Top House and Senate Republicans vowed to drive former president Donald Trump out of American politics after he incited a mob to attack the Capitol on 6 January 2021 but backed off their criticisms of the disgraced ex-president out of fear of his supporters, according to a forthcoming book by two New York Times reporters.
“I’ve had it with this guy,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy reportedly said of Mr Trump in the days after a horde of his supporters stormed the House and Senate’s place of business with hopes of stopping the quadrennial certification of electoral college votes that confirmed President Joe Biden as Mr Trump’s successor.
In their book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future, authors Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns report Mr McCarthy as so incensed with the then-president’s conduct that he told associates he would push Mr Trump to resign before the expiration of his term.
Mr McCarthy, who said Mr Trump “bears responsibility” for the mob’s violent conduct in remarks from the House floor, reportedly went further in his criticism of the ex-president in an 8 January phone call with other top House Republicans.
According to Mr Martin and Mr Burns, he said Mr Trump’s behaviour that day had been “atrocious and totally wrong” and directly blamed him for “inciting people” to attack the Capitol two days prior in remarks he said were “not right by any shape or form”.
Two days later, Mr McCarthy reportedly told his leadership team that House Democrats would have enough votes to pass an unprecedented second set of articles of impeachment against Mr Trump and said he would tell Mr Trump to resign once the vote was over.
“What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that and nobody should defend it,” he said, adding that he would tell the then-president: “I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign”.
But no such conversation between Mr McCarthy and Mr Trump ever took place, and was warned by one of his colleagues that Mr Trump’s supporters “go ballistic” any time any Republican criticises Mr Trump in any way and demand that Republicans instead investigate Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton, neither of whom incited a mob to storm the Capitol.
Instead, Mr McCarthy was back at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home by the end of that month, attempting to walk back his tepid prior criticism of the disgraced ex-president.
