‘Kevin is in very good shape’: House Republican shrugs off McCarthy audio controversy

Invoking Trump’s statements on Sunday, McCaul signaled yet again that Republican lawmakers’ response to the controversy would have little to do with the content of McCarthy’s remarks or his lies about the conversations, and would instead be predicated on the reaction the released audio elicited from the former president.

“President Trump said yesterday that he fully supports Kevin McCarthy for speaker, as do I,” McCaul said.

McCarthy, McCaul added, “has worked tirelessly to get the [House] majority back” from Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. “I can tell you, the support in the conference is very strong for him, and this is a little Beltway bubble blip, if you will. I don’t think it’s going to have any long-term consequences.”

McCaul also emphasized the “context” of McCarthy’s remarks in the released audio. “This was literally right after Jan. 6. It was a very dark day. It was a very shocking day. A lot of emotions flying high,” he said.

“What Kevin was doing,” McCaul continued, “was gaming out various options that, ‘Hey, what if [Trump] got impeached in the House and then the Senate convicted? Would it be better for him to resign prior to that?’ But the fact is, he never had that conversation with President Trump.”

POLITICO and other media outlets reported that McCarthy and Trump had a “positive” call last Thursday after the release of the initial audio. However, McCaul did not address a subsequent rift that has emerged between the House minority leader and the former president.

After the release of audio from McCarthy’s call with fellow House Republican leaders on Jan. 10, 2021 — which corroborated an earlier New York Times report and refuted McCarthy’s denial of the Times’ reporting — a second piece of audio showed that McCarthy told his conference in a follow-up call on Jan. 11, 2021, that Trump acknowledged some responsibility for the insurrection.

But Trump rejected that version of events, telling the Journal last Friday: “No, that’s false. I never claimed responsibility.”