House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joked about casual violence against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during a glitzy fundraising dinner in Tennessee on Saturday night, according to several reporters who were at the event.
During a speech to around 1,400 GOP donors, McCarthy reportedly spoke optimistically about the Republicans’ chances for retaking the majority in the House following the 2022 midterm elections.
McCarthy went on to say that, should the GOP manage to flip the House in 2022 and if he were to become the speaker, he would find it difficult to resist hitting Pelosi with the speaker’s gavel, The Washington Post’s Michael Scherer said on Twitter.
“It will be hard not to hit her with it but I will bang it down,” McCarthy joked, according to Scherer.
The comments were met with criticism on social media, with Politico CA Playbook writer Carla Marinucci calling it “sickening.”
—Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) August 1, 2021
—Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) August 1, 2021
During the fundraiser, McCarthy was also presented with a comically large gavel by the Tennessee congressional delegation. It was labeled with “Fire Pelosi,” according to Tennessean reporter Yue Stella Yu.
—Yue Stella Yu (@bystellayu_tnsn) August 1, 2021
McCarthy has long sought to become the next Republican House Speaker, Insider’s John L. Dorman reported in May. But he faces skepticism among some caucus members and GOP observers, Dornan wrote.
Where were the critics of this very obvious joke when a washed up so-called comedian was holding a severed head of DJT? Oh yeah, they were afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome and giving her a thumbs up.
He’s not alone!!???
For her mean-spirited, highly-partisan rule of the House, she would deserve that.
Leave it to McCarthy to say something stupid being a donny trump yes man idiot. Being a republican is a great burden and it shows in the type of comments he makes, these are the people who are running our country and representing us. It’s about time we the people put smarter and better people in places of power that are concerned with representing the people that voted for them. All of you people out there think about who is representing you or are they just in it for themselves like our former president was making his family richer at our expense, think about it.