November 15, 2023 02:30 PM UTC

Buck Really Believes McCarthy Sucker-Punched Burchett

• 1 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday’s bizarre spate of petty violence from Republicans on Capitol Hill included a Republican Senator nearly squaring off with the President of the Teamsters Union mid-hearing, as well as a red-on-red alleged “sucker punch” delivered by ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy against one of the “Gaetz Eight” members who voted to remove McCarthy as Speaker, Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee. McCarthy denied intentionally assaulting Burchett, telling ABC News that anybody he would have punched would know it:

He later told ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott, “I would not hit him in the kidney. I guess our shoulders hit, because Burchett runs up to me afterwards. I did not know what he was talking about.”

“If I would hit somebody, they would know I hit them,” he said.

It’s a very schoolyard bully non-denial thing to say–and Colorado’s Rep. Ken Buck, another member of the “Gaetz Eight” who we assume has thrown a blow or two in his younger days, isn’t buying it for a minute. The Hill’s Tara Suter:

“Kevin McCarthy and lying are like peanut butter and jelly,” Buck said [Pols emphasis] in a CNN interview when asked about McCarthy’s response to an accusation by Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) that the former speaker elbowed him in a Capitol hallway Tuesday…

“I think that Kevin McCarthy is, you know, obviously very upset, still, that he is not Speaker. And he is– he doesn’t hold any leadership position, now,” Buck continued. “He is a rank-and-file Congressman like me, and it’s got to be upsetting to him. And so he took it out, in the way he took it out, and now he denies it.”

In any other Congress at least in our lifetimes, these kinds of physical confrontations between elected officials would be front-page stories. Say what you will about the acrimony that has pervaded Congress since at least the Clinton years, members of Congress did not physically attack each other (or goad witnesses into a fight) even during Clinton’s impeachment, the Bush years, the “Tea Party” siege of President Barack Obama, or even Donald Trump despite Trump inciting a violent attack on Congress.

Now this kind of behavior is being normalized by one side of the aisle. Kevin McCarthy may be a serial liar, but the overall decline of decency in Congress is what Buck should be complaining about on MSNBC.