Donald Trump with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Palm Beach, Florida, January 28, 2021


Donald Trump rejected the pleas of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to intervene and stop the attack on the US Capitol on January 6.

As Trump followers — encouraged by his speech less than hours earlier — stormed the building and threatened legislators and Vice President Mike Pence, Trump told McCarthy by phone, “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.”

“Lawmakers who were briefed on the call afterward by McCarthy” said Trump’s support of the attackers started a shouting match. Speaking from inside the Capitol, the House Minority Leader told Trump that the mob was breaking into his office through the windows, and asked Trump, “Who the f–k do you think you are talking to?”

But despite the incident, McCarthy retreated from criticism of Trump during the House impeachment of Trump on “a charge of insurrection”. Along with all but 10 Republican House members, he voted against impeachment.

And on January, he paid tribute with a visit to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. He posed for a photo with an exultant Trump, and retracted his chiding of Trump, “Stop it. It’s over.”

Instead, McCarthy assailed Democrats for “impeaching a President who is now a private citizen” and declared that “the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped”.

House GOP Leader McCarthy Pays Tribute to Trump With Florida Visit

“Trump Didn’t Care, Or He Wanted It to Happen”

During the attack, Trump praised his followers as “patriots”. He refused to authorize deployment of the National Guard. Minutes before Vice President Pence — threatened with hanging by the invaders — and his family were evacuated, he tweeted insults against Pence for not overturning the Congressional certification of President-elect Joe Biden.

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, one of the 10 House Republicans who voted for impeachment, spoke of the Trump-McCarthy call in a town hall earlier this week:

You have to look at what [Trump] did during the insurrection to confirm where his mind was at. That line right there demonstrates to me that either he didn’t care, which is impeachable, because you cannot allow an attack on your soil, or he wanted it to happen and was OK with it, which makes me so angry.

We should never stand for that, for any reason, under any party flag. I’m trying really hard not to say the F-word.

On Friday night, Herrera Beutler added in a statement, “To the patriots who were standing next to the former President as these conversations were happening, or even to the former Vice President: if you have something to add here, now would be the time,” she said in a statement.

GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio echoed, “[Trump] was not sorry to see his unyieldingly loyal vice president or the Congress under attack by the mob he inspired. In fact, it seems he was happy about it or at the least enjoyed the scenes that were horrifying to most Americans across the country.”

Source: Trump Attorneys Lied About Pence

In the Senate, Trump’s defense team presented their case, taking only a few of the 16 hours allotted to them.

They largely avoided the substance of the case laid out by House impeachment managers. Instead, they spent much of their equating Trump’s urging of his followers to “fight like hell”, to stop the certification of Biden, with use of the word “fight” by Democratic politicians and even by the singer Madonna.

The attorneys claimed an absolute right of free speech for Trump and insisted that there was no link between his address outside the White House to the Capitol attack that began just over an hour later.

But “a source close to” Vice President Pence said Trump’s legal team lied when it said that “at no point” did Trump know Pence was in danger.

Trump never called the Vice President during the attack, even as Pence huddled with lawmakers trying to avoid any contact with the mob.