He’s just a jerk. He’s just a childish little…”
Burchett later told CNN’s Manu Raju his kidney was still in pain from the shove or elbow or whatever it was that McCarthy did, adding “I just don’t expect a guy who was at one time three steps away from the White House to hit you with a sucker punch in the hallway,” adding that the loser former House Speaker “is a bully with $17 million and a security detail. He is the type of guy that when you are a kid, he would throw a rock over the fence and run home to hide behind his mama’s skirt.”