(Newser)
–
The Kevin McCarthy-Nancy Pelosi feud has taken on an aggressive tenor: Speaking at a Tennessee Republican Party fundraiser Saturday night, the House minority leader addressed the possibility that he may become Speaker of the House after the midterm elections. “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel,” he said. “It’ll be hard not to hit her with it, but I will bang it down.” Democrats quickly spoke out against the violent imagery, NBC News reports, with one representative calling for an apology and another calling for McCarthy’s resignation. So far, they’ve gotten neither; a McCarthy rep said the lawmaker was “obviously joking.”
McCarthy had been gifted a giant gavel reading “Fire Pelosi” at the event, reports Fox News, which notes other Democrats are also calling for McCarthy to resign. As for Pelosi’s deputy chief of staff, he tweeted, “A threat of violence to someone who was a target of a #January6th assassination attempt from your fellow Trump supporters is irresponsible and disgusting.” This is just the latest in the back-and-forth between McCarthy and Pelosi over the House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol attack (McCarthy pulled all his picks for the panel after Pelosi vetoed two of them) and the reinstated mask mandates in the House (Pelosi recently called McCarthy a moron in that matter, CNN reports). You can hear McCarthy’s gavel remark here. (Read more Kevin McCarthy stories.)
// Load the SDK asynchronously (function (d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
