House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy sought to head off backlash within the party that could dash his hopes of becoming speaker next year after an audio tape exposed he told colleagues he’d urge the then-President Donald Trump to resign after last year’s Capitol insurrection.
In the audio recorded four days after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot by a mob of Trump supporters, McCarthy can be heard telling fellow Republicans during a leadership call that he planned to discuss with Trump the Democratic effort to impeach and remove him from office. It was posted late Thursday by the New York Times and aired on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show.
“The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this will pass, and it would be my recommendation you should resign,” McCarthy says in the recording, which was first reported by the New York Times and has not been independently verified by Bloomberg.
