McCarthy visited Mar-a-Lago after January 6 because staffers said Trump was 'not eating,' Liz Cheney writes in forthcoming book

Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert,John L. DormanNov 29, 2023, 09:02 IST

Insider

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and US President Donald Trump attend a legislation signing rally with local farmers in Bakersfield, Calif., on February 19, 2020.David McNew/Getty Images

In her upcoming book. Liz Cheney reveals why Kevin McCarthy visited Mar-a-Lago after January 6.
Cheney wrote McCarthy said Trump was "depressed" after the attack on the Capitol and wasn't eating.

In her forthcoming book, "Oath and Honor," former Wyoming GOP Rep. Liz Cheney revealed that Kevin McCarthy's heavily criticized visit to Mar-a-Lago following the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol was prompted by concern over former President Donald Trump being "depressed."

McCarthy made the controversial trip to the South Florida resort just three weeks after the attack that left five people dead, generating outrage from political allies and adversaries alike who considered the visit inappropriately timed.

"Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?" Cheney asked the then-House Minority Leader from California following his visit, CNN reported in an excerpt from her book.

"They're really worried," McCarthy told Cheney, who at the time was the chair of the House Republican Conference. "Trump's not eating, so they asked me to come see him.""What? You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump's not eating?" Cheney responded."Yeah, he's really depressed," McCarthy said, according to Cheney.Representatives for McCarthy — as well as Little, Brown and Company, the publisher of Cheney's new book — did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.McCarthy has since defended his decision to visit with Trump, saying at the time that their meeting was an effort to unite the party ahead of the 2022 midterms.In the book, the former congresswoman also wrote that several other Republicans were "angry and disgusted" at McCarthy's visit, with some members making fun of their onetime leader over the trip."Some mocked him, circulating the Trump/McCarthy photo along with the clip from the movie Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise tells Renée Zellweger, 'You.. complete… me," Cheney wrote in the book, according to CNN.

When the photo was taken, Republicans had already begun plotting their strategy for winning back the House, as they had picked up over a dozen seats in the 2020 elections and were just a few seats shy of a majority.In "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America's Future," a book by journalists Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin, the pair reported that McCarthy privately told a lawmaker he was not expecting to take a photo with the ex-president."I didn't know they were going to take a picture," McCarthy reportedly said, according to the book.After the GOP won a razor-thin House majority in the 2022 elections, McCarthy was naturally in line to be the next speaker, but he faced pushback from several conservative hardliners. Dissent from many of those far-right Republicans forced 15 rounds of voting in January before McCarthy finally secured the requisite number of votes to assume the speakership.Trump, at the time, sought to take credit for McCarthy's ascension, stating that he had performed "a big favor" by elevating the California lawmaker to the high-profile role.But McCarthy's tenure lasted less than a year.In October, after Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida put forward a motion to vacate the chair, McCarthy was ousted from the speakership, unable to quell several hardliners over their push for sizable budget cuts.Cheney, who for years had been seen as a future leader within the party, clashed mightily with Trump after January 6 and served as the vice chair of the high-profile House committee that probed the attack that day. She sought reelection in 2022, but was ousted in Wyoming's GOP primary by now-Rep. Harriet Hageman.The book is set to be released on December 5.

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McCarthy visited Mar-a-Lago after January 6 because staffers said Trump was 'not eating,' Liz Cheney writes in forthcoming book