WASHINGTON — As the United States hastily exited Afghanistan last year, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy dialed up the White House’s public switchboard number to lodge his anger over the messy withdrawal.
The California Republican got a quizzical call back from a White House staffer who wanted to know if it was actually him who left a message, according to McCarthy’s retelling during a record-long House floor speech in November. President Joe Biden followed up with a call, in which the two men clashed over the last Americans left in the country as the United States' longest war ended.
It was the only publicly known one-on-one call during the first 16 months of the Biden administration between the president and the man who could be speaker of the House next year, political rivals who would be part of the small cadre of elected leaders responsible for keeping the government funded and avoiding a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt.
