.HayesBrown: McConnell and McCarthy could have stopped Trump. And now we can prove it.
in his long-game goals, reshaping the federal judiciary with conservative nominees and overhauling the tax code but otherwise keeping the White House at arm’s length., McCarthy and McConnell fell into full alignment on Trump. In the days immediately following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, both men reportedly expressed the belief that Trump was at fault for the assault and that he couldn’t be allowed to remain in power.
Their backtracking is a display of failed leadership that should be shocking — but it’s actually a reminder of how McCarthy and McConnell got to the top in the first place. The Times’ story was adapted from the coming book “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” by Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin. According to them, McConnell and McCarthy were more forceful in their private denunciations of Trump than they were in public — at least in the first days after the attack.
Burns and Martin on Thursday night provided MSNBC with a recording of a meeting McCarthy held with the House Republican leadership team on Jan. 10, 2021. In the audio clip played on Rachel Maddow's show, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., then the third-ranking member of the GOP caucus, asks McCarthy whether Trump would ever consider stepping down.
"Now, this is one personal fear I have," McCarthy told Cheney."I do not want to get into any conversation about Pence pardoning. Again, the only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign.”