House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy sought to head off backlash within the party that could dash his hopes of becoming speaker next year after an audio tape exposed he told colleagues he’d urge the then-President Donald Trump to resign after last year’s Capitol insurrection.
In the audio recorded four days after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot by a mob of Trump supporters, McCarthy can be heard telling fellow Republicans during a leadership call that he planned to discuss with Trump the Democratic effort to impeach and remove him from office. It was posted late Thursday by the New York Times and aired on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show.
“The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign,” McCarthy says in the recording, which was first reported by the New York Times and has not been independently verified by Bloomberg.
The key for McCarthy and Republicans will be the reaction of Trump, who wields considerable influence in the party.
Trump and McCarthy spoke after the audio was released and the former president wasn’t upset about McCarthy’s remarks, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing unnamed people familiar with the conversation.
McCarthy’s office didn’t immediately respond on Friday to a request for comment.
McCarthy tweeted a denial of the New York Times story posted earlier in the day before the audio was broadcast. He called the report “totally false and wrong.”
McCarthy ultimately voted with 147 other Republicans against certifying presidential election results from some states, backing Trump’s false claim that he lost the 2020 race because of fraud. He also later voted against Trump’s impeachment.
Still, the tape could have ramifications for McCarthy’s hold on House GOP leadership and aspirations to become speaker if Republicans win a House majority in the November midterm elections.
McCarthy’s ascension to speaker already was no sure thing. He made a bid for the speakership in 2015, when John Boehner stepped down from the role, and he was next in line. But Paul Ryan was selected instead.
So far, most House Republicans have withheld commenting on the recording of McCarthy’s remarks. There are numerous examples of Republicans who criticized Trump in the past but have stayed in his good graces by demonstrating loyalty.
McCarthy has publicly treaded lightly on matters that could draw Trump’s scrutiny, since he initially issued a rebuke of Trump on Jan. 6, declaring on the House floor that the former president “bears responsibility” for the mob attack on the Capitol.
The House panel investigating the insurrection, in requesting McCarthy’s testimony, cited comments the GOP leader made to CBS about his call with Trump while the mob swarmed the Capitol.
“I told him he needs to talk to the nation. I told him what was happening right then,” McCarthy said in that exchange. “I was very clear with the president when I called him. This has to stop and he has to go to the American public and tell them to stop this.”
But Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington State Republican, said McCarthy relayed to her a slightly different account of the call at the time. Her statement was entered into the official record of Trump’s second impeachment trial last January.
“When McCarthy finally reached the president on Jan. 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol,” the statement said. “McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said: ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’”
McCarthy has refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, denying requests for an interview. He also has met with Trump since then and has made other public expressions of loyalty to the former president. McCarthy endorsed the opponent of GOP Representative Liz Cheney, a persistent Trump critic, in Wyoming’s Republican primary.
Cheney, who was ousted from House Republican leadership for her criticism of Trump and his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, was among those recorded on the call.
A spokesman for Cheney, who is on a panel investigating the riot and Trump’s actions, said she did not record or leak the call and doesn’t know how the reporters got it.
Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, the only other Republican on the Jan. 6 panel, said in a tweet after the audio was released that McCarthy “ought to be ashamed. Republicans, your leaders think you are dumb. Let’s be done with them.”
Kinzinger is not running for reelection.
