« Back

McCarthy claims He would Never Push Trump to Resign . . .

Bill Haskell | April 22, 2022 6:30 am

Politics

Rachel Maddow: Except there is a taped recording existing between McCarthy, Cheney, and others. Rachel Maddow “sharing an audio of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy saying that he would call Donald Trump and recommend that he resign in the wake of the January 6th attacks and with a second impeachment looming, as reported by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns of the New York Times in their new book “This Will Not Pass,” and contradicting McCarthy’s multiple denials.

Audio: “McCarthy said he’d recommend Trump resign; contradicts McCarthy’s denials” (msnbc.com) Rachel Maddow

Also, here is McConnell and what he thought.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell privately said he thought former President Donald Trump’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection were impeachable, even though he later voted to acquit his party’s leader, The New York Times reported Thursday.
Five days after Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol last year, McConnell reportedly discussed House Democrats’ fast-approaching vote to impeach Trump with two advisers in Kentucky and told them: “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a b—- for us.”
As he munched on Chick-fil-A with his advisers, Terry Carmack and Courier Journal columnist Scott Jennings, McConnell said he anticipated a strong, bipartisan Senate vote to convict Trump for his role in the insurrection, saying: “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.”

What McConnell privately said about Trump after Capitol riots: Report (courier-journal.com)

I Can not embed the Rachel Maddow clip. If you click on the link it will take you to it and listen. Cowards all of them.

7 Comments

Fred C. Dobbs says:

April 22, 2022 at 10:23 am

Evidently someone got to McCarthy and McConnell pretty quick and reminded them that the continued existence of the GOP very much depended on Donald Trump being allowed to run again, as would not be the case if he was impeached even after leaving office.

Who might that have been? There are so many possibilities?
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  April 22, 2022 at 4:19 pm
  
  If they can’t round up the usual suspects, at least they could subpoena some of them.
Fred C. Dobbs says:

April 22, 2022 at 5:32 pm

McCarthy’s Lie Puts GOP Hypocrisy on Trump on Display

NY Times – April 22

The Republican leader’s false claim that he never urged President Donald J. Trump to resign — disproved by an audio recording of the comments — drew little outrage from members of his party.

Representative Kevin McCarthy’s denial of disparaging comments he made about President Donald J. Trump after the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, exposed a widely known but seldom seen phenomenon in Washington: the hypocrisy of Republicans who have privately scorned Mr. Trump while publicly defending him.

Mr. McCarthy, the California Republican who is campaigning to be speaker of the House if his party wins the majority in November, had dismissed as “totally false and wrong” a report that he had told fellow G.O.P. leaders he would urge Mr. Trump to resign from office after the riot. But an audio recording of the conversation revealed Mr. McCarthy’s denial to be a lie.

For Mr. McCarthy, the immediate political problem was not being caught in a lie. In the Republican Party, which has coalesced around Mr. Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, falsehoods have become routine and even accepted.

The greater danger for Mr. McCarthy on Friday was the truth — that, with the disclosure of his negative comments about Mr. Trump, he might invite the ire of the former president, who maintains a stranglehold on his party and on a powerful faction of extremist House members who already pose the greatest risk to his political future. …
- Fred C. Dobbs says:
  
  April 22, 2022 at 5:34 pm
  
  For a Republican leader who has prostrated himself before Mr. Trump in ways large and small — including famously sorting through a package of Starbursts to present him with only his favorite red and pink candies — the lie was his latest show of loyalty. …
  
  Mr. McCarthy spent Friday morning working the phones, calling members of his conference to gauge their level of concern about the recording. A source familiar with the conversations said his team had also been asking rank-and-file members to post tweets supporting Mr. McCarthy for speaker. …
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    April 22, 2022 at 5:43 pm
    
    McCarthy gave Trump a jar of his favorite red and pink Starbursts
    
    (To be fair, McCarthy did not personally sort the Starbursts.)
    
    (CNN – January 15, 2018) House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy once sweetened his relationship with President Donald Trump with a gift of red and pink Starbursts.
    
    According to a report from The Washington Post, McCarthy noticed the President had a preference for the two colors of the chewy candies when they were alone on Air Force One last fall. Trump reached for them and plucked out only the cherry and strawberry flavors, the California Republican recounted.
    
    “We’re there, having a little dessert, and he offers me some,” McCarthy told the paper. “Just the red and the pink. A bit later, a couple of his aides saw me with those colors and told me, ‘Those are the president’s favorites.’”
    
    After that, McCarthy had one of his staff buy Starbursts and pick out the red and pink ones, which were placed in a jar bearing the name of the majority leader on the side and delivered to the president. A White House official told The Washington Post that Trump was grinning upon receipt of the gift. …
  - Fred C. Dobbs says:
    
    April 22, 2022 at 5:49 pm
    
    NY Times: … Mr. McCarthy’s prime concern on Friday, according to a person familiar with the situation, was about Republicans he thought would be upset by his private criticism of Mr. Trump — not those who might be alarmed by the fact that he had been exposed as a liar in denying it.
    
    There were few expressions of outrage from Republican members of Congress about their leader — one who would be in line to succeed the president if he achieves his aspiration of being speaker of the House — having been caught in a falsehood. They appeared to be following the lead of Mr. Trump. …
    
    … Mr. McCarthy’s private expressions of outrage most likely did not come as any surprise to Mr. Trump, who was irate when the congressman criticized him immediately after the Capitol assault in an unusually sharp House floor speech, saying he “bears responsibility” for the riot and proposing that he be censured.
    
    But Mr. McCarthy soon changed his tune after visiting the former president at his resort in Palm Beach, Fla. He walked back his condemnations, ultimately fought the creation of an inquiry …
    
    Some Republican lawmakers privately downplayed the significance of the taped conversation. They noted that Mr. McCarthy was not known as a truth-teller or someone who has been deeply loyal to Mr. Trump. Rather, he has built his reputation as a political operator whose approach is to fall in line with where a majority of his conference is heading. …
Fred C. Dobbs says:

April 24, 2022 at 5:47 pm

There are, these days, more GOP states than Dem ones, although there are more people residing in Dem states, which leads to serious trouble in this great democracy.

I have a friend nearby, here in Massachusetts, who up until recently was a registered GOP voter, who proudly voted for moderate GOP candidates when he could, is now a registered ‘unenrolled’ voter, in effect an ‘independent’, because he felt a need to be no longer ‘of the GOP’.

But he insists he will still vote for GOP candidates when they Make Sense. Truth be told, he is a rather selfish person who values his ‘property rights’ foremost. So be it.

I have pledged to myself & friends that I will never again vote for a GOP candidate, and that is a pledge I intend to keep. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twixt, shame on me.