Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Friday said he plans to talk to Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.) about his expletive-laced confrontation with teenage Senate pages early Thursday morning.
“I haven’t been able to speak to him yet. I’ll call him today. I don’t know the situation, I saw what was reported,” McCarthy told reporters Friday.
“That’s not the norm of Derrick Van Orden,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy said that he had spoken to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) about the incident with the pages, who assist Senate operations. The two congressional leaders had a pre-planned meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss government funding.
McCarthy said the whole incident might be a “misunderstanding.”
“I guess the interns have some ritual laying down, or something like that. I think it’s a misunderstanding on all sides from what’s going on,” McCarthy said.
A transcript written by a page minutes after the incident, and obtained by The Hill, recalled Van Orden calling a group of 16- and 17-year-old pages “jackasses” and “pieces of s‑‑‑” for lying in the Capitol rotunda early Thursday morning. The rotunda is a common spot for pages to relax when Senate business goes late.
Van Orden did not dispute the account of him cursing at Senate pages, telling The Hill that he thought the Capitol Rotunda should be “treated with a tremendous amount of respect for the dead” because it was used as a field hospital during the Civil War.
“If anyone had been laying a series of graves in Arlington National Cemetery, what do you think people would say?” Van Orden said.
Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday that he was “shocked” when he heard about the incident.
“I am further shocked at his refusal to apologize to these young people,” Schumer said.
“I can’t speak for the House of Representatives, but I do not think that one member’s disrespect is shared by this body, by [Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)] and myself.”
McConnell said he agreed with Schumer.
“Everybody on this side of the aisle feels exactly the same way,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Punchbowl News first reported that Van Orden had yelled at the Senate pages.