GOP LEADERS PRIVATELY BLASTED TRUMP AFTER JAN. 6
In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the two top Republicans in Congress, Rep. Kevin Mccarthy and Sen. Mitch Mcconnell, told associates they believed President Donald Trump was responsible for inciting the riot and vowed to drive him from politics.
Mccarthy went so far as to say he would push Trump to resign immediately: “I’ve had it with this guy,” he told a group of Republican leaders, according to an audio recording of the conversation obtained by The New York Times.
But within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Trump because they feared retribution. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.
The confidential expressions of outrage from Mccarthy and McConnell, which have not been reported previously, illustrate the immense gulf between what Republican leaders say privately about Trump and their public deference to the man.
The leaders’ swift retreat in January 2021 represented a capitulation at a moment of extraordinary political weakness for Trump — perhaps the last and best chance for mainstream Republicans to reclaim control of their party from a leader who had stoked an insurrection against American democracy itself.
This account of the discussions among Republican leaders in the days after the Jan. 6 attack is adapted from a new book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” which draws on hundreds of interviews with lawmakers and officials, and recordings of private conversations.
Mcconnell’s office declined to comment. In a statement on Twitter early Thursday, Mccarthy called the reporting “totally false and wrong.” His spokesperson, Mark Bednar, denied that the Republican leader told colleagues he would urge Trump to leave office. “Mccarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Bednar said.
But the recording tells a different story.
Mccarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
No one embodies the stark accommodation to Trump more than Mccarthy, a 57-year-old Californian who has long had his sights set on becoming speaker of the House. In public after Jan. 6, McCarthy issued a careful rebuke of Trump, saying that he “bears responsibility” for the mob that tried to stop Congress from officially certifying the president’s loss.
In private, Mccarthy went much further.
On a phone call with several other top House Republicans on Jan. 8, Mccarthy said Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 had been “atrocious and totally wrong.” He faulted the president for “inciting people” to attack the Capitol, saying that Trump’s remarks at a rally on the National Mall that day were “not right by any shape or any form.”