April 22, 2022 11:06 AM UTC

Lauren Boebert Holds Kevin McCarthy's Fate In Her Hands

• 0 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

The last 24 hours have seen a story about GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s initial reaction to the violent insurrection on January 6th, 2021, in which McCarthy at least for a while placed the blame squarely on ex-President Donald Trump and allegedly promised colleagues he would urge Trump to resign, explode into a major political crisis after McCarthy’s denials he said any such thing were crushed by damning audio (above).

This morning, Politico is asking the question: is Kevin McCarthy toast?

On Thursday night, NYT’s Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns delivered an absolute stunner of a scoop: an audio recording of a phone call on Jan. 10, 2021, in which McCarthy is heard clearly and unambiguously saying that Trump should resign…

What happens on the tape: McCarthy essentially conspires with Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.) about how to get Trump to step down as president after the Jan. 6 insurrection. On the call, Cheney — now Trump’s Enemy No. 1, but at the time, the House GOP’s No. 3 leader — asks McCarthy if Trump is going to resign. McCarthy responds: “I mean, you guys all know him, too — do you think he’d ever back away? But what I think I’m going to do is I’m going to call him … The only discussion I would have with him is that I think this [impeachment resolution] will pass and it would be my recommendation you should resign.”

Having made a liar of McCarthy before the eyes of the whole world, what happens next?

How do MAGA die-hards like Reps. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) and MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.) react? They’ve already suggested they could oppose McCarthy for speaker. Does this reporting spark a rebellion?

One senior House Republican aide told us Thursday night that there’s already some grumbling among the rank and file over a report by Burns and Martin that McCarthy wanted to get some of his own members kicked off Twitter — and you can expect that to dominate GOP conversations when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill next week. (On MSNBC, J-Mart teased that they have audio of McCarthy saying this, too.) [Pols emphasis]

The specific lawmaker cited in yesterday’s New York Times story in reference to McCarthy’s desire to kick other Republican lawmakers in addition to Trump off social media, as readers know, was Colorado’s own Rep. Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert. These are conversations that McCarthy was having with now-exiled Rep. Liz Cheney, who McCarthy treacherously helped oust and replace with ardently pro-Trump Rep. Elise Stefanik just weeks after. It’s even been suggested that Stefanik may have been behind the leak of this story to the New York Times in order to backstab McCarthy and replace him in line to be the next House Minority Leader or Speaker. Stefanik is also cultivating a base of support by throwing cash and love at Republican women candidates across the country including here in Colorado, another sign of her growing personal ambitions.

It’s considered a given that these developments are a big problem for McCarthy’s leadership aspirations in 2023. The question at this point is whether McCarthy can even hold on to his current position through November after being publicly shamed and exposed as a traitor to the MAGA cause. We’re watching Boebert’s Twitter feed as closely as reporters who have asked Boebert for comment are watching their inboxes.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson famously said, “if you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

Liz Cheney learned this lesson the hard way, and for all his spinelessness Kevin McCarthy may yet.