Sure Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy may seem like a generic sandwich bag filled with unflavored gelatin being dragged around by a deranged, orange toddler, leaking a trail of slime in his wake. But have you considered that maybe he’s actually a great American hero, who bravely threw his body on the grenade and saved the Republic?
No?
Well, just ask Our Kev, he’ll tell you himself.
“After all the work I have done for the Republican Party, the money I have raised!” he screamed at Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler. “After all the work I have done for you! … I alone am taking all the heat to protect people from Trump! I alone am holding the party together!I have been working with Trump to keep him from going after Republicans like you and blowing up the party and destroying all our work! … You should have come to me! Why did you go to the press? This is no way to thank me!”
That fun snippet is from a new book by Politico’s Rachael Bade and the Washington Post’s Karoun Demirjian and appeared in yesterday’s Politico Playbook and Washington Post. It describes the fallout from Herrera Beutler telling reporters about the infamous phone call during the Capitol Riot in which McCarthy begged the president to call off the mob, and Trump responded, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”
“More upset? THEY’RE TRYING TO FUCKING KILL ME!” the minority leader shot back, according to another new book, this one by New York Times Magazine writer Robert Draper.
But after the mob had been cleared and the blood and feces scrubbed off the walls, McCarthy changed his tune. Not only did he whip his members against a bipartisan effort to investigate the attack on the Capitol, but he spent months kissing Trump’s ass and unpersoning Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for the crime of saying that fomenting a coup is bad, actually.
All of which might sound a wee tiny smidge craven. Like the self-justification of a man intent on maintaining his hold on power and willing to get in bed with the actual devil to do it. It also reads as tacit acknowledgement that the Republican Party has been captured by Donald Trump and can’t survive without him, and so must purge its own members to conform to the vengeful impulses of an aging tyrant.
Or maybe it’s manly man Kevin McCarthy, admitting that he ordered that code red, you’re damn right he did.
You need Kevin on that wall, see, because Jaime, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with absolutely zero principals. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Adam Kinzinger? Kevin McCarthy has a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for the Capitol Police Officers who were beaten by the mob, and you curse the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who led the charge. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what Kevin McCarthy knows — that Ashli Babbitt’s death, while tragic, probably saved lives, or at the very least, red seats; and Kevin McCarthy’s existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible, saves lives and/or Republican congressional prospects.
Probably not an actual quote.
Except that our hero could not, or anyway would not, save Rep. Herrera Beutler, who came in third in her 2022 Republican primary. Nor could he save Kinzinger or Cheney, who had the temerity to antagonize the Troll King of MAGAville. Everyone but Mitt Romney who dared look sideways at the dear leader is being swept away.
But Kevin McCarthy persuaded the parasite not to devour any more of its rancid host, and so lives to fight another day. He’s like a cockroach … minus the exoskeleton. And the charm.
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