Kevin McCarthy planned to tell Trump to resign after Capitol riot, book claims
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy planned to tell President Donald Trump to resign in the aftermath of last year’s Capitol riot, saying he’d “had it” with the 45th president, according to a new book.
The anecdote about McCarthy’s exasperation is reported by New York Times scribes Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns in their upcoming book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” which cited hundreds of interviews with lawmakers and other officials.
The book claims the California Republican grew increasingly frustrated with Trump in the days following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, telling fellow Republicans, “I’ve had it with this guy.”
At the time, McCarthy was reportedly very critical of Trump in private, saying his remarks at the “Stop the Steal” rally ahead of the riot “were not right by any shape or any form.” During a call with his colleagues two days after the violence, the top House Republican even faulted the then-president for “inciting people.”
During the same call, McCarthy reportedly raised invoking the 25th Amendment — which lays out a process by which the vice president and members of the cabinet can remove a president from office — but ultimately decided it was not an option.
Two days after that, on Jan. 10, McCarthy told leadership that he planned to call Trump and tell him to resign.
“What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” he said, according to the book. “I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.”
McCarthy reportedly acknowledged that it would be unlikely that Trump would follow his suggestion.
During that same conversation, according to Martin and Burns, McCarthy said he wished social media giants such as Twitter and Facebook would remove the accounts of fellow Republican lawmakers from the sites — as they had done with Trump following the riot.
“We can’t put up with that,” McCarthy reportedly said. “Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?”
Mark Bednar, a spokesman for McCarthy, adamantly denied the allegations, telling the New York Times that “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign” and he “never said that particular members should be removed from Twitter.”
Thursday morning, McCarthy also blasted the report, calling it “totally false and wrong.”
“The New York Times’ reporting on me is totally false and wrong. It comes as no surprise that the corporate media is obsessed with doing everything it can to further a liberal agenda. This promotional book tour is no different. If reporters were interested in truth why would they ask for a comment after the book was printed?” He wrote in a statement?shared on Twitter.?
“The past year and a half?have proven that our country was better off when President Trump was in the White House and rather than address the real issues facing Americans, the corporate media is more concerned with profiting from manufactured political intrigue from politically-motivated sources,” McCarthy continued. “Our country has suffered enough under failed one-party Democrat rule and no amount of media ignorance and bias will stop Americans from delivering a clear message this fall that it is time for change.”?
A?Trump spokesperson?did not immediately respond?to?a?request for comment from The Post.
