House GOP leader says Trump 'goes up and down with his anger' and sometimes targets him

• House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is still painting a rosy picture of the Capitol insurrection.
• McCarthy made a number of excuses for former President Donald Trump in a New York Times interview.
• "He goes up and down with his anger," he said of Trump. "He's mad at everybody one day. He's mad at me one day."

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy attempted to justify former President Donald Trump's behavior around the January 6 Capitol siege in a recent interview with The New York Times.

McCarthy also tried to rationalize Trump's ire toward him for not doing more to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

"He goes up and down with his anger," McCarthy told The Times. "He's mad at everybody one day. He's mad at me one day."

McCarthy, who initially criticized Trump's provocation of the riot, has more recently walked back his condemnation and defended the former president. He reportedly got in a shouting match with Trump over the phone during the storming of the Capitol, pleading with the then-president to call off the rioters.

"Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are," Trump reportedly said on the call.

"Who the f--- do you think you are talking to?" McCarthy reportedly told Trump as insurrectionists were ransacking the Capitol.

McCarthy told The Times that he feared Trump would abandon the GOP after his election loss if party leaders didn't appease him. He suggested that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who ended his relationship with Trump post-riot, wasn't fulfilling his duty as a GOP leader.

"Look, I didn't want him to leave the party," McCarthy said. "Mitch had stopped talking to him a number of months before. People criticize me for having a relationship with the president. That's my job."

In a recent interview with "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace, McCarthy struck a different tone, saying Trump "put something out to make sure to stop this. And that's what he did, he put a video out later." In that video, Trump called the rioters "very special" and drew widespread condemnation for being too sympathetic in his statement.