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In a scene that seems pulled from The Real Housewives, Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy have been caught trading catty barbs at the 2024 Republican National Convention.
A few clips of the interaction have been doing the rounds online, and appear to show Gaetz interrupting a live interview segment with McCarthy on the convention floor of the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee. Gaetz, a noted nemesis of McCarthy who led last year’s charge to oust him as House Speaker, can be seen approaching the interview and sarcastically referencing his lack of a speaking slot at the RNC.
“Are you speaking tonight?” Gaetz quipped mid-interview with the same venom as NeNe Leakes, “If you took that stage, you would get booed off of it.” In the Housewives universe, it’s the kind of comment that’d get Gaetz the first seat at a reunion, but McCarthy wasted no time firing back at his opponent.
Pausing his own sentence, McCarthy said Gaetz has “an ethics issue about sleeping with a 17-year-old,” referencing the sex trafficking allegations leveled against the politician in 2023 (which are still unfolding). Just when you thought McCarthy had earned his mic-drop (or in Housewives terms, glass-smashing) moment, different footage of the encounter shows yet another bystander joining the fray.
From a new vantage point, Gaetz can be seen being physically held back by security while interrupting McCarthy, after which he is told by a different man to “Shut up, Gaetz, get out of here.” The onlooker continued: “Don’t be an a**hole, just be a good dude.” While the identity of that man is not yet known, social media users have rushed to his support, all but securing his first-chair place at the hypothetical RNC reunion.
“Is he on X?” one user wrote, “I want to follow and vice-versa.” Others described him as “an American hero” and someone who “just made my night.” X users didn’t hold punches when sharing their broader thoughts on Gaetz’ interruption, saying they want to “get ‘Shut up, Gaetz’ trending” and describing him as a “grandstanding dork” who resembled “a cornered animal.”
Another user chimed in with all the fervour of a Housewives fan: “Republican infighting is a beautiful thing!”
Of course, it isn’t the first time the internet has been set alight by Gaetz, with social media users last month selecting him to join a Moron 5 poster alongside the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, and Jim Jordan.
Elsewhere, netizens used AI art earlier this year to render Gaetz as a glammed-up drag queen, so I guess he’s just as suited for Housewives as he is for Drag Race (though neither reality show should stoop as low as to actually cast him).