A "heated" exchange took place among Republicans on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives this past week. 

According to reports from NBC News, the incident occurred on Thursday, April 18, 2024.

It appears that part of the dispute was over the foreign aid package that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been working on.

Suffice it to say that not all House Republicans are on board with his decision to send more U.S. taxpayer dollars to Ukraine.

What happened?

Just before lunch on Thursday, NBC's Julie Tsirkin reported that "things just got very heated on the House floor."

She continued, "[A] Group of [Republican] hardliners were trying to pressure Johnson to only put Israel aid on the floor and hold Ukraine aid until the Senate passed HR2."

The group, according to Tsirkin, included U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Tim Burchett (R-TN), Clay Higgins (R-LA), Byron Donalds (R-FL), and Derrick Van Orden (R-WI).

Tsirkin went on report that Johnson refused to give in to the group's request, and this is when Van Orden decided to call Johnson "Tubby."

"Johnson said he couldn’t do it, and Van Orden called him 'tubby' and vowed to bring on the [motion to vacate]," Tsirkin writes, adding that "no one in the group . . . was threatening John with an MTV," but that "van Orden seemed to escalate things dramatically."

Background

Johnson is currently facing significant pressure from House Republicans, with some threatening to remove him from the speakership position.

Currently, three House Republicans have publicly come out in favor of bringing a motion to vacate the speakership, U.S. Reps. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), and Paul Gosar (R-AZ).

Gosar is the latest to do so, and he explained that he now supports Johnson's removal because Johnson - since the Thursday incident mentioned above - has decided to move forward with a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes funding for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine. Greene was the first House Republican, several weeks ago, to call for Johnson's removal after he supported a $1.2 trillion government spending bill.

Greene, Massie, and Gosar argue that Johnson has gotten his priorities mixed up, that the money should be going to such things as fixing America's southern border, rather than Ukraine.

Former President Donald Trump has publicly come out in support of Johnson, but this has not done much to unite House Republicans behind the speaker. As Thursday's incident shows, House Republicans remain at odds.