Lordy, There Are More Tapes

Photo courtesy of Yahoo Canada

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) is having a terrible week. On the heels of leaked audio recordings in which he had pledged to other Republican leaders that he would ask former President Donald Trump to resign (he never did), New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin leaked further audio dated January 10, 2021 in which McCarthy and GOP second-in-command Steve Scalise (R-LA) acknowledge the grave threat that radical elements of their party pose and discuss ways to rein them in. 

Specifically, McCarthy and Scalise were concerned that continued comments by extremist members of their caucus could incite violence, even against their own party leadership. They labeled these members as “security risks” while discussing how their incitement could even rise to illegality. The recordings highlight the hypocrisy of the Republican leadership, which privately acknowledged the dangers the radicals posed and pledged to take action against them, yet later publicly backed down and sided with the far-right faction in order to retain their loyalty.

The GOP leaders named names among their chief concerns, all of whom supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the election. At the top of their list were Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Mo Brooks (R-AL). Gaetz had appeared on television attacking anyone critical of Trump, with a specific focus on Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who had already been the target of threats and abuse by Trump’s supporters for her sharp criticisms of the former president. Brooks had given an incendiary speech during the rally at the Ellipse and infamously was reported to have worn body armor to it. 

“He’s putting people in jeopardy,” McCarthy said of Gaetz. “And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.” Scalise added, “It’s potentially illegal what he’s doing.”

Brooks had told the rally-goers on January 6 that it was “the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.” And McCarthy had taken note of the speech, even while indicating concern over what former president Trump had said. “You think the president deserves to be impeached for his comments?” McCarthy asked on the call. “That’s almost something that goes further than what the president said.”

The GOP House leadership concerns covered other members whose comments were highly inflammatory, such as Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Barry Moore (R-AL). McCarthy said, “The country is too crazy. I do not want to look back and think we caused something or we missed something and someone got hurt. I don’t want to play politics with any of that.” He emphasized, “Our members have got to start paying attention to what they say, too, and you can’t put up with that shit.”

But play politics and put up is precisely what McCarthy then did. While McCarthy did plead the next day with his caucus members not to “incite” but rather to “respect one another,” he later went on to stand by some of the most extreme among them, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Paul Gosar (R-AZ), who had been removed from committee assignments for advocating violence against Democrats. McCarthy, in need of their votes to eventually win the speakership, pledged to reinstate them to their committees if the Republicans retake the House in November.

The reaction to the audio recordings from the far-right has been decidedly negative. On Fox News, Tucker Carlson called McCarthy “a puppet of the Democrats” after reporting on the new audio tape. He described McCarthy as “a man who, in private, turns out sounds like an MSNBC contributor.”  Rep. Gaetz issued a blistering statement referring to McCarthy’s and Scalise’s “sniveling calls with Liz Cheney” and labeled it “the behavior of weak men, not leaders.”

McCarthy may discover that his relationship with the far-right of his party is now irreparable, especially as more evidence emerges of his true views about some of his fellow Republicans. If he cannot hope to win their support, he may ultimately calculate that they are no longer worth protecting. This would by no means be a principled move; if McCarthy is known for anything, it is his willingness to place his own political ambitions above his scant principles. As bad facts mounts around the radicals’ deeper involvement in the conspiracy to overturn the election, McCarthy may figure he is better off throwing at least some of them under the bus, especially while there’s still time for other Republicans to step in to represent their districts.

Then again, that would take a bit of courage—something else McCarthy is not considered to possess in large measure.