There are tapes: Kevin McCarthy caught lying about seeking Donald Trump’s resignation
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has spent the past fifteen months like a deer in the headlights, afraid of everyone on all sides of his party. He’s a half wit, to be sure. But now it turns out McCarthy may have had more specific reason for being so afraid of his own shadow.
Tonight the New York Times reported that on January 10th, 2021 – four days after the insurrection – Kevin McCarthy told his fellow House Republican Liz Cheney that he was planning to ask Donald Trump to immediately resign the presidency. McCarthy immediately claimed that the report was false. But then suddenly an audio recording of McCarthy’s words surfaced on the Rachel Maddow show.
This means McCarthy is in hot water on multiple levels. First, shortly after the insurrection, he privately vowed to seek Trump’s resignation, but failed to go through with it – exposing him as weak. Second, this puts McCarthy squarely on Trump’s bad side. Third, McCarthy just got caught lying about the whole thing, which automatically makes any scandal look worse. Fourth, there’s a tape of McCarthy saying it, which makes for the perfect soundbite that’ll get played over and over by the media and go viral on social media. Fifth, it’s clear that someone (Liz Cheney? Someone else?) secretly recorded McCarthy saying these words fifteen months ago and decided to strategically release it right now, ahead of the public January 6th Committee hearings.
We’ll see what the specific fallout from this ends up being. But Kevin McCarthy is about to take heat from all sides. He’s been exposed as a weakling of a leader. He’s about to be on Donald Trump’s bad side. And he’s been caught lying about what he got caught saying on tape. It’s almost difficult to find a way to blow it this badly.
