The ongoing conflict between Rep. Matt Gaetz and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy resurfaced with a brief but intense encounter at the Republican National Convention.
Footage from the incident on Tuesday shows Gaetz approaching McCarthy, who was engaged in a conversation, and taunting him.
“What night are you speaking? Are you speaking tonight, or … ?” Gaetz asks before being pushed away.
Gaetz then approached McCarthy again, saying: “If you took that stage, you would get booed off of it.” As Gaetz walked away, someone told him to “shut up.”
Gaetz’s public provocation of McCarthy is consistent with the 42-year-old Florida Republican’s inclination for trolling tactics. This episode underscores the ongoing animosity between the two, which previously led to McCarthy’s ousting as House speaker and caused weeks of turmoil within the House GOP.
The feud shows no signs of abating. When asked about the incident later in the day, McCarthy suggested Gaetz was upset because he had not intervened to stop a congressional ethics investigation into allegations that Gaetz paid a 17-year-old to have sex with him. (Gaetz has strongly denied the allegation and any wrongdoing.)
McCarthy told NBC News: “Well, it’s all about he had an ethics complaint four years ago that he paid an underage girl. … And he came to me to try to leverage me to stop the ethics investigation. That’s illegal — I’m not doing that.”
Last year, federal prosecutors decided not to press charges against Gaetz in a sex trafficking probe. The House Ethics Committee announced last month that it was continuing to investigate several allegations against him.
On Tuesday, Gaetz criticized the investigation in a post on X, seemingly blaming McCarthy, who resigned from Congress in December 2023.
“This is Soviet. Kevin McCarthy showed them the man, and they are now trying to find the crime,” Gaetz wrote. “I work for Northwest Floridians who won’t be swayed by this nonsense and McCarthy and his goons know it.”
In his interview with NBC News, McCarthy also suggested that Gaetz should be in prison.
“Look, everybody has different people in their party,” he said. “Unfortunately, Matt happens to be here. I think at the end of the day, he probably shouldn’t be on the streets.”