The initial report from The New York Times gave the political world a bit of a jolt yesterday morning. The newspaper, citing evidence from an upcoming book from reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, published an article on how Congress’ top two Republicans — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — responded in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.
We learned from the piece that the GOP leaders repeatedly told associates early last year they held Donald Trump responsible for the insurrectionist violence, and they welcomed the then-president being driven from American politics. Referring to the House’s plans to impeach Trump, McConnell, for example, reportedly said, “The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a b**** for us.” He added, “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.”
In the House, according to the Times’ reporters, McCarthy went even further. The article said the GOP leader told his colleagues during a Jan. 10 call that he was so finished with Trump that he intended to tell the then-president to quit. “I think this [impeachment resolution] will pass,” McCarthy said, about the conversation he would have with Trump, “and it would be my recommendation you should resign.”
The revelations were striking for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the degree to which both Republican leaders were presented as cowards. If the reporting is accurate, McConnell and McCarthy were well aware of the dangers Trump posed, but they ultimately put party over country and refused to hold him accountable.
The GOP is filled with too many radicalized true believers, but the Times’ report presented McConnell and McCarthy as something worse: unprincipled partisans who care more about power than democracy.
Pressed for comment, McConnell said nothing. McCarthy, however, took a very different approach to the reporting.
The House minority leader’s office explicitly denied ever telling colleagues that he would push Trump to resign. Around the same time, McCarthy himself issued a written statement, insisting that the Times’ reporting was “totally false and wrong.”
The problem with McCarthy’s denials is that there’s a recording of the Jan. 10 call, which we aired last night on The Rachel Maddow Show. NBC News reported:
Just days after the Jan. 6 riot, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy told a fellow Republican lawmaker that he would recommend to then-President Donald Trump that he resign, according to audio of a call shared with MSNBC and aired Thursday night. In the Jan. 10, 2021, call, McCarthy can be heard telling Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., that he planned to tell the president he should step down following the violent attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters.
The reporting McCarthy described as “totally false and wrong” turned out to be totally true and accurate.
“The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this [impeachment resolution] will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign,” McCarthy said in an audio recording aired on the show last night.
In other words, McCarthy (a) told his members he’d encourage Trump to resign; (b) abandoned his own principles; (c) lied about it; and (d) got caught.
The next question is what, if any, consequences the House Republican might face as a result.
Politico spoke to a senior GOP aide who said McCarthy has a “trust” issue, adding, “He’s a bald-faced liar who literally just has no problem completely lying. And that doesn’t sit well with members.” But as is often the case in Republican politics, the minority leader’s fate may very well rest in the hands of the former president whom McCarthy was briefly prepared to abandon. And on this front, the Californian may be surprisingly safe. The Washington Post reported this morning that Trump and McCarthy had a phone conversation last night and the former president was apparently “not upset about McCarthy’s remarks and was glad the Republican leader didn’t follow through, which Trump saw as a sign of his continued grip on the Republican Party.” Or put another way, the former president sees McCarthy — the would-be next Speaker of the House — as being in his back pocket. The House GOP leader may have said he’d call for Trump to resign, but since McCarthy lacked the courage to follow through, Trump is reportedly willing to let it slide. In theory, it could prove problematic for Republicans to have a House leader with no credibility as a person who tells the truth, but in practice, Republicans had a president for four years with no credibility as a person who tells the truth, and the party didn’t much care. Looking ahead, questions abound. Was last night’s Trump-McCarthy call sufficient to keep the former president satiated? Are there more tapes that might create new problems for the House leader? Will intra-party rivals see McCarthy as damaged and start positioning themselves as competitors? Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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