Elizabeth Warren insults GOP senator by clucking like chicken at tense hearing

A Senate hearing devolved into chaos when Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) clucked like a chicken at Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) for refusing to let her answer his own question.

The confrontation erupted Tuesday during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on housing and consumer affordability. Tillis had been pressing a witness on whether credit card rate caps had ever succeeded anywhere in the world.

"Point to the one time in the whole history of the world at credit cards globally where it's worked once," Tillis demanded, offering to yield his remaining time. "I got forty-five seconds left. I want somebody who has expertise in this field to explain it to me right now."

Warren took him up on it.

"I got it!" she fired back. "And that is when the giant corporations —"

"No! You didn't answer my question!" Tillis cut her off.

"No! No! I'm not finished!" Warren shot back.

Tillis talked over her again, then declared his time expired, prompting the gallery to laugh.

Warren snapped back at Tillis by clucking at him like a chicken.

"Ranking Member!" Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) exclaimed. "Ranking Member! Ranking Member! Ranking Member! Ranking Member! I'll give the ranking member 30 seconds."

"I just wanted to remind my colleague that back during the COVID crisis, the financial institutions all were given free access to overdraft their accounts at the Fed," Warren said. "It saved them literally billions of dollars because they could get free access to money when they didn't have money in their accounts, and the government politely asked them to extend the same courtesy to their own customers — which they refused to do — and they raked in billions more in profits."

"So it worked for the big boys," she added. "It just didn't work for the little guys."

"So it's never worked before," Tillis replied, "but I look forward to somebody presenting the first successful implementation."