McConnell called Trump a stupid narcissist but will vote for him anyway

Proving that a broken clock is right twice a day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell trashed former President Donald Trump in private following the 2020 election, calling Trump “stupid,” a “narcissist,” and a “despicable human being,” according to a soon-to-be-released biography of the Kentucky Republican.

McConnell’s frank assessments of the leader of the GOP were made in recorded diaries given to Michael Tackett, the Associated Press deputy Washington bureau chief, for his new McConnell biography titled “The Price of Power.” According to publisher Simon & Schuster, it’s based on “thousands of pages of archival materials, letters, and more than 100 interviews with associates, colleagues, and McConnell himself.”

In those diaries, McConnell said “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump was out of the White House, adding that Trump’s 2020 loss “only underscores the good judgment of the American people.”

"They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him," McConnell said.

Yet despite McConnell’s disdain for Trump, he gave up on the best opportunity to rid his party and the country of the man he called a liar when he voted against convicting Trump for inciting the violent and deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Had McConnell worked to rally the Republican senators he leads to vote to convict Trump on the single impeachment charge of inciting insurrection, Trump could have been barred from running for office again in the future. McConnell’s decision to let Trump slide helped pave the way for Trump to wage his current comeback bid. Trump has vowed to destabilize American democracy by threatening to jail his political enemies and using the military to go after American citizens whom he described as “the enemy from within.” 

What’s more, even though McConnell thinks Trump is “stupid” and a “despicable human being,” he endorsed Trump in his 2024 comeback bid, saying in March: “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States. It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support.”

McConnell endorsed Trump because he is trying to prevent what he called his “worst nightmare” which he described as a Democratic sweep of the White House, the House, and the Senate. 

While McConnell has stuck by Trump, a number of other Republicans have said they won’t be voting for him and instead endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, declaring that they are putting “country over party.”

Those Republicans include: former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Wyoming Rep Liz Cheney; former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois; former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general in former President George W. Bush’s administration; and former Trump White House aides Cassidy Hutchinson, Stephanie Grisham, and Olivia Troye, among others.

Harris and her campaign have been reaching out to Republicans, hoping that their defections from Trump could be decisive in what’s currently predicted to be a toss-up election in November.

She held a rally on Wednesday in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with over 100 Republicans who are supporting her campaign. Two of those Republicans, Bob and Kristina Lange, spoke at the event, describing themselves as lifelong Republicans who voted for Trump. 

“Never in a million years did either of us think that we'd be standing here supporting a Democrat. But we've had enough. We've had enough,” Kristina Lange said at the event.

If only McConnell had as much courage as the Langes. 

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Cheney’s jab at ‘Putin wing’ of the Republican Party is an electoral masterstroke … for Democrats

Back in the before times, Democrats loved to hate former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, partly because of their pointed political disagreements with her but also because she was actually a damn good messenger.

But Cheney’s politics aside, he messaging prowess worked to Democrats' advantage during the Jan. 6 select committee hearings last year: Cheney was always mission-driven, on point, and in command of the facts. The committee she helped lead as vice chair proved to be the most consequential congressional spectacle in decades, arguably helping to deal Republicans a blow at the ballot box last November and spurring a Justice Department inquiry into Donald Trump's role in the insurrection.

Now Cheney is taking up a new role as we barrel toward another election in which Trump appears poised to top the GOP ticket. Instead of littering the Republican primary as another doomed Trump detractor, Cheney is dropping incisive anti-Trump messages into the political ether.

Cheney's latest addition to the political landscape came Tuesday, when she sought to separate old-guard Republican defense hawks from newfangled MAGA isolationists.  

"Putin has now officially endorsed the Putin-wing of the Republican Party," Cheney tweeted over an AP News article about Russian President Vladimir Putin blasting the criminal indictments of Trump as "rotten" politically motivated prosecutions.

"Putin Republicans & their enablers will end up on the ash heap of history," continued Cheney. "Patriotic Americans in both parties who believe in the values of liberal democracy will make sure of it."

Putin has now officially endorsed the Putin-wing of the Republican Party. Putin Republicans & their enablers will end up on the ash heap of history. Patriotic Americans in both parties who believe in the values of liberal democracy will make sure of it. https://t.co/XsJN7b6fPs

— Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) September 12, 2023

Cheney's rallying cry against "Putin Republicans" seeks to make common cause among a politically divergent group of establishment Republicans and Democrats who are united in their support for Ukraine, rejection of Trump, and disdain for Putin.

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Rhetorically speaking, "Putin Republicans" and "Putin wing" of the Republican Party are also sticky phrases that could potentially catch on, helping to create a definitive us (democracy stalwarts) versus them (Trump/Putin backers) dynamic.

MAGA Republicans hate Cheney with a white-hot rage and reveled along with Trump in throwing her out on her ear last year. But her name still holds political sway with a very narrow slice of the Republican Party—perhaps some 5% or so—and that's still a meaningful chunk of voters in a general election, even if it's a pittance in the primary.

Democrats would be smart to take note of Cheney's messaging and even take it up, reinforcing it. She is skillfully helping to create a permission structure for old-guard Republicans to help reelect Joe Biden next year, even if they don't particularly like him.

It's a device Biden loves, as he has routinely shied away from painting Republican voters with such a broad brush that he alienates all of them.

Some of those conventional Republican voters could very well be the difference between a one-term presidency and Biden's successful reelection next year.

Morning Digest: Democratic ads hit extreme anti-choice GOP candidates with their own words

The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, Daniel Donner, and Cara Zelaya, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.

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Tennessee held its primary Thursday, and you can find the results here. We’ll have a recap in our next Digest.

Leading Off

Abortion: We wondered shortly after Roe v. Wade was overturned in late June if Democratic campaigns would continue to focus hard on abortion rights this cycle, and the answer is a resounding yes. Team Blue is airing new commercials in the races for Arizona's U.S. Senate seat and governor of Michigan that each use footage of the newly minted Republican nominees, Blake Masters and Tudor Dixon, expressing extreme anti-choice views, while Team Blue has also kept up the offensive in other races across the country.

We'll start in Arizona, where Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly quickly opens with clips of Masters proclaiming, "I think Roe v. Wade was wrong. It's always been wrong … It's a religious sacrifice to these people, I think it's demonic." The audience later hears the Republican argue, "The federal government needs to step in and say no state can permit abortion … You make it illegal and you punish the doctors."

Kelly's allies at Senate Majority PAC are also hammering Masters on abortion rights in a new $1.2 million ad campaign, though they're adopting a different messaging strategy. The commercial stars a woman identified as Brianna who explains, "Three years ago, I had an ectopic pregnancy, and if I didn't make it into the OR within a couple minutes, I was going to bleed out and die." She continues, "But according to Blake Masters, that's just too bad. He wants to ban all abortions, even in cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother." Brianna ends by saying that if Masters had his way, her three children would have lost their mother.

Meanwhile in Michigan, a DGA-backed group called Put Michigan First makes use of a debate clip where Dixon answers in the negative when asked, "Are you for the exemptions for rape and incest?" The spot then plays footage of podcaster Charlie LeDuff asking the candidate, "The question would be like, a 14-year-old who, let's say, is a victim of abuse by an uncle, you're saying carry that?" Dixon responds, "Yeah, perfect example." When Dixon is asked in an interview with MIRS if she'd provide an exception for "health of the mother," she replies, "No exceptions."

Over in Virginia's 2nd Congressional District, Democratic Rep. Elaine Luria's commercial takes Republican state Sen. Jen Kiggans to task for celebrating when Roe was overturned. In Georgia, Democrat Stacey Abrams is airing a spot where several women warn that, under a law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, they could be "investigated and imprisoned for a miscarriage."

And back in Arizona, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Katie Hobbs proclaims she'll "protect a woman's right to choose, fix our schools, and lower costs." Other recent Hobbs ads also attack each of the GOP frontrunners, former TV news anchor Kari Lake and Board of Regents member Karrin Taylor Robson, for opposing abortion rights. (Hobbs began airing her ads as Tuesday's GOP primary was still too close to call.)

Republicans, by contrast, have been reluctant to discuss abortion at all in their general election commercials even before this week's big defeat for anti-choice forces in Kansas. One notable exception came last month when Mark Ronchetti, who is Team Red's nominee for governor of New Mexico, argued that his policy to restrict the procedure to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy was reasonable and that Democratic incumbent Michelle Lujan Grisham was "extreme" for supporting "abortion up to birth."

Most Republicans, though, remain content to avoid the topic altogether. Masters, for his part, is spending at least $650,000 on an opening general election ad campaign starring his wife, who says he's running because he loves the country and the state. (Inside Elections' Jacob Rubashkin points out that Masters just days ago was campaigning as a conservative border warrior who warned, "There's a genocide happening in America.") The RGA, meanwhile, is attacking Hobbs on border security―but not abortion.

Senate

AZ-Sen: Republican Blake Masters' allies at Saving Arizona PAC have dusted off a mid-July internal from Fabrizio, Lee & Associates that shows him trailing Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly 49-44, which is identical to what OnMessage Inc. found in a more recent survey for another conservative group. Both firms are releasing these unfavorable numbers to argue that the political climate will be a big asset to Masters.

Governors

FL-Gov: St. Pete Polls' newest survey for Florida Politics finds Rep. Charlie Crist beating Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried in a 56-24 landslide in the first poll we've seen in nearly a month for the Aug. 23 Democratic primary.

Fried's allied PAC, meanwhile, is running the first negative commercial of the race, and it goes after Crist for appointing an "anti-choice extremist" to the state Supreme Court when he was Florida's Republican governor. The spot also features footage from this year of Crist saying, "I'm still pro-life," though it doesn't include him continuing, "meaning I'm for life. I hope most people are." (Crist used that same interview to express his regret over his anti-abortion judicial picks.) Politico says the spot is airing in the Orlando market, which covers about 20% of the state.

RI-Gov: Gov. Dan McKee has secured an endorsement from RI Council 94, which is Rhode Island's largest state employee union, for the Sept. 13 Democratic primary. Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, meanwhile, has earned the backing of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, which is one of the state's two teachers unions: The other, the NEA, is for McKee.

WI-Gov: Wealthy businessman Tim Michels said just one month ago that "[w]hen politicians are shocked to find themselves losing, they go negative out of desperation," but you can probably guess what he's now doing days ahead of Tuesday's Republican primary. Yep, the Trump-endorsed candidate is airing his first attack ad against former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, whom Michels' narrator dubs "the ultimate Madison insider" and a "[p]ro-China, pro-amnesty, anti-Trump politician."

Kleefisch and her allies went on the offensive in early July, with the former lieutenant governor arguing that Michels "pushed for years to raise our gas tax while getting rich from massive government contracts." That prompted Michels to put out a statement bemoaning that "it is sad that the former Lieutenant Governor has decided to go negative by falling in line with politics as usual."

The anti-tax Club for Growth was all too happy to attack Kleefisch last month, but Michels himself insisted as recently as Monday that he was still taking the high road. "I've never had a negative ad run by my campaign in this race," he said, explaining, "And the reason is we've never had a single piece of business by talking bad about the competition." Michels added, "And the reason is, it's just bad policy, and if you get a reputation of doing that in my industry … people immediately disrespect you."

So why did Michels decide to court disrespect and try out some "bad policy" just days later? Kleefisch's team, of course, told the Associated Press' Scott Bauer that this about-face proves their candidate "has all the momentum." Michels' own spokesperson, though, also hinted that they felt the ads were doing them some real damage, arguing, "When your opponent does that for weeks on end, it can't go unanswered forever."

Unfortunately, we have almost no recent polling to indicate if either of the candidates campaigning to take on Democratic Gov. Tony Evers are going "negative out of desperation." The one and only survey we've seen in the last month was a mid-July internal for a pro-Michels group that had him up 43-35, numbers that are quite dusty now.

Whatever the case, things may get a whole lot uglier on Friday when Trump, who has zero qualms about "talking bad about the competition," holds his pre-primary rally in Waukesha County. (You may have heard a few jokes about it if you've ever logged onto Twitter in the last decade.) We got a taste for Trump's dislike of the former lieutenant last month when the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Daniel Bice reported that Trump used his April meeting with Michels to bring up a 2019 picture of Kleefisch's daughter going to her high school prom with the son of state Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn.

The elder Hagedorn went straight to the MAGA doghouse the next year when he provided the crucial vote to stop Trump's attempts to steal the election, and Bice reports that he was upset about the photo of the two teenagers. Kleefisch, who has trashed the justice herself, responded by declaring, "I'm outraged my opponent would use a photo of my underage daughter for political ammunition in order to score an endorsement." However, unnamed sources told Bice that Michels didn't actually know about the picture before Trump himself raised the topic ahead of his "little rant" against Brian Hagedorn.  

House

CO-03: Democrat Adam Frisch has released an internal from Keating Research that shows him trailing far-right freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert 49-42 in a western Colorado seat that Trump would have taken by a similar 53-45 spread.

FL-10: Both the state AFL-CIO and the Florida Education Association have endorsed gun safety activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost ahead of the busy Democratic primary on Aug. 23.

FL-13: The Club for Growth is airing what appears to be the first negative TV ad of the Aug. 23 GOP primary, and its piece rips Kevin Hayslett as a "trial lawyer" who was disloyal to Donald Trump in 2016. The broadside comes days after Hayslett released an internal that showed him trailing 2020 nominee Anna Paulina Luna, whom both the Club and Trump are supporting, only 36-34.

The narrator informs the audience, "While Hillary's campaign called Trump a fraud, Hayslett declared it was 'ludicrous' Trump had not released his tax records." The commercial concludes that Hayslett, whose offense doesn't seem to have gone further than Facebook posts, is "guilty of aiding and abetting the Democrats to assault Donald Trump."

Hayslett himself launched his own negative spot around the same time arguing that it's Luna who's the GOP heretic. The audience is treated to footage of Luna saying, "I always agreed with President Obama's immigration policies," and favoring a "pathway to citizenship."

IN-02: A special election will take place this year to succeed Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski, who died in a car crash on Wednesday, though it’s not yet clear when it will be and how the GOP nominee will be chosen. Almost everyone expects the special to coincide with the Nov. 8 general election, but it’s up to Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb to set the date. Trump carried the existing version of this northern Indiana seat 59-39, while he took the redrawn version by a similar 60-37 spread.

It will be up to the local GOP leadership to choose a new nominee for the special and regular two-year term, and Fox’s Chad Pergram explains that state law requires that any vacancy on the ballot “shall be filled by appointment by the district chairman of the political party.” The chair of the 2nd District Republican Party, though, was Zach Potts, a Walorski aide who was also killed in the collision.

MN-03: Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips is out with a poll from GQR giving him a hefty 57-36 edge over Navy veteran Tom Weiler, who has next week's Republican primary to himself. Biden would have carried this suburban Twin Cities constituency 59-39, though Weiler's allies are hoping that a GOP wave could reverse the dramatic Trump-era gains Democrats made in this once-swingy area.

MN-05: Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, whose city makes up about 60% of this constituency, has endorsed former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels' bid against Rep. Ilhan Omar in next week's Democratic primary. Omar backed the mayor's two main rivals in last year's instant runoff race, though Frey ended up winning re-election convincingly. Frey and Samuels also defeated a 2021 ballot measure that would have replaced the Minneapolis Police Department with a Department of Public Safety, while Omar supported the "Yes" side.

NY-10: Impact Research's internal for attorney Dan Goldman shows him leading Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou 18-16 in the packed Aug. 23 Democratic primary, with New York City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera and 17th District Rep. Mondaire Jones at 14% and 10%, respectively. Other polls have found different candidates ahead, but they all agree with Impact that a hefty plurality are undecided. 

NY-16: Former Rep. Eliot Engel has endorsed Westchester County Legislator Vedat Gashi's Democratic primary campaign against the man who unseated him two years ago, freshman Rep. Jamaal Bowman. Gashi also earned the backing of Nita Lowey who, unlike Engel, left the House voluntarily last year after decades of service. About three-quarters of this seat's denizens live in the old 16th District where Bowman upset Engel, while the balance reside in Lowey's old turf.

NY-23: Barry Zeplowitz and Associates has conducted a survey that gives state GOP chair Nick Langworthy a 39-37 edge over 2010 gubernatorial nominee Carl Paladino in this month's primary, which is dramatically different from Paladino's 54-24 lead in his own mid-July internal from WPA Intelligence. Veteran pollster Barry Zeplowitz said he conducted this new poll independently, though Paladino quickly called foul and attacked Zeplowitz for donating $99 to his rival.

"So because I gave $99 to a candidate who asked and gave nothing to a second candidate who did not, the poll is a complete scam?" Zeplowitz asked rhetorically, adding, "Mr. Paladino should be thanking me for giving his campaign a heads-up that he is involved in a toss-up. Let the best man win."

WY-AL: Rep. Liz Cheney's newest commercial for the Aug. 16 GOP primary opens with her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, proclaiming, "In our nation's 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump." Every poll that's been released shows the younger Cheney badly losing to Trump's pick, attorney Harriet Hageman, in what was the Trumpiest state in the nation in both 2016 and 2020.  

Prosecutors

Hennepin County, MN Attorney: Seven candidates are competing in next week's officially nonpartisan primary to replace retiring incumbent Mike Freeman as the top prosecutor in Minnesota's largest county, but campaign finance reports show that only three of them have access to a serious amount of money. The two contenders with the most votes will advance to the November general election.

The top fundraiser through July 25 by far was state House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler, who took in $230,000 and has several unions on his side. Former Hennepin County Chief Public Defender Mary Moriarty raised a smaller $140,000, but she sports high-profile endorsements from local Rep. Ilhan Omar, Attorney General Keith Ellison, and the state Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party.

Retired judge Martha Holton Dimick, finally, hauled in a similar $130,000; Dimick, who would be the state's first Black county attorney, has the backing of Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey as well as the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association.

San Francisco, CA District Attorney: Former District Attorney Chesa Boudin said Thursday that he would not compete in this fall's instant-runoff special election to regain the post he lost in a June recall. His announcement came the same week that attorney Joe Alioto Veronese launched a bid to take on incumbent Brooke Jenkins, a recall leader whom Mayor London Breed appointed to replace Boudin last month.

Alioto Veronese is the grandson of the late Mayor Joseph Alioto, who served from 1968 to 1976; his mother, Angela Alioto Veronese, ran in the 2018 special election for mayor but took a distant fourth against Breed. The younger Alioto Veronese previously served as a California criminal justice commissioner and member of the city's police and fire commissions, but he doesn't appear to have run for office before now.

Under the city's current law, the district attorney's post would be on the ballot again in 2023 for a full four-year term. However, voters this fall will decide on a measure that would move the city's next set of local elections to 2024 and keep them in presidential cycles going forward.

Election Recaps

WA-03: The Associated Press on Wednesday evening called the first spot in the previous day's top-two primary for Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, who notched 31%, but it remains unclear which Republican she'll face. With 158,000 votes counted, which the AP estimates is 83% of the total, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler leads Trump-backed Army veteran Joe Kent by a narrow 23-22. The five Republican candidates on the ballot are taking a combined 66% of the vote compared to 33% for Democrats in this 51-46 Trump seat, though Herrera Beutler may have won some support from Democratic voters after voting for impeachment.

Maricopa County, AZ Attorney: Former City of Goodyear Prosecutor Gina Godbehere has conceded Tuesday's Republican primary to appointed incumbent Rachel Mitchell, who leads her 58-42. (The margin may shift as more votes are tabulated.) Both candidates were competing to succeed Allister Adel, a fellow Republican who resigned in March and died the next month.

Mitchell will now go up against Democrat Julie Gunnigle, who lost to Adel 51-49 in 2020, in a special election for the final two years of the term. This post will be up for a regular four-year term in 2024.

Montgomery County, MD Executive: It’s been more than two weeks since the July 19 Democratic primary, but we still don’t know who won the nomination to lead this populous and reliably blue county. With 132,000 ballots counted, incumbent Marc Elrich leads wealthy businessman David Blair 39.3-39.2―a margin of 154 votes.

Election officials say that there are about 4,000 mail-in votes left to tabulate as well as 7,250 provisional ballots to sort through, and that they’re aiming to certify the results by Aug. 12. The second-place candidate would then have three days to request a recount, which is what happened in the 2018 contest between these very two candidates: Elrich ultimately beat Blair by 77 votes four years ago.

P.S. This dragged-out count came about because Republican Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed a measure that would have allowed mail-in ballots to be processed ahead of Election Day. The author of that bill is state Sen. Cheryl Kagan, a Democrat who represents part of Montgomery County; Kagan has called for the state to change its policies to prevent another major delay this November.

Grab Bag

Where Are They Now?: Wanda Vázquez, who became governor of Puerto Rico in 2019 after her predecessor resigned in disgrace, was indicted Thursday on bribery charges related to her unsuccessful 2020 campaign for a full term. Vázquez, who is affiliated with both the GOP and the pro-statehood New Progressive Party (PNP), responded by proclaiming her innocence.

Federal prosecutors allege that Vázquez fired the head of Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions and appointed a new one loyal to a campaign donor. Vázquez badly lost the PNP primary 58-42 to Pedro Pierluisi, who prevailed in a close general election.

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Jan. 6 committee may have another ‘invitation’ for Kevin McCarthy

The Jan. 6 committee is not done with Kevin McCarthy. 

The leader of Republicans in the House of Representatives and longtime ally to former President Donald Trump will soon find himself on the receiving end of another request to appear before the panel investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

McCarthy was never formally subpoenaed by the committee, but investigators asked that he cooperate voluntarily this January. His refusal to come forward has simmered as options have been explored by the committee behind the scenes on how to go about navigating the legal thicket that is demanding another member of Congress testify under subpoena. 

“We’ve invited him to come earlier before the latest revelation that was reported on tapes. So in all probability, he will be issued another invitation to come just like some other members,” Jan. 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters Tuesday. 

That decision will be made “soon,” Thompson added.

RELATED STORY: The Jan. 6 committee wants you, Kevin McCarthy

Audio recordings of McCarthy obtained by The New York Times over this week have exposed the Republican as a leader on edge, fearful, and prepared to call on Trump to resign after Jan. 6 because he believed the president had some responsibility for the attack. McCarthy has denied making the comments.

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

But in a phone call four days after the insurrection, McCarthy is reportedly heard openly worrying to GOP leadership about the inflammatory remarks pouring out from fellow lawmakers like Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Matt Gaetz of Florida—among others—who supported Trump’s push to overturn the election. 

Brooks took the stage at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and called on the president’s supporters to “fight like hell” before they descended on the Capitol. Gaetz used the aftermath of the attack to lash out at fellow Republicans critical of Trump, including Liz Cheney, who is now the Jan. 6 committee vice chair. 

“The other thing I want to bring up and I’m making some phone calls to some members, I just got something sent now about … Matt Gaetz where he’s calling peoples names out … this is serious stuff people are doing that has to stop,” McCarthy said.

“I’m calling Gaetz, I’m explaining to him, I don't know necessarily what to say but I’m going to have some other people call him too … This is serious shit, to cut this out,” McCarthy said.

When Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana pointed out to McCarthy that Gaetz’s remarks bordered on illegality, the House leader acknowledged again the severity of the situation. 

“Well, he’s putting people in jeopardy, he doesn't need to be doing this. we saw what people would do in the Capitol and these people came prepared well with everything else,” McCarthy said.

Gaetz has retreated from McCarthy since the recordings were published. In a statement posted on Twitter, the congressman—who is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice—defended his comments and called McCarthy and Scalise “weak men.”

Gaetz said he was “protecting President Trump from impeachment” while the House GOP leader was defending Rep. Adam Kinzinger and “protecting Liz Cheney from criticism.”

Gaetz has not yet been asked to appear before the Jan. 6 committee thus far—at least not publicly. A spokesman for the committee did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. Gaetz also did not immediately return a request for comment to Daily Kos.

Besides McCarthy, the committee has previously issued requests for records and deposition to Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. Both Republicans have refused to appear voluntarily. 

Details about Jordan and Perry’s conduct in the runup to Jan. 6 have been made more transparent with the recent publication of text messages sent to Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mark Meadows. 

More than a month after the 2020 election, Perry texted Meadows frantically in search of guidance as the administration sought a path to overturn the election results. 

“Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!” Perry wrote on Dec. 26. 

Perry wasn’t just looking for guidance, however—he was also offering some of his own.

It was Perry who spurred Meadows to meet with Jeffrey Clark, an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice on board with Trump’s claims of rampant election fraud.

According to the testimony that former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Trump not only pushed the Department of Justice to discredit the election results, but it was Clark who led a charge to have him ousted so the scheme could be better controlled.

Clark pleaded the Fifth Amendment over 100 times when he finally sat with members of the committee in February following weeks of delays. 

The texts show Perrry also spewed conspiracy theories to Meadows about rigged voting machines and accused the CIA of a cover-up. 

As for Jordan, White House call logs show the Ohio Republican spoke with Trump for roughly 10 minutes on Jan. 6. A text message obtained by the committee and made public in December also appeared to show Jordan sharing legal arguments in support of an unconstitutional pressure campaign leveled at then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop the count.

Jordan said the text was a forward from former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz, but it is not clear whether the text was in fact a forward or why it was sent at all, based on what the committee released.

Jordan has been notoriously inconsistent when fielding questions about his engagement with Trump on Jan. 6. 

Both he and Perry voted against the formation of the select committee investigating the attempted overthrow. Both now sit on a shadow committee purporting to analyze the events of Jan. 6.

RELATED STORY: White House Jan. 6 call log confirms what Jim Jordan couldn’t—or wouldn’t

When Thompson told reporters Tuesday that another invitation was due soon for McCarthy, the Mississippi Democrat also did not rule out issuing “invites” to other members of Congress. 

“We’ll make a decision on any others before the week is out,” Thompson told The Hill

When asked if he would skip the second invite for McCarthy and move straight to a subpoena, Thompson said it was “a consideration.” 

According to the Times, in the Jan. 10 GOP leadership call where McCarthy lamented the remarks from Gaetz and Brooks, Cheney was on the line too and raised concerns about Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado publicly tweeting about the movement of lawmakers as they were under siege. 

In other clips, McCarthy is heard asking about whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was involved in any remarks at the Ellipse on Jan. 6. She did not speak at the rally that morning but had spent weeks advocating for Trump and promoting the lie that the election was stolen by Democrats.  

McCarthy is gunning to become speaker of the House should Republicans take the majority. It has been a long-awaited goal for the legislator and may explain the increasingly light touch he has employed with some of the most extreme members in the House and in particular those on the uber conservative House Freedom Caucus. 

When Rep. Paul Gosar was censured and removed from his committees for posting an animated video depicting the murder of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, McCarthy called it an “abuse of power” inflicted by “one-party rule.” 

A month after the insurrection, when Greene posted a sign outside of her Capitol Hill office targeting a fellow lawmaker who is the parent of a transgender child, McCarthy was quiet. 

A few months later in May 2021, when Greene was reportedly stalking Ocasio-Cortez through the halls of Congress and harassing her, McCarthy was quiet.

When Greene spewed conspiracy theories on social media about everything from “staged” school shootings to questioning whether a plane actually hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 to antisemitic rhetoric, she was booted off her committee assignments. 

McCarthy said he was opposed to Greene’s remarks but said in the same breath that her ouster was a Democrat “power grab” and called it “dangerous.” 

When both Gosar and Greene attended a conference organized by white nationalists this February, McCarthy said he spoke to both lawmakers but wouldn’t divulge what, if any, the repercussions might be.  

According to CNN, during a House GOP conference meeting Wednesday morning, McCarthy said his remarks on the calls were merely him “floating scenarios about Trump’s future after Jan. 6.”

He reportedly received a standing ovation.

NEW: Kevin McCarthy just gave a full throated defense of the Nyt tapes during a House GOP conference this morning, saying he was just floating scenarios about Trump’s future after Jan 6, and received a standing ovation, per multiple sources in the room.

— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) April 27, 2022

McCarthy did not respond to multiple requests for comment by Daily Kos.

Jan. 6 committee wrestling with criminal referral for Trump

The Jan. 6 committee has amassed so much evidence in the nearly 500 days since Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that congressional investigators are weighing a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for the twice-impeached ex-president. 

Whether they ultimately issue that referral is a question that hangs heavy in the air over the probe and members are internally split on the path ahead, according to a report by The New York Times from Sunday. 

Nonetheless, after some 800 interviews and extensive cooperation from those orbiting the Trump White House and campaign in the runup to Jan. 6,  the committee’s bipartisan leadership has said the evidence strongly indicates Trump illegally obstructed Congress—again—and committed fraud against the American people as he and those who sought to keep him in power worked to pull off a scheme that hinged on his lies about the outcome of the 2020 election.

During an interview on CNN following the Times report, committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Republican ousted from GOP leadership for her participation in the probe, brushed off the notion that division was stewing among members. 

The sources in the Times said some lawmakers on the committee are at odds over whether it is actually necessary to throw their weight behind a criminal referral for the ex-president to the Department of Justice. 

That referral is mostly symbolic as the committee has acknowledged countless times over the last year in court and to the press that it simply does not have the authority to prosecute Trump.

A criminal referral could also potentially trigger a lengthy series of delay tactics from Trump or his allies in Congress that would draw time and resources away from key areas of the probe. 

From the Times:

The members and aides who were reluctant to support a referral contended that making one would create the appearance that Mr. Garland was investigating Mr. Trump at the behest of a Democratic Congress and that if the committee could avoid that perception it should, the people said.

This assessment on optics reflects, at least in part, the scars left in Washington from the deeply contentious and circus-like atmosphere created in the wake of Trump’s first impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. 

Prosecution in this case, as a matter of constitutional fact, must be left to the proper—and separate—channels at the Department of Justice.

To that end, over the sprawl of its inquiry the select committee has issued subpoenas aplenty and filed lawsuits to claw back or expose various records from integral Trump White House and campaign officials. In this process, it has left a trail of morsels for the Department of Justice to consider as that department conducts its own separate and massive review of Jan. 6.

Take the case of John Eastman, the Trump attorney who wrote a memo proposing how to overturn the election through an unconstitutional pressure strategy involving former Vice President Mike Pence. 

RELATED STORY: Trump led a criminal conspiracy, Jan. 6 lawyers say in court

When a federal judge in California finally reviewed the emails Eastman sought to keep away from the committee during his tenure at Chapman University, the judge found information that led him to believe Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” engaged in a federal crime. 

The ruling was a boon for transparency overall, to be sure, but it also provided the Department of Justice with something deeply important, at least in the eyes of some members of the Jan. 6 committee: A federal judge’s ruling, they reportedly said, would simply mean more in the eyes of Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

Once the committee completes its investigation, it will issue a report on its complete findings and recommendations. That report alone may have so much information and relevant evidence in it that the Department of Justice could use it as its guide to bring criminal charges. 

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who previously served on both impeachment inquiries for Trump and for former President Bill Clinton, now sits on the Jan. 6 probe. She is of the opinion that a criminal referral isn’t the end all be all to accountability or justice. 

When asked whether the select committee would issue a criminal referral for Trump, Lofgren told the Times, “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.”

“It doesn’t have a legal impact,” Lofgren said. 

Other panel members like Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia have been insistent, however, that it is about the principle of the matter, political ramifications of the criminal referral be damned. 

“This committee, our purpose is legislative and oversight, but if in the course of our investigation we find that criminal activity has occurred, I think it’s our responsibility to refer that to the Department of Justice,” Luria recently told MSNBC. 

This weekend, Cheney told CNN “there’s not really a dispute on the committee” over the referral and emphasized that members are working in a “really collaborative way.” 

The committee, reportedly, has not yet met formally to discuss issuing a referral to the Department of Justice for Trump, however, and there may not be a meeting in the mix any time soon. 

Public hearings are expected this summer, potentially in May and June, and according to committee member and Rep. Pete Aguilar, the probe is not interested in “presupposing” what will be in its final report. 

As of April 6, the Department of Justice has made nearly 800 arrests in its investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.