In audio, ally slams Trump

House’s McCarthy says report untrue

WASHINGTON — House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told other GOP lawmakers shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection that he would urge then-President Donald Trump to resign, according to an audio recording posted Thursday night by The New York Times.

McCarthy also said: “What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it.”

The Times reported that the audio was a recording of a Jan. 10 conversation among House GOP leaders in which they discussed the Democratic effort to impeach Trump.

McCarthy is heard telling the other lawmakers that he would tell Trump, “I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.”

The audio of McCarthy’s statements was released late Thursday night.

Earlier Thursday, after the Times published a story describing the conversation, McCarthy released a statement calling it “totally false and wrong.”

“The past year and a half have proven that our country was better off when President Trump was in the White House and rather than address the real issues facing Americans, the corporate media is more concerned with profiting from manufactured political intrigue from politically- motivated sources,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy also disputed The Times’ report that he and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had privately vowed to push Trump out of politics.

McConnell’s office declined to comment on the report. According to the New York Times, the Kentucky Republican had predicted that the Senate would convict Trump and privately said in the days after the Jan. 6 attack, “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is.”

Despite their reported comments condemning Trump, both McCarthy and McConnell soon backed the president once again.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a vocal Trump critic and one of two Republicans serving on the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, said in a tweet Thursday that reports that McCarthy had said he’d “had it” with Trump were “100 percent true.”

“McCarthy was over Trump until he wasn’t, when he realized he needed him. This picture literally resurrected Trump’s political life,” Kinzinger said, sharing the now-infamous Mar-a-Lago photo of the two men. “Thanks, Kev.”