Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) confirmed the report of a recent rude encounter with former GOP opponent Kari Lake at a private club in Washington, D.C.

The Bulwark wrote Wednesday that Gallego spotted Lake at the members-only Ned’s Club and went in for a handshake. Lake, who lost to Gallego in their bitter race for the upper chamber in November, reached out with both hands in an apparent gesture of good will. But she killed the moment by uttering, “How does it feel to be bought and paid for by the cartels?”

The exchange was relayed by an unnamed person “familiar with the exchange.” Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) was also in earshot and “blasted Lake,” the outlet noted.

“It’s pretty gross,” Gallego said to the outlet.

But Gallego admitted that he took the bait, disappointing his wife.

He told The Bulwark: “I did try to rub it in — when [Lake] essentially said, ‘How could you live with yourself every day?’ I’m like, ‘Easily: I won,’ and I walked away.”

Lake, a Donald Trump disciple who’s now an adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media in his administration, falsely asserted that Gallego was somehow connected to drug cartels because the candidate wrote in a memoir that his father was a drug dealer who was absent from his life after his parents’ divorce.

An Arizona Republic opinion column Wednesday blared in its headline on the recent incident, “We can’t forget why Kari Lake is a bad person. She keeps reminding us.”

HuffPost has reached out to Lake’s camp for comment.