Trump supporters and conspiracy theory - Part 2

[Rick Plant]

Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell wanted Trump to resign over Jan. 6 -- but soon changed their minds



"I've had it with this guy."

That was House minority leader Kevin McCarthy's declaration to Republican leaders in the days immediately following the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection when told them he would push Donald Trump to resign. That tune soon changed, according to a new book by New York Times reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin.

The book, which was excerpted Thursday by the Times, details how McCarthy and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell privately were much closer to pushing for the president's resignation than previously known. It also illustrates the vast difference between what they said behind closed doors and what they parsed in public.

"The leaders’ swift retreat in January 2021 represented a capitulation at a moment of extraordinary political weakness for Mr. Trump — perhaps the last and best chance for mainstream Republicans to reclaim control of their party from a leader who had stoked an insurrection against American democracy itself," they write.

The political calculations they made once the smoke cleared from the Capitol could not be more clear than in a comment made by McConnell to a friend when explaining why he backed off a public fight with Trump and his political machine. “I didn’t get to be leader by voting with five people in the conference,” McConnell said.

Both McConnell and McCarthy abandoned the notion of pushing for Trump's resignation when "it became clear it would mean difficult votes that would put them at odds with most of their colleagues."

“This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future” draws on hundreds of interviews with lawmakers and officials, and contemporaneous records of pivotal moments in the 2020 presidential campaign.

"During the same Jan. 10 conversation when he said he would call on Mr. Trump to resign," according to the book, "Mr. McCarthy told other GOP leaders he wished the big tech companies would strip some Republican lawmakers of their social media accounts, as Twitter and Facebook had done with Mr. Trump. Members such as Lauren Boebert of Colorado had done so much to stoke paranoia about the 2020 election and made offensive comments online about the Capitol attack."

“'We can’t put up with that,' Mr. McCarthy said, adding, 'Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?'”

The authors say that McConnell’s office declined to comment and that a spokesman for McCarthy denied that the Republican leader told colleagues he would push Trump to leave office. “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” the spokesperson said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/us/politics/trump-mitch-mcconnell-kevin-mccarthy.html

[Rick Plant]

'They knew this man was deranged!' George Conway busts McCarthy and McConnell's 'cowardice and corruption' after Jan. 6

Republican congressional leaders Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell violated their oaths of office by allowing Donald Trump to remain president after Jan. 6, according to George Conway.

The conservative attorney told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" that new reporting that shows McCarthy and McConnell privately discussed pushing Trump to resign over the insurrection, but they quickly changed their minds over concerns that breaking with the GOP president could endanger their leadership roles.

"It is a display of cowardice and corruption that I just couldn't, was unimaginable a few years ago, and I think is unparalleled in American history," said Conway, whose wife Kellyanne served in Trump's White House until August 2020. "I say corruption because these are men who took oaths of office to defend the Constitution of the United States and they knew this man was deranged, they knew this man tried to overthrow the Constitution and they knew it was an impeachable offense to end all impeachable offenses, and yet they did nothing at the end of the day."

"Mitch McConnell refused to hold a trial before the end of Trump's term, and at the end of the day Kevin McCarthy ended up sucking up to Trump," Conway added. "This is a bare constitutional minimum for members of Congress who have the privilege of representing us in government. The bare minimum has to be standing up to a man who is trying to end constitutional democracy. We don't ask our elected officials to arm themselves and defend a warren of tunnels in a dystopian steel plant that's surrounded and bombed. We ask for them just to do, you know, impeach a man who tried to overturn the Constitution, vote to bar him from ever holding office again and they completely failed to live up to their obligations."

[Rick Plant]

‘Grifters central’: Trump campaign consultant says his DC hotel ‘was America’s lobby of corruption’

The end of Trump Hotel DC represents the end of a bizarrely unique period in American presidential history.

"Even though it opened only a few weeks before Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, the 263-room hotel quickly achieved a status in Washington that historians agree was unlike that of any other venue owned by an American president," Eric Lipton reported for The New York Times. "The hotel generated millions of dollars in direct payments to Mr. Trump’s family, starting from even before he was sworn in, as his own inaugural committee paid the venue more than $1 million."

The lease of the government-owned building was sold to CGI Merchant Group of Miami, which announced it will rebrand the hotel as Waldorf Astoria. The newspaper estimates the Trump family will see a $100 million profit.

"Even before Mr. Trump was sworn in, the hotel became a magnet for foreign officials, including from Saudi Arabia, whose government rented out a block of rooms, spending $190,000 on its room tab and another $78,000 for meals and beverages, lobbying disclosures show," The Times reported. "Soon enough, foreign business and government groups from Bahrain, Kuwait, Turkey and Azerbaijan, among others, followed by hosting events at the hotel, with representatives from at least 33 nations sighted there by Zach Everson, a journalist who created an online newsletter tracking social media posts from the hotel during Mr. Trump’s presidency."

Trump 2016 campaign consultant Healy Baumgardner said the hotel "Was America's lobby of corruption."

"It was grifters central," he explained.

Read the full report: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/us/politics/trump-hotel-sale-washington.html

[Rick Plant]

‘TURN THE CAMERAS OFF!’ Donald Trump foamed at the mouth


Trump bellowed insults at Piers Morgan for disbelieving his claims the election was rigged

'PIERS, we have a problem.’

I was standing inside the gilded gold-plated confines of President Donald Trump’s exclusive Mar-a-Lago private member’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and one of my production team was brandishing a document with a concerned look on his face.

'What’s that?’ I asked, bemused.

‘This is a collection of quotes you’ve apparently said about President Trump in the past two years. Someone sent it to him in the last hour, and the quotes are not good. In fact, they’re really bad.’

 I was due to start an interview with Trump in precisely eight minutes, and it was intended to be a blockbuster exclusive to rocket-launch my new global TV show, Piers Morgan Uncensored, on Monday, April 25.

My 4-camera crew were all set up in a palatial bar, I was suited, booted, made-up and had been exchanging cordial small talk with secret service agents designated to ensure we behaved ourselves.

But as I hurriedly scanned the 3-page white paper document, my heart sank.

There were several dozen comments from me, taken from columns I’d written and interviews I’d given, in which I was savagely critical of Trump’s conduct in the last year of his presidency, from his woeful handling of the coronavirus pandemic to his refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election, and the appalling January 6 riot at the Capitol which followed.

Whoever sent it knew exactly what they were doing.

These were by far the worst things I’d ever said about a man with whom I’d been friends for 15 years, but I felt they were justified when I said them, and I still do now.

In the suddenly very chilly light of a sun-kissed Florida afternoon however, they made distinctly unhelpful reading.

‘Is he going to cancel the interview?’ I asked, trying not to panic.

 ‘I don’t know,’ came the reply. ‘But he is VERY upset.’

‘See if I can go and talk to him about it,’ I suggested.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in Trump’s office.

Normally, he’d greet me with a cheery smile and the words ‘How’s my champ?’ because I was his first Celebrity Apprentice on the series that made him a TV superstar.

But this time, there were no such welcoming niceties.

He was staring at me across his desk with undisguised fury, clutching the document entitled ‘Piers Morgan Comments About President Trump.’

‘What the f**k IS this?’ he snarled.

Then he began slowly reading out some of the quotes.

‘Trump’s a supreme narcissist….’

Pause..

‘Trump’s now too dangerous, he’s morphed into a monster that I no longer recognise as someone I considered to be a friend and thought I knew.’

Pause.

‘He’s now acting like a mafia mob boss.’

Pause.

‘And all because Donald’s stupendous ego couldn’t accept losing and sent him nuts.’

Each time he paused, he peered over the document at me, with mounting rage in his eyes.

When I won Trump’s Celebrity Apprentice show in 2008, his final words to me as he announced the result were: ‘Piers, you're a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You're tough. You're smart. You're probably brilliant. I'm not sure. You're certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody…. you’re the Celebrity Apprentice.’

When he won the 2016 election, I returned the favour by sending him a card saying: ‘Well, Donald, you're a vicious guy. I’ve seen it. You're tough. You're smart. You're probably brilliant. I'm not sure. You're certainly not diplomatic. But you did an amazing job. And you beat the hell out of everybody…you’re the President of the United States.’

So, we had a reasonable understanding of each other’s personalities, good and bad.

And it wasn’t like we’d never had a spat.

He unfollowed me on Twitter (he only followed around 50 accounts at the time, so this didn’t go unnoticed!) in April 2020 after he’d proposed using household disinfectant to fight Covid, and I’d hammered him in a column for spreading ‘bats**t crazy coronavirus cure theories.’

But a few months later, he called me for a lengthy chat before the election and chuckled about how ‘mean and nasty’ I’d been about him, so I mistakenly assumed he didn’t really mind me verbally whacking him from time to time.

Wrong!

I’d never seen him so livid or felt so uncomfortable in his presence as I did right now in his office.

He was almost foaming at the mouth and kept shaking his head slowly and menacingly at me, like Don Corleone when he felt he’d been disrespected.

MOUNTING RAGE


Donald Trump stormed out of his interview with Piers Morgan

There was no point in trying to deny the quotes.

I’d said them, and I’d meant them.

‘I’ve always been critical of you when I’ve felt you deserved it,’ I eventually said, ‘but as you know, I’ve also written and said many supportive things about you too. This is a one-sided hatchet job designed to stop you doing our interview.’

‘It’s definitely a hatchet job,’ he retorted, ‘ON ME!’

 Then he read another line: ‘January 7, 2021 - President Trump needs to be removed from office. As soon as possible… through new emergency articles of impeachment, which would have the additional benefit of barring him from ever running for the presidency again.’

‘REMOVED FROM OFFICE?!’ he spat. ‘BARRED FROM EVER RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AGAIN?!’

Then he threw down the document and threw me a look of withering contempt.

'I thought we were friends?’ he shouted. ‘This is so disloyal! After all I’ve done for you? Why would say all this about me?’

‘I thought what you did was wrong,’ I replied, feeling myself beginning to sweat.

This wasn’t going well.

It looked for sure like Trump was about to can the interview, which would have been a massive waste of time and money for me and our team and leave me an even more massive hole for the first show.

I was desperately thinking of some way to salvage things.

‘I don’t intend our interview to be confrontational,’ I said. ‘A lot of time has passed since I said those things, and a lot has happened in the meantime.’

‘Why should I do it at all?’ he scoffed. ‘You’re not real. You’re a fake.’

‘No, I’m just brutally honest.’

‘DIS-honest!’

‘You didn’t make me your Celebrity Apprentice because I’m a shrinking violet who sits on the fence or doesn’t say what he really thinks.’

We stared at each other for a few seconds, his eyes boring into mine with all the warmth of an Arctic glacier.

It was time to change the mood music.

‘I’d love to talk about your recent golf hole-in-one,’ I stammered. ‘Your playing partner Ernie Els was raving about it.’

Trump sat bolt upright.

‘He was? Where?’

‘In a newspaper interview I read. He said it was a brilliant shot and you played really well.’

‘I did, I did.’

‘Was that your first hole-in-one?’

‘No! I’ve had seven!’

Seven?

 This claim seemed highly implausible (I’m a keen golfer and only had one. Most amateurs haven’t even had that.) but this wasn’t a good moment to fact-check him about his sporting prowess.

 ‘Amazing,’ I replied. ‘Congrats!’

 Suddenly, Trump clapped his hands.

‘OK, I guess I’ll still do the interview. I don’t know why, honestly, but I’ll see you down there.’

'VERY ANNOYED'


Trump was later heard denouncing Piers as a 'scumbag' and wishing he'd never done the interview

My extremely fractious audience was over, and I felt a huge wave of relief as I headed back to my team.

 ‘How was he?’ asked my Executive Producer, Winnie Dunbar-Nelson who’d flown from London to oversee the interview.

‘He’s very annoyed,’ I said, ‘more annoyed than I’ve ever seen him. Spitting blood, in fact. But he’s going to do it.’

Ten minutes later, President Trump arrived in the interview room, and acted like nothing had happened as we posed for smiling photos together.

He was even charm personified to Winnie, who he remembered from three previous presidential interviews we’d taped for my old show, Good Morning Britain, in Davos, on board Air Force One and inside the Churchill War Rooms.

But I could sense he was still very wound up, and there was none of the usual bonhomie between us that I was used to in our many previous encounters.

I’d been promised 20 minutes and feared he would cut that down to punish me.

But in the end, I got 75 minutes, by far the longest time I’d ever had with him on camera.

I also agreed with him about a number of issues, as I have done in the past.

I’ve never been tribal or partisan about Trump – of the 100 or so columns I wrote about him during his presidency, around half were positive, half negative.

But things took a dramatic downward turn when I finally brought up his refusal to accept defeat in 2020 and the appalling scenes on January 6.

I told him I believe he lost the supposedly ‘rigged, stolen’ election, I repeatedly pointed out his failure to produce any evidence of the widespread voter fraud he insists occurred to rob him of his presidency, and I blamed his refusal to admit defeat for the deadly riots at the Capitol.

‘Then you’re a FOOL!’ he sneered. ‘And you haven’t studied!’

He was back to the furious Trump he’d been in his office and branded me a fool six more times, in between calling Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell ‘stupid’, and his former vice-president Mike Pence ‘foolish and weak.’

Our collective crime was that none of us agree he had the election stolen.

Now abandoning any pretence at cordiality, Trump ranted that he was far more honest than me, and again sneered that I wasn’t ‘real’ before haranguing me for exceeding our 20 minutes which was particularly disingenuous given that during all our previous interviews, he’d invariably decided exactly how long he wanted to keep talking.

As he bellowed insults at me for disbelieving his rigged election bulls**t, it reminded me of the scene in A Few Good Men where Jack Nicholson’s arrogant deluded Colonel Jessup calls Tom Cruise’s military lawyer Lt.

Kaffee a ‘snotty little b*stard’ for grilling him about ordering a deadly Code Red punishment on a marine.

‘I want the truth,’ demands Kaffee.

‘YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!’ roars a contemptuous Jessup, before losing his rag, lecturing Kaffee about loyalty and honour, and then finally admitting his culpability.

I don’t expect Trump to ever admit he lost the election fairly or confess to being responsible for the January 6 carnage.

We’ll never hear him say ‘You’re g*ddam right I did!’ like Col. Jessup because ironically, he can’t handle the truth.

'TURN THE CAMERAS OFF'



Incensed Trump tried to end things by declaring ‘That’s it!’ before I reminded him that we hadn’t discussed his hole-in-one, which he then sat down again and did - briefly - before abruptly jumping to his feet, looking hateful, and barking at the shocked crew: ‘TURN THE CAMERAS OFF!’

Then he turned on his heels, and sloped angrily off through a side door, loudly muttering ‘SO dishonest…’

It wasn’t a rhetorical observation.

Apparently, he was later heard denouncing me as ‘scumbag’ and saying he wished he’d never done the interview.

But I thought it was the best one we’ve ever done together, and all the tension created by the damning document he was given gave it a crackle and energy that makes for compelling television.

As for who sent him the document in the first place, Trump told me it came from London and gave it to me to ‘keep as souvenir of your treachery.’

Mysteriously, it contains two random, very positive comparative quotes from British politician Nigel Farage who now works as a presenter for my rival UK network GB News.

Oh, and by an extraordinary coincidence, Farage happened to have dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on April 8, just three days before I was there.

You don’t need to be a rigged election conspiracy theorist to work out who probably sent it.

The next day, I sent Trump an email thanking him for his time and included these words: ‘You had every right to get annoyed and call me a fool for not believing the election was stolen from you, but I also have every right to my opinion, and I wasn’t going to lie to your face just to avoid annoying you. The best friends are the most honest/critical ones, not the sycophants.’

As I write this, ten days later, I haven’t had any reply.

Perhaps we’ll never speak again, and our friendship is over?

https://www.the-sun.com/news/5166418/piers-morgan-donald-trump-storms-out-interview/

[Rick Plant]

Trump's disastrous interview with Piers Morgan reveals a pivotal fact about the Murdoch family: Morning Joe and George Conway



MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and George Conway agree Rupert Murdoch and his family are trying to "destroy the monster" they created by ambushing Donald Trump with a hostile interview with his erstwhile friend Piers Morgan.

The Murdoch-owned TalkTV aired the interview that appears to show Trump storming out in protest, but an audio recording provided by the former president's communications director appears to show the pair laughing and thanking one another for a "great interview," and the Murdoch-owned New York Post hyped the program as "Trump vs. Piers."

"Here is what is fascinating about this," Scarborough said. "You will remember Rupert Murdoch, he is not one of those who sticks around after the parade is over. He doesn't stick around with his arm around somebody and say, hey, we're with you. The Murdochs are quietly -- not so quietly moving closer and closer to [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis. People close to them know that they're ready to throw it all behind Ron DeSantis. They're ready to move on from Trump, so even if this didn't go down the way the New York Post, the paper of record of 'Morning Joe,' even if it didn't go down the way the promo suggested it did, it reveals a much bigger tell and that is that the Murdochs are blindsiding Donald Trump. The parade is moving on."

Conway, whose wife served in Trump's White House until August 2020, agreed the Murdochs were trying to hobble Trump ahead of the next presidential election.

"The Murdochs played a big role in creating this monster, we can hope that they'll try to destroy the monster now," Conway said. "It is just hilarious to watch and it is good television, so maybe this is how Fox [News] is going to get its ratings up beyond what's -- you know, in response to Trump's attacks on them, so I don't know."

Scarborough was struck by Trump's response to some unexpectedly tough questions from Morgan about the election that he lost, telling the talk show host, "You're not real," and Conway offered an explanation for the odd turn of phrase.

"Not just he is bubble-wrapped, he is a sociopath," Conway said. "That's why he doesn't believe what he doesn't want to believe. He declares everything fake and creates his own reality for himself. It's not surprising that he says to Piers, 'I don't think you're real.' That's his way of saying, 'Everything I disagree with, everything I don't want to know about, everything that offends me or hurts my ego is fake.' That's Donald Trump, that's Trump."

[Rick Plant]

McCarthy is just another right wing liar and he got caught on tape saying he was going to tell Donnie to resign. Plenty of more tapes are waiting to be played.   

McCarthy denied saying he'd tell Trump to resign -- but Rachel Maddow has the tape



MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Thursday fact-checked House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) after he denied pushing Donald Trump to resign.

"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," The New York Times reported. "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."

McCarthy denied the report.

"In a statement on Twitter, Mr. McCarthy called the reporting 'totally false and wrong.' His spokesman, Mark Bednar, denied that the Republican leader told colleagues he would urge Mr. Trump to leave office. “McCarthy never said he’d call Trump to say he should resign,” Mr. Bednar said," the newspaper reported.

Following McCarthy's denial, reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin of The Times provided the tape to Maddow.

The host played it on air, "so that you can know that when Kevin McCarthy denied that this happened, he is not telling the truth."

The call was with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), who on Thursday was announced as a 2022 Profile in Courage award recipient. The Kennedy family and John F. Kennedy Library Foundation have been giving out the award since 1989.

Watch:

[Rick Plant]

Maddow expects calls for Kevin McCarthy to resign after she busts him in a 'flat out lie'



MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow explained why she expects calls for GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to resign after she busted him lying to The New York Times.

Maddow obtained audio of a call between McCarthy and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-CA) that proved he lied about denying saying he would ask Trump to resign.

She obtained the audio from reporters Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin of The Times.

"I don't mean to be pollyanna about this at all, or naďve," Maddow said. "But it seems to me that I expect a sort of level — from politicians, in particular — of saying one thing in public and saying it another way in private. Certainly speaking more harshly, less diplomatic terms in private."

"What I don't expect is — for even public officials, even politicians — to flat out lie about what they have said, when it is on the record, when they have reason to believe it might have even been recorded, and they just lie and deny it happened," she explained.

"I think this creates a real problem for Mr. McCarthy, I think he must at least apologize, I would not be surprised if there are calls for his resignation, for him lying and denying that he did this when in fact he did it," she said.

Watch Part I:

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