WASHINGTON — Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s denial of derogatory comments he made about President Donald Trump after the attack on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, exposed a phenomenon widely known but rarely seen in Washington: the hypocrisy of Republicans who have spurned Trump in private while defending him publicly.
McCarthy, R-Calif., who is campaigning to be speaker of the House if his party wins a majority in November, dismissed as “totally false and wrong” a report that had told other GOP leaders he would urge Trump to resign. office after the riot. But an audio recording of the conversation revealed McCarthy’s denial to be a lie.
For McCarthy, the immediate political problem was not to be caught in a lie. In the GOP, which has rallied around Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, falsehoods have become routine and even accepted.
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The biggest danger for McCarthy on Friday had been the truth: that by making his negative comments about Trump public, he could incur the wrath of the former president, who maintains a stranglehold on his party and a powerful faction of extremist members of the House. . who already represent the greatest risk to his political future. But on Friday night, it seemed the danger would not materialize, as Trump told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that their relationship was still good.
“I think it’s all a huge compliment, frankly,” Trump told the Journal, referring to McCarthy and other Republicans who criticized him in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack but then relented. “They realized that they were wrong and they supported me.”
For a Republican leader who has kowtowed to Trump in ways big and small, including famously sorting a pack of Starbursts to present him with only his favorite red and pink candies, the lie was McCarthy’s latest show of loyalty.
Some of Trump’s fiercest supporters on Capitol Hill have long slammed the former president and members of his family behind closed doors, venting about his erratic policy decisions and tweets while expressing their utter loyalty in public. The release of the audio of McCarthy’s remarks was a rare moment in which duplicity was on display.
McCarthy spent Friday morning working on 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 McCarthy as a speaker.
“The Republicans will regain the majority in November and when we do, Kevin McCarthy will be our President,” Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, tweeted Friday.
Trump aides said the two spoke Thursday morning, after the story went public, and had what they called “a good conversation.”
Another person familiar with the conversations said the two spoke again Thursday night, after audio was released showing that McCarthy’s denial had been a lie and that Trump did not appear to be unnerved by the remarks.
McCarthy’s main concern on Friday, according to a person familiar with the situation, was Republicans who he thought would be upset by his private criticism of Trump, not those who might be alarmed that he had been exposed as a liar by denying it. . As if to underscore the point, McCarthy repeated the falsehood on Friday, telling reporters in Ridgecrest, California: “I never thought he should resign.”
There was little expression of outrage from Republican members of Congress that their leader, one who would be in line to succeed the president if he achieves his aspiration to be the speaker of the House, was caught in a falsehood. They seemed to be following Trump’s lead.
The former president “probably realizes this is all being pushed by the left and the mainstream media,” said Jason Miller, a Trump adviser, noting that McCarthy would benefit from the recording airing for the first time on a television network. MSNBC broadcast hosted by Rachel. Maddow, frequent target of the right. “The battle of the speakers will happen after we get the majority back.”
McCarthy’s private expressions of outrage probably didn’t surprise Trump, who bristled when the congressman criticized him in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol storming in an unusually harsh speech on the House floor, saying he “bears responsibility” for the riots and proposing that he be censored
But McCarthy soon changed his mind after visiting the former president at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida. She retracted her convictions, ultimately fought the creation of an investigation and led an effort to purge Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, from her House leadership seat for speaking out against Trump.
Some Republican lawmakers privately downplayed the importance of the recorded conversation. They noted that McCarthy was not known as someone who spoke the truth or had been deeply loyal to Trump. Rather, he has built his reputation as a political operator whose focus is to side with the majority of his conference.
The recording, those members said, simply revealed McCarthy as the person his conference knew him to be. And for now, there was no obvious alternative to challenging him in a race for the speaker.
But McCarthy also faces powerful political enemies who dominate the extremists at his conference. On Friday morning, Steve Bannon, a former White House senior adviser, said on his popular podcast that it was a “deadly sin” to deny the comments that were later broadcast on tape.
In his quest to become a speaker, McCarthy has long engaged in painful contortions to please the various factions in his conference, all of whose support he will need to become the most powerful Republican in Washington.
That has often meant going to great lengths not to antagonize Trump or his staunchest allies in Congress. He has dodged reporters in the halls of the Capitol who question him about a Republican National Committee resolution that suggested Jan. 6 was a “legitimate political speech” and censured members of his conference for participating in the House investigation. about the attack. He has refrained from punishing far-right Republicans who attended white supremacist rallies or posted videos promoting violence against Democrats, instead saying he has had harsh, private conversations with them about their behavior.
McCarthy’s office did not respond to requests for comment on the tape Friday. He is scheduled to travel with a group of House Republicans to the southwestern border of Texas on Monday, where he is expected to hold a news conference and is likely to be pressured to respond publicly to the recorded conversation.
In Trump circles, McCarthy is already viewed with skepticism and little confidence.
The relationship between the two men, Trump aides said, was cordial but not particularly close. The former speaker is closest to House members like Rep. Elise Stefanik, RN.Y., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, with whom he speaks regularly and whom he considers loyal. McCarthy, by contrast, often relies on his aide Brian Jack, a former White House political director, as a go-between who has a strong relationship with the former president.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, a McCarthy critic who has pushed for Trump to become speaker, was the first to denounce his comments.
“While I was demonstrating in Wyoming against Liz Cheney…Kevin McCarthy was defending Liz Cheney among House Republicans,” Gaetz posted on Twitter on Friday, noting that McCarthy “should have trusted my instincts, not his.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, a vocal critic of Trump, tweeted that McCarthy should be “ashamed” of his lie. “Republicans, your leaders think you are fools,” Kinzinger wrote. “Let’s finish them off.”
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