- Trump told reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns that
Kevin McCarthy knows better than to cross him. - "He wouldn't say that," Trump said of the House GOP leader's claims to talk tough about him in private.
The reason McCarthy would never break ranks , is simple, Trump told The New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns.
"Inferiority complex," he told the reporters in an interview for "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," the new political tell-all. The excerpt was first reported by Punchbowl News on Thursday.
McCarthy's fealty to the twice-impeached former president is back in the
Multiple media outlets reported at the time that he and Trump got into a yelling match as MAGA supporters were overrunning the Capitol complex. Trump insists that never happened — because McCarthy wouldn't dare.
"He wouldn't say that," Trump told Martin and Burns of the purported outburst.
McCarthy has avoided discussing what he and Trump talked about on January 6, even ignoring a request from the House select committee that's still trying to piece together what happened in the events surrounding the insurrection.
A spokesperson for McCarthy didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the latest Trump remark that the House GOP leader had an "inferiority complex".
In calls taped days after the attack, McCarthy unloaded on Trump, declaring that he'd "had it with this guy" and "what he did is unacceptable."
But the fury faded quickly. Within weeks, McCarthy visited Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida to make nice and pose for awkward pictures the former president immediately publicized to demonstrate his unwavering sway over the GOP.
"I didn't know they were going to take a picture," McCarthy reportedly told a colleague.
But following the January 6 attack, audio recordings released by the two New York Times reporters also showed that McCarthy mulled pushing Trump to resign from the presidency.
"I'm seriously thinking of having that conversation with him tonight," McCarthy told fellow top Republicans on January 10, 2021.
Prior to the recent release of the audio of the call, McCarthy had called the reporting "totally false and wrong." McCarthy has since denied ever telling Trump to resign.
McCarthy is angling to become the next speaker of the House if the Republicans win back the majority in the 2022 midterm elections. But he also faces splinter factions inside his own party ranks from the likes of pro-Trump lawmakers, including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Despite the recent revelations about McCarthy, however, Trump has signaled publicly that he isn't upset.
"I think it's all a big compliment, frankly," Trump recently told the Wall Street Journal of the leaked McCarthy call. "They realized they were wrong and supported me."
And for now, the House GOP appears to be rallying around McCarthy, reportedly giving the leader a "standing ovation" at a conference meeting on Wednesday.
"I think that there's so many other important crises that we need to be stressing. Also the American people want to hear answers. Why is their gasoline so high?" Republican Rep. Brian Babin of Texas told the Washington Post.