Since that fateful day back in January, when thousands of Donald Trump’s most rabid supporters tore away the seams of this nation’s very democracy by violently storming the Capitol building while Congressmen and women were inside trying to certify the results on the 2020 election, countless GOPers have torn at the seams of their own already shaky reputations by attempting to defend the former president and his actions surrounding the insurrection. But the fact of the matter is, what happened is Donald Trump’s fault.
Did he specifically tell his supporters to storm the Capitol building? Maybe not, in so many words. But he did everything just short of that. It was Trump’s relentless claims of a stolen, rigged election that got his supporters riled up. It was his encouragement of a “protest” at the Capitol on January 6th that ensured these enraged people would show up. It was his rally just a couple blocks away that got them fired up. And it was his reluctance to call an end to it all that allowed it to progress as far as it did. Frankly, there is nowhere else to lay the blame.
However, none of that has done anything to stop some of his most devout Republicans in office from defending him down to the wire, even if it costs them what was left of their own reputations.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is case in point here.
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
Recently, McCarthy sat down for an interview with the New York Times, in which he once again defended Donald Trump and tried to justify his actions surrounding the violent siege on this nation’s Capitol. To take things a step further still, McCarthy went on to try to justify the ex-president’s ire towards the House Minority Leader himself.
“He goes up and down with his anger,” McCarthy attempted to rationalize to the Times. “He’s mad at everybody one day. He’s mad at me one day.”
The House GOPer initially criticized Trump’s actions surrounding the insurrection, only to walk back his criticism and try to defend the Republican Messiah. Reports even claimed that McCarthy got into a screaming match with the then-president as the riots were underway, pleading and begging Trump to call on his supporters to stand down.
“Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are,” Trump reportedly told the House Minority Leader in the call.
“Who the f— do you think you are talking to?” McCarthy reportedly fired back as Trump’s supporters were knee-deep in the process of storming the Capitol building.
In speaking with the Times McCarthy said he feared that Trump would abandon the Republican party after his loss in the 2020 election if members of the party didn’t appease his theories. He even went so far as to suggest that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wasn’t fulfilling his duties as a GOP leader when he ended his relationship with Donald Trump post-riots.
“Look, I didn’t want him to leave the party,” McCarthy rationalized. “Mitch had stopped talking to him a number of months before. People criticize me for having a relationship with the president. That’s my job.”
McCarthy struck an even deeper, more troubling nerve during a recent interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace when he said Trump “put something out to make sure to stop this. And that’s what he did, he put a video out later.”
Of course, we all know that Trump’s video drew wide criticism for calling the rioters “very special” and telling him he loved them.
You can read the full report here.
Featured image via screen capture
