MILWAUKEE — The long-running feud between former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) hit the road this week, putting a spotlight on the tensions still percolating through the House GOP conference as the Republican Party pushes a message of unity.
McCarthy — who was ousted from the top job in a historic fashion last year, then resigned from his seat — and Gaetz made their way to Milwaukee for the coronation of former President Trump, a trip that reunited the two foes and reopened old wounds from last year’s chaotic Speakership saga.
The drama unfolded when Gaetz, who spearheaded the successful effort to remove McCarthy from the top job, approached the California Republican on the Republican National Convention floor as he was doing an interview on Tuesday and taunted him about his presence at the function.
“What night are you speaking?” Gaetz facetiously asked McCarthy. “Are you speaking tonight?”
“If you took that stage, you would get booed off of it,” he added. “You would get booed off the stage.”
McCarthy ignored Gaetz during the episode but has railed against the Florida Republican since, bringing attention to the ongoing House Ethics Committee investigation probing allegations that Gaetz had a sexual relationship with an underage girl, which the lawmaker has vigorously denied.
“I don’t know what he was on. But I hope he gets the help that he needs,” McCarthy said at the convention center in Milwaukee. “But more importantly, I hope the girls get the justice they deserve.”
The sentiment, to be sure, is not new for McCarthy and Gaetz; the two men for months have had an acrimonious relationship, which hit a fever pitch when the Florida Republican spearheaded the successful effort to oust the then-Speaker.
But the episode at the convention underscores the tensions that remain in the House GOP conference at a moment Republicans are pushing a message of unity ahead of the November elections — an eyesore the party would prefer to ignore.
“I’m not gonna say anything negative about Gaetz but he’s got a way of drawing the spotlight to himself when if it’s not on him, and frankly that’s not helpful,” said Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.). “We fight for what we want but we need to win elections in order to enact the policies that we want.”
“The old saying, you get more bees with honey than vinegar,” he added.
Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) called Gaetz’s interaction “inappropriate.”
“Matt Gaetz needs to show more maturity,” he said. “He should conduct himself with some dignity that reflects the House of Representatives. Kevin McCarthy was a great Speaker of the House, he did a great job. I resent the fact of what Gaetz and others did to him.”
“Tubby did not need to ‘physically held back’ he pulled a ‘Hold me back bro’ move to look like a tough guy because he is in fact, is a little b‑‑‑‑,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), a Gaetz critic, wrote on the social platform X.
The latest McCarthy-Gaetz episode unfolded during the RNC, where Republicans from across the country — including many of those serving on Capitol Hill — convened to showcase an image of unity ahead of the November elections. Trump, in his speech on the final night of the event, urged the party to “rise above past differences,” and the event featured remarks from two of the ex-president’s primary opponents, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.).
But that picture was undermined — at least for a moment — during the McCarthy-Gaetz drama, which put a spotlight on the friction that remains in the GOP. Some Republicans, however, brushed off the conflict, arguing that despite their differences, the two men have a key similarity: They’re both backing Trump.
“You’re gonna have stuff happen all the time. I’m not really concerned about that,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said from the RNC convention floor. “The big thing that I’m concerned about, whether it’s Matt or Kevin, they’re both unified behind Donald Trump and the mission in front of us is making sure he’s the next president Other stuff going on between the two of them, they’ll figure that out, they’re both big boys. We’ll move on.”
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, echoed that sentiment, telling reporters “I bet you that Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy vote for the same guy for president, so that’s what I call unity.”
“I saw two people that didn’t get along with each other. It was an individual conflict, not a broader conflict between groups or anything,” Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) said. “It’s really, Matt and Kevin don’t like each other.”
The confab came more than nine months after Gaetz forced a vote on ousting McCarthy from the Speakership, which was successful after seven GOP lawmakers and all Democrats joined him in the effort. Two months later, McCarthy announced he would depart Congress at the end of the year, putting a bookend on his more than 15-year tenure in the House.
But as McCarthy’s ouster moves farther away in the rearview mirror, the tensions between the two men have only grown.
Gaetz, for one, has continued to highlight his successful removal effort, writing on X that he “86’d” McCarthy, writing that “Better days are ahead for the Republican Party” and facetiously endorsing the California Republican to be the RNC chair because the position “doesn’t make any policy decisions… or negotiate against Democrats.”
McCarthy, meanwhile, backed Gaetz’s GOP primary opponent and has continued to accuse the Florida Republican of spearheading his ouster effort out of frustration that McCarthy did not stop an Ethics Committee investigation into him, a charge the former Speaker has denied.
Some say Gaetz’s frustration with McCarthy — which was on full display on the RNC floor — is warranted. Asked if it was wrong for Gaetz to approach McCarthy in such a manner, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who also voted to oust the California Republican, responded “no.”
“Kevin’s spending $900,000 every two weeks, I think, on Matt’s campaign attacking him,” Burchett continued. “So no, I don’t. He wants to play in the big boy league, politics is a contact sport.”
Burchett was one of at least three Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy and was present at the convention, joining Gaetz and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) in that category. But they weren’t the only three GOP lawmakers on the California Republican’s mind.
Asked about his involvement in Gaetz’s primary, McCarthy pivoted the conversation to Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), the chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus who also voted to oust him from the Speakership.
McCarthy backed Good’s primary challenger, John McGuire, funneling the Republican thousands of dollars from his Majority Committee PAC. McGuire bested Good by 0.6 percentage points, according to Decision Desk HQ, but Good requested a recount.
“The best thing that I had last night, it was really good, John McGuire was here,” McCarthy said. “We took pictures.”
Asked about Good requesting a recount in the Virginia primary race, McCarthy knocked his former colleague.
“Take more of his money, that’s alright,” he said. “He’ll lose again.”
Aris Folley contributed.