So Much for Party Unity! Matt Gaetz & Kevin McCarthy Got Into It Again

On day two of the RNC, Gaetz told McCarthy he’d be “booed off the stage” and McCarthy told Gaetz he “probably shouldn’t be on the streets." Messy, messy, messy.

By Kylie Cheung  |  July 17, 2024 | 1:39pm
Photo: Getty Images Politics
So Much for Party Unity! Matt Gaetz & Kevin McCarthy Got Into It Again

Another day, another textbook case of men being far too dramatic to hold public office. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reunited during day two of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday, and I regret to inform you all that they did not work it out on the remix.

Lest you need a “Previously on…” because of everything that’s happened since the end of last year: Gaetz and McCarthy have pretty much always hated each other’s guts, with Gaetz at one point alleging that McCarthy was hiring online influencers to trash talk him. By September, Gaetz led the coup that successfully ousted McCarthy as Speaker, paving the way for weeks of chaos as the Republican caucus scrambled to replace him. Throughout that whirlwind process, at least once, Gaetz and McCarthy reportedly almost came to physical blows.

On Tuesday afternoon, despite the convention’s inspiring, Hallmark-esque call for party unity, the two were at each other’s throats once again. Gaetz got things started by heckling McCarthy while he tried to do an interview. “What night are you speaking? Are you speaking tonight?” Gaetz taunted McCarthy while repeatedly tapping him on the shoulder. The joke (?), you see, is that McCarthy is not speaking, but Gaetz is. “Hey, if you took that stage, you would get booed off of it. You would get booed off the stage,” Gaetz continued. The Florida man, who very much lives up to that moniker, eventually fled the scene like a child when someone off-camera told him, “Shut up, Gaetz. Don’t be an asshole.”

Sure, McCarthy proved incapable of defending himself from Gaetz’s coup, but he had plenty of words for Gaetz when asked about the interruption later. “He had an ethics complaint four years ago that he paid an underage girl, and she has come to ethics,” McCarthy said almost immediately, referring to the FBI investigation into Gaetz for the alleged human trafficking of a 17-year-old minor back in 2021. McCarthy went so far as to claim Gaetz tried to get him to break the law to help him: “He came to me to try to leverage me to stop the ethics investigation. That’s illegal. I’m not doing that.”

McCarthy concluded his hate tirade (which, semi-respect!) first by characterizing Gaetz as a stain on the Republican Party: “I would hope there wouldn’t be another Matt Gaetz in the Republican Party. … Look, everybody has different people in their party. Unfortunately, Matt happens to be here.” He then delivered the kill shot by taking a page from Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” suggesting Gaetz should be locked up for the safety of women and girls: “I think at the end of the day, he probably shouldn’t be on the streets.” For the record, Gaetz and McCarthy are both at a convention to nominate a man found civilly liable for sexual abuse to be president, so I’ll let that speak for itself.

Messy, messy, messy. I wish them both nothing but the worst!

 
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