House GOP leader says Trump 'goes up and down with his anger' and sometimes targets him
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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is still painting a rosy picture of the Capitol insurrection.
McCarthy made excuses for former President Donald Trump in a New York Times interview.
"He goes up and down with his anger," he said. "He's mad at everybody one day. He's mad at me one day."
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy attempted to justify former President Donald Trump's behavior around the January 6 Capitol siege in a recent interview with The New York Times.
McCarthy also tried to rationalize Trump's ire toward him for not doing more to overturn the result of the 2020 election.
"He goes up and down with his anger," McCarthy told The Times. "He's mad at everybody one day. He's mad at me one day."
McCarthy initially criticized Trump's provocation of the riot but has since defended the former president. CNN reported in February that McCarthy had gotten into a shouting match with Trump over the phone during the storming of the Capitol, pleading with the president to call off the rioters.
"Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are," Trump reportedly said.
"Who the f--- do you think you are talking to?" McCarthy was said to have told Trump.
McCarthy told The Times he'd feared that Trump would abandon the GOP after his election loss if party leaders didn't appease him. He suggested that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wasn't fulfilling his duty as a GOP leader.
"Look, I didn't want him to leave the party," McCarthy said of Trump. "Mitch had stopped talking to him a number of months before. People criticize me for having a relationship with the president. That's my job."
In an interview with the "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace over the weekend, McCarthy struck a different tone on Trump's response to the insurrection, saying Trump had "put something out to make sure to stop this."
"And that's what he did, he put a video out later," McCarthy said.
In that video, Trump called the rioters "very special" and was widely criticized as too sympathetic.
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