House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday denied reports that he privately sought to push President Donald Trump to resign in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The California Republican reiterated his allegiance to Mr. Trump after The New York Times published a report on Thursday saying Mr. McCarthy and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told fellow lawmakers that Mr. Trump was responsible for the uprising amid the congressional certification of the 2020 election and that he should no longer be in office.
“The New York Times’ reporting on me is totally false and wrong,” Mr. McCarthy tweeted Thursday. “The past year and a half have proven that our country was better off when President Trump was in the White House and rather than address the real issues facing Americans, the corporate media is more concerned with profiting from manufactured political intrigue from politically-motivated sources.”
Mr. McCarthy and Mr. McConnell privately expressed outrage in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol riot and sought to remove Mr. Trump from office before reversing course later that month, according to The New York Times.
Mr. McConnell declined to comment for the article, according to The New York Times.
Mr. McCarthy allegedly inquired about invoking the 25th Amendment in a call with several top House Republicans two days after the riot before determining that it would not be a viable option.
SEE ALSO: NYT posts recording of McCarthy saying he’d urge Trump to resign
On Jan. 10, 2021, Mr. McCarthy told party leaders that he planned to tell Mr. Trump that the impeachment resolution brought against the president in the House would likely pass and that he “should resign,” though he acknowledged to the group that it was unlikely that Mr. Trump would heed his advice, according to the report. The conversation between Mr. McCarthy and the former president ultimately did not occur.
In a speech three days later, Mr. McCarthy said Mr. Trump “bears responsibility” for the Capitol but stopped short of calling for the president’s resignation.
Mr. McCarthy’s spokesman, Mark Bednar, denied “that the Republican leader told colleagues he would push Mr. Trump to leave office.”
“McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Mr. Bednar said, according to The New York Times.
The news outlet adapted its reporting from a forthcoming book titled “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, which it says “draws on hundreds of interviews with lawmakers and officials.”
Mr. McCarthy accused the authors of not seeking comment before including the accounts in the book.
“It comes as no surprise that the corporate media is obsessed with doing everything it can to further a liberal agenda,” he said. “This promotional book tour is no different.”
Correction: A previous version of this story included a misspelling of the last name of McCarthy spokesman Mark Bednar.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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