They know. They don’t care.
![](https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/mccarthy-1024x576.jpg)
It’s grimly amusing that as the anti-anti Trump “left” continues to try to whitewash 1/6, the Republican leadership knew exactly what was going on:
In the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building, the two top Republicans in Congress, Representative Kevin McCarthy and Senator Mitch McConnell, told associates they believed President Trump was responsible for inciting the deadly riot and vowed to drive him from politics.
Mr. McCarthy went so far as to say he would push Mr. Trump to resign immediately: “I’ve had it with this guy,” he told a group of Republican leaders, according to an audio recording of the conversation obtained by The New York Times.
But within weeks both men backed off an all-out fight with Mr. Trump because they feared retribution from him and his political movement. Their drive to act faded fast as it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues.
“I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference,” Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, told a friend.
The confidential expressions of outrage from Mr. McCarthy and Mr. McConnell, which have not been previously reported, illustrate the immense gulf between what Republican leaders say privately about Mr. Trump and their public deference to a man whose hold on the party has gone virtually unchallenged for half a decade.
The idea that Kevin McCarthy could drive Donald Trump from politics could be the most depressing script Armando Iannucci ever wrote, except that McCarthy is such a total chickenshit there would only be five minutes worth of material.