‘It’s the Wild West’: MSNBC Panel Warns That Brawls Are About to Break Out All Around Congress After Days of ‘Bonkers Behavior’

Chris Jansing led her MSNBC panel in expressing their collective shock over the wild behavior observed across Congress throughout the day.

Jansing led her show on Tuesday with the dustup between Representatives Tim Burchett (R-TN) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), plus the moment when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had to step in and stop Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) from having a fist-fight with a witness in the middle of a hearing.

When Jansing brought on her reaction panel, she summed up all of this by asking, “Have you ever seen anything like what we’re seeing today?”

“One accusation he elbowed me,” she continued. “The other one standing up in the middle of a hearing? What’s going on?”

Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) was first up to bat, where he expressed his doubts that McCarthy intentionally elbowed Burchett, as the latter has claimed.

“Maybe it was a joke that Burchett did not appreciate, but that’s just not in his nature,” he said. “But zooming out, there is a lot of tension in the House Republican conference, a lot of resentment given everything that has happened during this last year.”

“It is the Wild West over here,” said Ali Vitali. “It often is — we joke about that — those of us who spend time covering the House. But the tension that has been simmering among Republicans over the course of the last two months is really the underpinning to what you’re seeing now.”

Vitali continued:

I think what Congressman Curbelo says is right. All of us who walk the halls know it is narrow hallways, people who’ve stop to do interviews as Congressman Burchett did are sometimes in the way of those who are trying to walk by. The fact that McCarthy has a security detail, of course, makes it a bulkier way of passing by someone.

So look, I could very much see a world in which an accidental elbow was thrown as people were trying to move through the hallways, and I can also see a world in which what Congressman Burchett says is true, where Speaker McCarthy did this on purpose. He says he didn’t. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this.

Vitali concluded by calling it “pretty bonkers behavior” from elected lawmakers, even as she noted the context of the upcoming effort to decide the next government funding bill.

Watch above via MSNBC.