Conservative blasts GOP leaders who continue to 'shovel their garbage' in Trump’s defense — despite knowing the truth

What Republicans say publicly and what they really think can be two very different things, and there is no greater example than House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Newly released audio from January 10, 2021 shows McCarthy, during a phone conservation with Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, calling for then-President Donald Trump to resign or perhaps be removed from office via the U.S. Constitution’s 25th Amendment — the same McCarthy who later railed against Cheney, demonized her for being a part of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 select committee, and jumped through hoops to stay in Trump’s good graces.

McCarthy’s actions are a perfect example of why Never Trump conservative Amanda Carpenter, who once served as communications director for Sen. Ted Cruz, finds so much to dislike about today’s Republican Party and the MAGA movement. And she slams McCarthy’s “machinations” in a blistering article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on April 28.

“Deny and lie — that was Kevin McCarthy’s initial reaction to last week’s New York Times reporting about how he had privately blamed former President Donald Trump for inciting the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol and was desperate to distance the party from Trump,” Carpenter writes. “McCarthy had to change tacks after the Times produced audio recordings…. It’s not enough to describe McCarthy as a liar who will betray anyone within his vicinity to protect his position atop the MAGA dump. Something is happening on a more disturbing level.”

Carpenter continues, “What’s disorienting about McCarthy’s machinations is that what the House Republican leader is trying to defend and explain away is his temporary display of honesty. After the ugliness and the deaths of the attack on the Capitol, McCarthy — and the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, whose private comments about Trump have also been leaked — came to their senses. McCarthy and McConnell said they were fed up with Trump and remarked how he could be removed, with McConnell asking a reporter about the 25th Amendment and both men discussing impeachment.”

Had Trump been convicted in his second impeachment trial, he would not be able to run for president in 2024. But McCarthy voted against impeaching Trump in the House in 2021, and McConnell later voted “not guilty” in Trump’s second impeachment trial just as he had voted “not guilty” in his first.

“McCarthy and McConnell knew that Donald Trump was bad for their party,” Carpenter emphasizes. “They knew that Trump was bad for the country. They knew that he was to blame for Jan. 6th. And they talked about getting rid of him. Yet neither man publicly called on Trump to resign. Neither man voted to impeach or convict Trump. In public, they attacked the proposal for an independent Jan. 6th commission.”

Carpenter notes the exact words that McCarthy and McConnell privately used in reference to Trump following the January 6, 2021 insurrection. McCarthy’s exact words: “I’ve had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it.” And McConnell’s exact words: “If this isn’t impeachable, I don’t know what is…. The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us.”

Carpenter concludes her article by lamenting that a long list of “Republican officials, members of Congress, and MAGA media personalities” have continued to defend Trump even know they know full well how egregious his actions were following the 2020 election.

“They all knew the truth,” Carpenter writes. “And they kept it quiet, to themselves, so they could go on to whitewash the attack, rehab Trump, and shovel their garbage on all of us.”