House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy appears to have walked himself into a buzzsaw this week, courtesy of the NY Times and some underhanded RINOs.
Tape came to light of McCarthy blasting President Trump over his supposed role in the January 6th “insurrection,” that, as time has gone by, sounds more and more like a set-up orchestrated by members of the FBI and Democratic Congressional leadership. The conversation included McCarthy, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Rep. Liz Cheney, and other Republican leaders. Here’s an excerpt from the NY Times report:
In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the two top Republicans in Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, told associates they believed President Trump was responsible for inciting the deadly riot and vowed to drive him from politics.
Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: “I’ve had it with this guy,” he told a group of Republican leaders, according to an audio recording of the conversation obtained by The New York Times.
Cheney would go on to have another conversation with McCarthy on January 10th, asking him if he thought Trump would accept a resignation in order to avoid another impeachment trial. McCarthy stated that he didn’t think would take him up on the offer, but that he would tell him that he thought he should resign over the incident.
This revelation doesn’t play well for McCarthy, as he has been seen as the front-runner to become Speaker should the GOP retake the House in November. While the tension between McConnell and Trump has been well documented, McCarthy always seemed to be supportive of Trump, a quality that won him a great deal of support against the RINOs in Congress. Now, that ascension might be in jeopardy.
Keep Your Friends Close, but Your Enemies Closer
A few things jump out at me with this little revelation.
The first is the issue over the meeting being recorded. Now, I’ll admit to the fact that I don’t know if it’s standard practice to record meetings like this one that occurred amongst Republican leadership. If it is, then to some degree, if McCarthy truly has been two-faced all this time in his support for Trump, who he truly is has been exposed. The flipside is that he might still be in Trump’s corner, but when he was speaking, he was caught up in the heat of the moment when Congress feared that all those “rioters” who were allowed in by Capitol Police might do them harm, and his emotions got the best of him. Whichever it may be, it’s not a good look.
But what if McCarthy didn’t know the conversation was being recorded? This is where it starts to get tricky over the legality of it all. D.C. Code § 23-542. allows you to record a conversation or phone call if you are a party to the conversation or you get permission from one party to the conversation in advance. What if he foolhardily had believed that it was a private meeting between senior leadership on what to do next, and not intended for public consumption? Emotions were high in the days after January 6th, and McCarthy might have been speaking from an emotional perspective that would only be cleared as more facts about what happened that day came to light.
So the next thing to wonder is what someone hoped to gain by going to the media with this tidbit?
No, I’m not. I know exactly why it was released, for the same reason anything sleazy is done in DC: To take someone out.
But who would have done it? Let’s look at our prime suspects, both of who quickly rushed to be in front of the media to deny any role in the leak.
Suspect No. 1
Steve Scalise, House Minority Whip, the guy who would move up to the role of House Majority Leader if Republicans take the House in November and could conceivably move up to the role of Speaker if McCarthy can’t get the votes from his fellow Republicans. You might remember Scalise from the shooting at the Congressional Baseball Team practice a few years ago, that was committed by an angry, ardent Bernie Sanders supporter while armed with an M-4, a rifle that the media loves to classify as an “assault rifle.” Scalise was badly injured in the shooting, and was fortunate to survive despite the significant blood loss. (Strange, I don’t remember a lot of Democratic outcry and demands for banning “assault rifles” after the Scalise shooting. I guess they don’t care if its Republicans getting shot).
I’m not saying Scalise leaked it to smear McCarthy and get him out of the way, either because he thought he was being disloyal to Trump or in order to make a move on the Speaker position, but it certainly gives him a motive.
Suspect No. 2.
The Girl With Daddy Issues, Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Right out of the gate, if there was a meeting where hostile words about Trump were going to get flung in the heat of the moment, why would you want Cheney anywhere near that meeting? Yeah, I know, she was the No.3 in GOP House leadership, but still. She has a well-documented history of opposing Trump in response to his calling out the Bush/Cheney Administration for getting the US into the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. Her anti-Trump behavior would lead to her being censured, along with fellow RINO Adam Kinzinger, for their votes to impeach President Trump over the January 6th incident. Cheney would go on to gleefully accept a role on Pelosi’s January 6th Kangaroo Court Committee. Her decision to ally herself with Democrat leadership, who moved to impeach a private citizen and never held any kind of official hearings that allowed for defense witnesses, would lead to her being removed from her leadership role in the GOP. It was a move supported by Minority Leader McCarthy. A little revenge in the making with the leak, perhaps? Cheney isn’t going to have the support of her fellow Republicans after choosing to throw her lot in with Pelosi, so there’s no way she’ll be considered for the role of Speaker, but she would probably be very happy to rip it from McCarthy’s grasp.
Trust No One
One of my favorite sci-fi franchises is Star Trek, and my favorite series remains The Next Generation. One of the main reasons I loved the series was because of Patrick Stewart’s portrayal of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Stewart is already a great actor, but he did so much with the role, and created so many iconic moments in the role, that I put him above so many other Star Trek captains (yes, even Kirk).
Now, I get that the lines he spoke were written for him, but the messaging in the way he delivered the lines sold his performance. One of my favorite episodes is a fourth season one, titled “The Drumhead.” Through a chain of events initiated by an engine room explosion on board the Enterprise, Starfleet begins to investigate the matter by way of a determined judge, Admiral Norah Satie, who quickly becomes convinced that the explosion is a conspiracy brought about by a young crewman who hid the fact that he was partially Romulan, a current enemy of the Federation. The judge’s net begins to sweep up everyone in sight, including Captain Picard. But once on the witness stand, Picard delivers a verbal knockout punch to Satie’s case, going so far as to use Admiral Satie’s father’s own words against her, a speech that exposed her pursuit of a conviction as a personal matter rather than a legal matter.
But what really stuck with me is what Picard said to Lt. Worf, his head of security who had been in support of Satie’s crusade until Picard exposed her. The lines were true then, and very true still today:
"Villains Who Twirl Their Mustache Are Easy To Spot. Those Who Clothe Themselves In Good Deeds Are Well-Camouflaged."
Washington is full of individuals who want to clothe themselves in good deeds, who claim to be doing the sleazy, underhanded things they do for the “good of the nation” and to “save democracy.” Maybe that’s why Congress has such a low approval rating amongst average Americans. They’re tired of being lied to and treated like fools who can’t see what’s really going on.
Maybe McCarthy really is disloyal to Trump despite his public persona. Maybe Scalise and Cheney didn’t leak that recording, but they might know who did and felt motivated to see it happen for personal reasons. Either way, it all stinks.
P.S. Isn’t it amazing how quick the media was to jump on this to trash McCarthy, but buried their collective head in the sand for a year and a half over Hunter Biden’s laptop and all the dirt there was on it? It’s almost like they’re biased against Republicans.