Former speaker Kevin McCarthy has so much bottled-up rage after his ousting, he's now lashing out — literally — at his own party members, according to Rep. Tim Burchett. As in sneaking up behind the Tennessee lawmaker — one of the "crazy 8" Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy — in a hallway on Capitol Hill this morning to "elbow him in the back," causing Burchett "a lot of pain."
Burchett's accusation is backed by NPR's Claudia Grisales, who was interviewing Burchett when the incident occurred. "Have NEVER seen this on Capitol Hill," she wrote on X, going on to describe what happened. "McCarthy shoved Burchett. Burchett lunged towards me. I thought it was a joke, it was not." (See her full post at bottom.)
"I got elbowed in the back, and it kinda caught me off guard, because it was a clean shot to the kidneys," Burchett said to CNN's Manu Raju (see video below, posted by The Recount). "And I turned back, and there was Kevin. For a minute I was like, 'What the heck just happened?'"
"He's a bully with 17 million dollars and a security detail," Burchett continued. "He's the type of guy that, when you're a kid, would throw a rock over the fence and then run home and hide behind his mama's skirt."
Burchett explained that after McCarthy jabbed him, he chased after him to ask what the hell just happened. "But of course, as he always does, he just denies it, or blames somebody else. It was a little heated, but I just backed off," Burchett said. "Everybody saw it."
"You just don't expect a guy who was three steps away from the White House to hit you with a sucker punch in the hallway," he comically added, seeming to forget how he himself refused to hold the biggest bully of them all accountable for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection.
