McCarthy, McConnell Reportedly Supported Consequences For Trump After Capitol Riot
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WASHINGTON ― At first, the top Republicans in Congress talked tough about Donald Trump after the then-president incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) privately said he would tell Trump to resign, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he believed Trump’s behavior warranted impeachment, according to a new book by two reporters at The New York Times.
In the weeks following the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, McCarthy and McConnell publicly blamed Trump for the attack, but both stopped short of saying he should be removed from office. The newly reported comments make it all the more remarkable that neither man ultimately made a serious effort to stand up to Trump or hold him accountable.
“What he did is unacceptable,” McCarthy reportedly told his leadership team on Jan. 10, during a conversation in which he also said he would tell Trump to resign. “Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it.”
Three days later, McCarthy had evidently changed his mind.
In a Jan. 13 House floor speech, McCarthy said that Trump “bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” but said he shouldn’t be impeached. Instead, McCarthy called for a “fact-finding commission.”
One week later, McCarthy reversed himself again, saying he didn’t believe Trump “provoked” the riot. Then in May, McCarthy announced that he opposed the fact-finding commission he’d previously supported.
McCarthy’s office denied to the Times that he ever said he would push for Trump’s resignation. The leader has sought to placate the ex-president in order to maintain enough support in the Republican conference to become speaker if Republicans win the House in this year’s midterm elections.
In a statement on Thursday, McCarthy called the new reporting “totally false and wrong.”
McCarthy paired his denial of the story with praise for Trump: “The past year and a half has proven that our country was better off when President Trump was in the White House,” McCarthy said, adding that the corporate media profits from political intrigue.
McConnell, for his part, reportedly told associates in private that if Trump’s behavior wasn’t impeachable, he didn’t know what would be.
In public, McConnell forcefully denounced Trump that January, calling his actions “a disgraceful dereliction of duty” and saying it was obvious Trump incited the riot. But McConnell still voted to acquit him of the impeachment charge for “incitement of insurrection” on a technicality.
The following month, McConnell said he’d support Trump for president in 2024 if he won the nomination.
McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this article.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
