Tim Burchett accuses ‘bully’ Kevin McCarthy of elbowing him as tempers erupt in Congress

The House has been in session for 10 straight weeks, and it is about to burst at the seams as tension between members is high and emotions are boiling over.

“This place is a pressure cooker,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Tuesday at his weekly press conference.

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And nothing reflected this more than just minutes prior to Johnson’s comments when the tension was about to rupture in the Capitol basement.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), one of eight Republicans who voted to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) from the speakership, said he has not talked to the former speaker since his vote. But, after the House GOP conference meeting, Burchett claimed that while he was talking to a reporter in the Capitol basement, McCarthy walked behind him and elbowed him in the kidney.

McCarthy said Burchett’s claims are over the top. He said he was walking and talking with Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and his security detail in the Capitol basement, which gets narrow after conference meetings as reporters and members stop to talk in the hallway, and bumped into Burchett. McCarthy said he didn’t think anything about it until Burchett was yelling at him afterward.

“If I hit somebody, they would know it,” McCarthy told reporters. “If I kidney punched someone, they would be on the ground.”

The incident was documented on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, by an NPR reporter who witnessed the event.

Burchett confirmed the thread on social media was how things went down.

“Burchett responded jokingly as McCarthy kept walking, ‘Sorry Kevin didn’t mean to elbow —’ then seriously yelled, ‘Why’d you elbow me in the back Kevin?! Hey Kevin, you got any guts!?'” the NPR reporter posted on X.

“You’re pathetic man, you are so pathetic,” Burchett said to McCarthy, according to the reporter.

After the event, Burchett talked to reporters and said McCarthy needed to “go on back to Southern California,” although his district is in Bakersfield, California, and that the elbow was “absolutely” purposeful.

“He’s just a bully, with $17 million and a security detail,” Burchett said. “I’m from East Tennessee; I don’t care. If I’m going to handle it, we’ll do it out in the parking lot.”

While the event was documented, some question whether McCarthy meant to elbow the Tennessee Republican or if it truly was an accident because the area is heavily trafficked by journalists and members alike after conference meetings.

“Maybe it was a UFO,” one senior GOP aide said, referring to Burchett’s past hearing on UFOs.

Another incident in the House on Tuesday occurred during a House Oversight Committee hearing. Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) was pressing Chairman James Comer (R-KY) during the hearing, which, in turn, Comer snapped and yelled at him.

“You look like a smurf, just going around and all this stuff,” Comer said at Moskowitz.

Tensions flared in the Senate Tuesday as well when Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) stood up in an apparent move to fight Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had to intervene.

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If the House can pass the continuing resolution, as planned, on Tuesday, then it is set to go home for Thanksgiving week, giving it a much-needed break.

“I’ve been drinking from Niagara Falls for the last three weeks,” Johnson said. “This will allow everybody to go home for a couple of days for Thanksgiving and everybody cool off. … So, I think everybody can go home, we can come back, and reset.”