House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy can’t escape questions about whether he said he would call on former President Donald Trump to resign.
Speaking from the southern border on Monday, McCarthy repeated his claim he didn’t lie last week when he denied reporting that he called on Trump to resign in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. McCarthy made the trip to South Texas with House Republicans to draw attention to “Biden’s border crisis.” Instead, the embattled leader had to return to answering questions about his reported comments and his relationship with the former president.
“Well, first of all, let me just answer your question, since you don’t want to talk about the border,” McCarthy said when asked if he was lying last week. “The reporter never asked me that question. The reporter came to me the night before he released the book. My understanding was he was saying that I asked President Trump to resign. No, I never did, and that was what I was answering.”
The denial comes after a New York Times report on the new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, alleged that McCarthy told other GOP leadership he would call on Trump to resign.
MCCARTHY AND HOUSE GOP LEAN INTO IMMIGRATION AS ELECTION THEME IN TRIP TO THE BORDER
“If you’re asking now, did I tell my members that were going to ask, ask them. Ask them if I told any of them if I said that to President Trump. The answer is no,” McCarthy said on Monday. “But what’s more important than something that happened 15 months ago on a private conversation with about four other people is what’s happening here right now.”
Though the GOP leader is in Texas to talk about the consequences of the Biden administration repealing Title 42, McCarthy has been plagued with questions about the accuracy of recent reporting and his relationship with Trump.
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McCarthy has publicly denied the reporting, though an audio recording obtained by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow reveals McCarthy telling a group of Republicans on Jan. 10, 2021, that he would recommend Trump’s resignation.
