New York Times reports that GOPers were saying different things behind the scenes after Jan 6th than they were saying to the public. Reports that Kevin McCarthy said he was going to talk to Trump and tell him to resign. McCarthy releases statement strenuously denying and blaming the corporate media for lying about him. NYT then releases audio tape of McCarthy saying exactly what they reported. He also mentions in the recording that he doesn’t want to talk to Trump about Pence pardoning him. Raises the question, pardon him for what, Kevin?
As if this wasn’t enough, another recording is released that he states that not only does Trump bear responsibility for the 6th due to his words and actions, but states that Trump himself admitted to him that he bears some responsibility for what happened.
Fallout? Clearly GOP will not hold their own accountable, but, how many congresscritters are wracking their brains trying to remember every conversation from that time period and what may have been recorded. NYT has said that there are more tapes.
Does anyone think this will affect the midterms and/or McCarthy’s desperate desire to be speaker? Will the GOP turn on McCarthy?
Nothing worse for a mainstream Republican than being caught on tape being virtuous or honorable in private.
I think nothing will come of it. It’s not like Trump’s behavior or culpability are secrets. They are purposefully ignored, and it appears that that strategy works just fine. Are there potential Trump voters who are influenced by what the New York Times says? Can’t imagine there are many.
My impression is that independents are on net mostly not very politically informed and are totally uninterested in the latest episode of the Trump Show.
But they also are tracking much more closely in polling to the Democrats on a lot of issues than they are to the hardcore GOP base. They may be turning off those types by going so hard after the insane people.
This will make no different on an election level – the GOP won’t gain/lose any seats because of it and McCarthy won’t lose his seat.
It might impact McCarthy’s dream of being Speaker of the House if a “real” Trump fan challenges. Which isn’t to say he’ll lose but it might give him a fight or an embarrassing near loss when the House votes.
I feel like we are going to see many more of these revelations from now until the elections. If the GOPers are constantly having to deny and defend against their own previous recorded words it might affect their ability to be on offense. We shall see, but I have a feeling this is going to get much much worse for them.
Apparently, Trump spoke with McCarthy last night and wasn’t upset. Trump actually saw the fact that McCarthy didn’t follow through on asking him to resign as a sign of Trump’s dominance over the GOP.
I’ll note that the number of competitive districts right now is pretty close to zero. You could run a racoon in a MAGA hat in many of these and it would win over a qualified and well-spoken Democrat*. That some GOP members might have to make embarrassing backtracks on their words from a couple years ago might affect which Republican wins the seat but it won’t affect which party wins the seat.
*Also the reverse in many districts but the question is whether this will impact the expected GOP win
I don’t know, we shall see what happens. I do think this is only the first shoe to drop and we’re talking about the shoes of a centipede. Death of a thousand cuts from now until November. That’s what I’m hoping anyway. If there’s one person that has the political Machiavellian chops to do it, it’s the daughter of Dick “Darth Vader” Cheney.
They had an interesting observation at the end, pointing out that it’s a meaningless time to drop this on the world. By election day, it will be a long-forgotten event that the two gentlemen involved have both moved on from.
It would be interesting if there was a way to determine whose voice in the clip had the best quality in the record. It might be a leak by McCarthy himself - feeling confident that others had recorded it as well - to clear it out when he wants to rather than when his opponents would want it.
More importantly was that McCarthy went to visit Trump sometime in January 2021, with general reporting saying that he was going to tell him that the jig was up, and then emerged from Mar-a-Lago the most devout Trump fanatic ever seen.
I can’t imagine anything that Trump would have had to offer the guy to have produced such a turnaround, after almost getting McCarthy killed, in terms of things like promising him greater political success, financial backers, money, etc. It really narrows it down to blackmail material.
I don’t know what Trump has on McCarthy but we can be fairly confident that McCarthy already told Trump what he was thinking and then Trump turned around and showed him a tape - and that was that.
I am deeply curious what McCarthy did that’s worth sucking it up to Donald J Trump so mightily.
Your conspiracy theories aren’t needed here. There was enough time for McCarthy to see that base was pro-insurrection. Kevin knows which way the wind is blowing. No need for a more complicated explanation than that.
I’m not too surprised by this. In order for Trump to get mad at McCarthy, there would have to be something to get mad at him about, which would require that Trump had done something bad enough that a congressional member of his own party thought that he should resign. Far better to pretend that this never happened.
Now its possible that this is for show and Trump is internally seething at McCarthy, but Trump, in spite of being a compulive liar, Trump ironically has never been good at subterfuge. So I think its legit.
Trump was sending the Club for Growth president texts saying “Go fuck yourself” for not changing his OH senate endorsement a day after Trump endorsed Vance so, yeah, this isn’t a guy who plays stuff close to the chest when he’s feeling pissy.
