The congressman who nearly got here to blows with Rep. Matt Gaetz said he was incensed by how the Florida politician was conducting himself on the House floor through the heated voting for Rep. Mike McCarthy’s speakership.
“I used to be just exasperated that Matt was treating McCarthy so badly,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) told The Post Saturday.
“So, I just walked over to the tip the aisle just a few feet away from where he was seated and said, ‘Matt I’m not going to forget this.’
“I used to be about to walk away when [North Carolina Rep.] Richard Hudson grabbed me from behind and pulled me backward,” Rogers recalled.
He added that the entire thing was “really a giant nothing burger.”
Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, said he was also surprised by the confrontation.
“I’ve never seen Mike like that. He’s a quintessential old southern gentleman,” Gaetz said. “We’ve got a longstanding positive and productive relationship. It was a momentary frustration on his part given the high drama and tension of the week.”
The moment was the last hurrah of anti-McCarthy forces within the chamber. The California Republican took the gavel on the following ballot — the fifteenth — ending the longest Speaker’s fight because the Civil War.