Buck: Kevin McCarthy and lying are like peanut butter and jelly

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) accused former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) of consistently lying in comments Tuesday.

“Kevin McCarthy and lying are like peanut butter and jelly,” Buck said 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.

Burchett accused McCarthy of doing so when Republicans were leaving a conference meeting and he was talking to reporters in a hall. Burchett claimed he chased after the former speaker following the incident.

“I was like, ‘What the heck, you know, why did you do that?’” said Burchett, one of the eight House Republicans who voted to remove McCarthy from power last month.

McCarthy would later deny elbowing the Tennessee Republican,.

“I guess our elbows hit as I walked by,” McCarthy later told reporters, including CNN. “If I would hit somebody, they would I know hit them.”

Buck, who himself voted to remove McCarthy from the Speakership, said he thinks McCarthy is still upset about being nixed from Speakership.

“I know he doesn’t want to take responsibility for pushing a Congressman who voted against him in the motion to vacate,” Buck said. 

“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.”

The Hill has reached out to McCarthy’s office.