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New book details how McCarthy came to support Trump after Jan. 6

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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Just another cowardly Republican POS:

In the weeks after the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump of a charge related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was seething.
Frustrated that Trump would not talk to him, stressed that his chance to become House speaker could be in jeopardy and furious that a trusted confidante had publicly disclosed a tense call between him and Trump, McCarthy snapped.


“I alone am taking all the heat to protect people from Trump! I alone am holding the party together!” he yelled at Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) during a previously undisclosed meeting in McCarthy’s office on Feb. 25, 2021. “I have been working with Trump to keep him from going after Republicans like you and blowing up the party and destroying all our work!”

Stunned by McCarthy’s anger, Herrera Beutler began to cry. Through tears, she apologized for not telling him ahead of time that she had confirmed to the media details of a call McCarthy made to Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, urging him to tell his supporters to leave the U.S. Capitol.






“You should have come to me!” McCarthy said. “Why did you go to the press? This is no way to thank me!”
“What did you want me to do? Lie?” Herrera Beutler shot back. “I did what I thought was right.”
The tense meeting between Republican lawmakers is detailed in the new book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” by Washington Post reporter Karoun Demirjian and Politico reporter Rachael Bade, a copy of which The Post obtained ahead of its release next week. Several excerpts detail McCarthy’s state of mind from Election Day 2020 to the origination of the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
House GOP tries to embark on a united front as expected rifts loom
“McCarthy’s tirade against Herrera Beutler was just the start of what would become a GOP-wide campaign to whitewash the details of what happened on January 6 in the aftermath of the second impeachment,” the authors write.



McCarthy and Herrera Beutler both denied the explosive details from their 2021 meeting in a statement to the authors, saying their reporting “is wrong.”
“Beyond multiple inaccuracies — it is dramatized to fit an on-screen adaptation, not to serve as a document of record. We know it’s wrong because we were the only two in the room for this conversation,” the joint statement to the authors said. The authors state that their reporting was verified by a primary source and multiple lawmakers who heard the account firsthand from McCarthy.

The amicus brief decision​

The book describes the political calculations made by congressional leaders and those who played a central role in the two impeachment trials against Trump that ended in acquittal. McCarthy’s inner conflict began shortly after Trump asserted that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Trump’s false claim that he had won the election moved his allies in the House to sign an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results in key states. According to the book, McCarthy sought the counsel of Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), then the House GOP conference chair, about what he should do about the amicus brief, ultimately telling her that he would not sign it because it would “give the federal government too much power over elections.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), left, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during a news conference in Washington on July 21, 2021. Months earlier, McCarthy greenlit a move by Jordan to set up shop off the House floor and lobby colleagues to join the effort to overturn the 2020 election. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
But even though McCarthy knew that “embracing [Trump’s] denials could trigger national turmoil,” according to the book, the minority leader ultimately caved. He eventually signed onto the brief after learning that “Trump and his allies had erupted upon noticing” his name was missing. McCarthy, at the time, blamed a “technical glitch” for the omission.



McCarthy’s office denied to the authors that he ever asked Cheney for advice or had reservations about supporting the amicus brief. Bade and Demirjian note in the book that the denial goes against what was conveyed to them by multiple people in McCarthy’s office at the time who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
McCarthy often strayed from advising his conference during the period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, refusing to disclose whether he would vote to decertify the election or how he would vote on impeachment. The writers describe him as “frozen between his fealty to Trump and his own ethical compass.” Each time, he chose his ambition.
McCarthy not only blessed attempts to overturn the election results on Jan. 6 but also greenlit a move by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to set up shop off the House floor and lobby colleagues to join the effort. The decisions worried some of McCarthy’s own staff members, according to the book, as well as more moderate House Republicans, who worried the objections might lead to violence.

Fallout from the impeachment vote​

McCarthy often found himself seeking to do the right thing before changing course, the book details. After evacuating to Fort McNair as the riot was underway at the Capitol on Jan. 6, McCarthy called Cheney to inform her that upon his return, he would force the GOP conference to abandon objections to the electoral college tally. But he caved again after Jordan argued that backing down at that point would make them all look weak. Jordan’s office did not respond to a request for comment.



“Still, the GOP leader’s lust for power had come at a heavy price: In refusing to push back on the president, McCarthy had helped turn the GOP into a party that promoted conspiracy theories and lies,” the authors write. “Now those lies had led to violence and an insurrection. And much as he loathed to admit it, McCarthy was ashamed.”
Knowing that a vote to impeach Trump would drive a dagger through his speaker ambitions, but equally finding Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6 indefensible, McCarthy allowed his conference to vote their conscience on impeachment. He also knew they could vote in a way he couldn’t.
“Republicans were coming to him, seeking answers on whether they should vote to impeach the president. McCarthy didn’t know what to tell them. How could he turn on Trump when he needed him to land his dream job someday — yet how could he corral his rank and file into opposing impeachment when he knew Trump was guilty,” the authors write.
How McCarthy’s political machine worked to sway the GOP field
Herrera Beutler was one of many Republicans who asked him for advice. Their conversations turned into “a therapy session” for McCarthy, who knew that telling the truth about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 would influence her to vote to impeach, according to the book. He told her about the call where Trump praised the rioters, how Trump was unmoved to act or take responsibility for his actions since.



McCarthy’s promise to protect those who chose to impeach Trump over Jan. 6 was short-lived. Trump was “apoplectic” at McCarthy’s suggestion to censure him instead of holding an impeachment trial, allegedly telling “everyone who would listen that the man who had once been ‘my Kevin’ was in fact the biggest ‘p---y’ in Washington.” McCarthy’s conference was coalescing again around Trump, irate after Twitter and Facebook banned him from their platforms and colleagues sided with Democrats to impeach their president.
To make amends, McCarthy met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in late January 2021, telling his Republican colleagues who voted to impeach that his meeting was “to make peace with the ex-president” and to ensure he would not act to take revenge against them.
But McCarthy’s blowup one month later with Herrera Beutler, and his decision to support Cheney’s ouster as conference chair later, mirrored similar retaliation tactics of Trump. The former president ended up working to find primary challengers to all 10 Republicans, including Herrera Beutler. At least eight of them will not be returning to Congress.

 
Just another cowardly Republican POS:

In the weeks after the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump of a charge related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was seething.
Frustrated that Trump would not talk to him, stressed that his chance to become House speaker could be in jeopardy and furious that a trusted confidante had publicly disclosed a tense call between him and Trump, McCarthy snapped.


“I alone am taking all the heat to protect people from Trump! I alone am holding the party together!” he yelled at Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) during a previously undisclosed meeting in McCarthy’s office on Feb. 25, 2021. “I have been working with Trump to keep him from going after Republicans like you and blowing up the party and destroying all our work!”

Stunned by McCarthy’s anger, Herrera Beutler began to cry. Through tears, she apologized for not telling him ahead of time that she had confirmed to the media details of a call McCarthy made to Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, urging him to tell his supporters to leave the U.S. Capitol.






“You should have come to me!” McCarthy said. “Why did you go to the press? This is no way to thank me!”
“What did you want me to do? Lie?” Herrera Beutler shot back. “I did what I thought was right.”
The tense meeting between Republican lawmakers is detailed in the new book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” by Washington Post reporter Karoun Demirjian and Politico reporter Rachael Bade, a copy of which The Post obtained ahead of its release next week. Several excerpts detail McCarthy’s state of mind from Election Day 2020 to the origination of the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.
House GOP tries to embark on a united front as expected rifts loom
“McCarthy’s tirade against Herrera Beutler was just the start of what would become a GOP-wide campaign to whitewash the details of what happened on January 6 in the aftermath of the second impeachment,” the authors write.



McCarthy and Herrera Beutler both denied the explosive details from their 2021 meeting in a statement to the authors, saying their reporting “is wrong.”
“Beyond multiple inaccuracies — it is dramatized to fit an on-screen adaptation, not to serve as a document of record. We know it’s wrong because we were the only two in the room for this conversation,” the joint statement to the authors said. The authors state that their reporting was verified by a primary source and multiple lawmakers who heard the account firsthand from McCarthy.

The amicus brief decision​

The book describes the political calculations made by congressional leaders and those who played a central role in the two impeachment trials against Trump that ended in acquittal. McCarthy’s inner conflict began shortly after Trump asserted that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Trump’s false claim that he had won the election moved his allies in the House to sign an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results in key states. According to the book, McCarthy sought the counsel of Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), then the House GOP conference chair, about what he should do about the amicus brief, ultimately telling her that he would not sign it because it would “give the federal government too much power over elections.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), left, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during a news conference in Washington on July 21, 2021. Months earlier, McCarthy greenlit a move by Jordan to set up shop off the House floor and lobby colleagues to join the effort to overturn the 2020 election. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
But even though McCarthy knew that “embracing [Trump’s] denials could trigger national turmoil,” according to the book, the minority leader ultimately caved. He eventually signed onto the brief after learning that “Trump and his allies had erupted upon noticing” his name was missing. McCarthy, at the time, blamed a “technical glitch” for the omission.



McCarthy’s office denied to the authors that he ever asked Cheney for advice or had reservations about supporting the amicus brief. Bade and Demirjian note in the book that the denial goes against what was conveyed to them by multiple people in McCarthy’s office at the time who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
McCarthy often strayed from advising his conference during the period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, refusing to disclose whether he would vote to decertify the election or how he would vote on impeachment. The writers describe him as “frozen between his fealty to Trump and his own ethical compass.” Each time, he chose his ambition.
McCarthy not only blessed attempts to overturn the election results on Jan. 6 but also greenlit a move by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to set up shop off the House floor and lobby colleagues to join the effort. The decisions worried some of McCarthy’s own staff members, according to the book, as well as more moderate House Republicans, who worried the objections might lead to violence.

Fallout from the impeachment vote​

McCarthy often found himself seeking to do the right thing before changing course, the book details. After evacuating to Fort McNair as the riot was underway at the Capitol on Jan. 6, McCarthy called Cheney to inform her that upon his return, he would force the GOP conference to abandon objections to the electoral college tally. But he caved again after Jordan argued that backing down at that point would make them all look weak. Jordan’s office did not respond to a request for comment.



“Still, the GOP leader’s lust for power had come at a heavy price: In refusing to push back on the president, McCarthy had helped turn the GOP into a party that promoted conspiracy theories and lies,” the authors write. “Now those lies had led to violence and an insurrection. And much as he loathed to admit it, McCarthy was ashamed.”
Knowing that a vote to impeach Trump would drive a dagger through his speaker ambitions, but equally finding Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6 indefensible, McCarthy allowed his conference to vote their conscience on impeachment. He also knew they could vote in a way he couldn’t.
“Republicans were coming to him, seeking answers on whether they should vote to impeach the president. McCarthy didn’t know what to tell them. How could he turn on Trump when he needed him to land his dream job someday — yet how could he corral his rank and file into opposing impeachment when he knew Trump was guilty,” the authors write.
How McCarthy’s political machine worked to sway the GOP field
Herrera Beutler was one of many Republicans who asked him for advice. Their conversations turned into “a therapy session” for McCarthy, who knew that telling the truth about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 would influence her to vote to impeach, according to the book. He told her about the call where Trump praised the rioters, how Trump was unmoved to act or take responsibility for his actions since.



McCarthy’s promise to protect those who chose to impeach Trump over Jan. 6 was short-lived. Trump was “apoplectic” at McCarthy’s suggestion to censure him instead of holding an impeachment trial, allegedly telling “everyone who would listen that the man who had once been ‘my Kevin’ was in fact the biggest ‘p---y’ in Washington.” McCarthy’s conference was coalescing again around Trump, irate after Twitter and Facebook banned him from their platforms and colleagues sided with Democrats to impeach their president.
To make amends, McCarthy met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in late January 2021, telling his Republican colleagues who voted to impeach that his meeting was “to make peace with the ex-president” and to ensure he would not act to take revenge against them.
But McCarthy’s blowup one month later with Herrera Beutler, and his decision to support Cheney’s ouster as conference chair later, mirrored similar retaliation tactics of Trump. The former president ended up working to find primary challengers to all 10 Republicans, including Herrera Beutler. At least eight of them will not be returning to Congress.

Seems like the kind of guy northern, abby, iihawk, etc. would love to vote for. Corrupt people. Perfect for MAGA.
 
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As a mob rampaged through the Capitol to overturn Donald Trump’s presidential reelection loss, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is said to have screamed on the phone at Trump: “They’re trying to f---ing kill me!”

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A few weeks later, when details about the California Republican’s fears on Jan. 6, 2021, went public, McCarthy reportedly redirected his fury — away from Trump, and toward another GOP lawmaker who dared to tell the truth about his phone call with Trump.

These revelations — courtesy of two new books about Trump and the GOP — illustrate in fresh detail the craven depths McCarthy plumbed to protect Trump from accountability related to Jan. 6, after initially being horrified by Trump’s role in the insurrection.

But this also raises a forward-looking question: What is a man who literally feared that a Trump-incited mob would kill him — then spent the next 20 months engaged in a coverup on Trump’s behalf — capable of doing for Trump should he become House speaker?






McCarthy’s call with Trump is detailed in journalist Robert Draper’s new account of the radicalization of the GOP. It had already been reported that McCarthy pleaded with Trump to calm the rioters, to which Trump replied, “I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”


In Draper’s new account, we learn McCarthy feared his life was about to come to a violent end. After Trump snarled that McCarthy should be “more upset,” this happened:

“More upset?” McCarthy yelled back incredulously, according to an account he gave a few hours later to a Republican colleague. “They’re trying to f–ing kill me!”
After McCarthy’s security detail removed him, Draper reports, another Republican lawmaker remained behind, hiding crouched on a toilet while rioters tore through McCarthy’s suite.
Despite all this, McCarthy quickly pivoted to helping Trump obfuscate about the run-up to what happened that day. The second book, by Post reporter Karoun Demirjian and Politico’s Rachael Bade, reports that after Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) revealed some details about the McCarthy-Trump screaming match, McCarthy raged at her over it:


“I alone am taking all the heat to protect people from Trump! I alone am holding the party together!” he yelled at Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) during a previously undisclosed meeting in McCarthy’s office on Feb. 25, 2021. “I have been working with Trump to keep him from going after Republicans like you and blowing up the party and destroying all our work!”
Though they’re both denying the account, note McCarthy’s fear that if Republicans publicly told the truth about Trump’s Jan. 6-related conduct, it would provoke retaliation from Trump, fracturing the party. This book is clear on that point, reporting that McCarthy’s tirade launched “what would become a GOP-wide campaign to whitewash" what happened.

That whitewash included opposing a bipartisan commission to examine Jan. 6, trying to install Trumpist saboteurs on the House select committee that Democrats subsequently created and refusing to testify to it himself.
What’s now clearer than ever is that McCarthy saw helping with Trump’s insurrection coverup — which itself is arguably an extraordinary betrayal of the country — as essential to keeping the GOP united and on a path to win the House majority.


Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a member of the Jan. 6 committee, says this new reporting strengthens the case that Trump sought to use mob violence to obstruct the official proceeding of counting the presidential electors — a potential crime — by impeding the lawmakers themselves.

“This is a meaningful corroborating detail in the already abundant evidence that Trump set about to interfere with this crucial federal proceeding, the peaceful transfer of power,” Raskin told me, noting that this also “underscores McCarthy’s complicity in helping Trump cover up for the dangerous violence that he had unleashed.”
Now imagine McCarthy as speaker of the House.
Someone capable of going to such extreme lengths for Trump — in order to continue “holding the party together” — would probably be willing to maximally employ the power of the House to harass or defund investigations or even prosecutions of Trump, as Trump is already demanding.



Some House Republicans are already floating ways a new majority could target investigations or prosecutions. Government shutdowns or debt ceiling breaches could be marshaled toward that end. If Trump is running for president in 2023 while investigations continue, impairing them would be even more imperative for McCarthy’s goal of “holding the party together.”
A House speaker willing to go to extreme lengths for Trump would also be in a position to help Trump or an imitator steal the 2024 election. If the Electoral Count Act of 1887 is not revised, and a democracy-sabotaging GOP governor could certify fake electors in a swing state, do you doubt that McCarthy’s House would vote to count those sham electors, creating chaos or worse?
“Trump was happy to put McCarthy’s life in danger, but McCarthy still quickly scrambled to kiss Trump’s ass, as Trump likes to put it,” Raskin told me. He added that the GOP “has become a dangerous cult of personality filled with toadies, sycophants and liars. They’re a threat to constitutional democracy.”
The new McCarthy revelations are not merely about filling in the historical record. They’re a clear warning of the future dangers our democracy faces.

 
He's like a slightly more savvy version of Lindsay Graham, but clearly still a bootlicker at heart. He'll find whoever the mouth breathing masses will follow then immediately jump on their coattails. He'd throw the country to the wolves for his own personal ambition. I doubt he believes half of what he says publicly, it's all a show to get more power and get reelected. He's an example of the worst of American politics.
 
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