House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) said nothing on Friday after an audio tape revealed he was outright lying about his reaction to the Jan. 6 riot.
McCarthy on Thursday explicitly denied to the New York Times the information he would Tell President Donald Trump to step down After the Capitol uprising. A few hours later he called the report “Completely wrong and wrong“- The journalists who wrote the story Audio released McCarthy makes the statement almost exactly as they say.
“My recommendation is that he step down,” McCarthy told lawmakers by phone on Jan. 10, 2021, explaining the advice he intended to give the then president in anticipation of a second impeachment. “This will be my opinion. I didn’t think he would take it, but I don’t know ”.
In addition to misrepresenting the story, McCarthy on Thursday Garbage journalistsHe argues that “the corporate media is obsessed with what they can do to push the liberal agenda forward.”
A McCarthy spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment from HuffPost on Friday.
On Friday, Times reporters published a separate post in which McCarty told a larger group of Republicans a week after the attack that Trump agreed with him that he had “some responsibility “for what happened. This is a claim reported during the time without audio Don’t tamper with Trump’s behavior then and now. In recent months, Trump has gone so far as to call the riots a reasonable protest against a stolen election.
McCarthy also praised the uprising. But the revelation of his personal suggestion that Trump should not serve in the last days of his presidency, which was not known until this week, makes his first public change in the uprising in the Capitol even more visible.
A week after the attack, McCarthy said Trump was “responsible” for what happened and should be punished. The following week he said he had Trump In the end, it didn’t cause a stir. ABefore the end of the month, McCarthy traveled to Trump Palace in Florida to pay his respects.
McCarty’s makeup reflects a strategy to maintain maximum support for the Trump-loving House Republican Conference. If Republicans win the House of Control in midterm elections in November, McCarthy will remain their leader only if a majority of Republicans support him as speaker.
Source: Huffpost