McCarthy Seeks Thaw With Trump as G.O.P. Rallies
Behind Former President
The top House Republican met with former President
Donald J. Trump, working to mend fences after saying that Mr. Trump bore
responsibility for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Representative Kevin McCarthy tempered his initial
criticism, saying that while former President Donald J. Trump bore “some
responsibility” for the Capitol assault, so did “everybody across this
country.”
By Maggie
Haberman
Jan. 28,
2021
Updated
6:15 p.m. ET
Two weeks
after Representative Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, enraged Donald
J. Trump by saying that he considered the former president responsible for the
violent mob attack at the Capitol, the two men met on Thursday for what aides
described as a “good and cordial” meeting, and sought to present a united front.
The meeting
at Mr. Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., came two weeks after Mr.
McCarthy, in a speech on the House floor, said that the former president “bears
responsibility” for the events of Jan. 6, when a throng of his supporters
stormed the Capitol after a rally in which Mr. Trump urged them to “fight like
hell” against his election defeat.
It was the
latest evidence that top Republicans, many of whom harshly criticized Mr. Trump
after the assault, have quickly swung back into line behind him and are
courting his support as he faces a second impeachment trial.
While Mr.
McCarthy, Republican of California, voted against the impeachment article, Mr.
Trump was infuriated by the speech that he delivered just before doing so,
advisers said.
Aides to
both men have been trying to broker a thaw between the two ever since, even as
Mr. Trump has targeted other Republicans who criticized him more harshly for
his role in the Capitol breach and voted in favor of impeaching him. They
included Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, who joined
nine others in the party who voted in support of impeaching Mr. Trump on a
charge of “incitement of insurrection.”
Mr. Trump’s
advisers have been seeking to highlight his remaining popularity with
Republican voters as the Senate trial is set to begin in less than two weeks.
All but five Republicans voted on Tuesday to toss out the impeachment case
against him as unconstitutional, reflecting how reluctant members of his party
are to abandon Mr. Trump even after he has left office.
On
Thursday, aides released a photograph of Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump posing
together in one of the ornate rooms at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club,
and issued a statement calling the meeting a “very good and cordial one.” The
statement bore the hallmarks of Mr. Trump’s bombastic and often false
assertions about himself, incorrectly claiming that his “popularity has never
been stronger than it is today.”
“His
endorsement means more than perhaps any endorsement at any time,” the
statement, issued by Mr. Trump’s Save America political action committee,
added, saying that Mr. Trump had agreed to work with Mr. McCarthy to try to
take back the House majority in 2022.
Mr.
McCarthy’s own statement was noticeably less focused on Mr. Trump personally
and more on the broader effort to win House Republican seats.
“Today,
President Trump committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate
in 2022,” Mr. McCarthy said, adding, “A united conservative movement will
strengthen the bonds of our citizens and uphold the freedoms our country was
founded on.”
Their
meeting took place shortly before an ally of Mr. Trump, Representative Matt
Gaetz of Florida, made an appearance in Wyoming to attack Ms. Cheney for her
vote in favor of impeaching Mr. Trump. Mr. McCarthy was already in Florida for
a fund-raising trip, and the meeting was added to his schedule, officials said.
Mr.
McCarthy, people close to him said, has been under attack from nearly every
side, as members of his caucus who are allied with Mr. Trump have pushed to
fight harder to defend him. After the speech that angered Mr. Trump, Mr.
McCarthy tempered his criticism, saying he did not believe that the former
president “provoked” the Capitol attack, and that while Mr. Trump bore “some
responsibility,” so did “everybody across this country.”
Mr.
McCarthy has made no secret of his desire to be the speaker, which could happen
if Republicans reclaimed the House.
And his
party is now in the unstable position of having a de facto leader in Mr. Trump,
whose approval rating among all Americans is low, but who remains popular with
a majority of its voters.
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015 as a
campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018
for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT
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