“Well, Kevin, I think these people are more upset about the election than you are,” said Trump, according to lawmakers who were informed on the call later by McCarthy.
McCarthy insisted that the rioters were Trump supporters and begged Trump to cancel them.
Trump’s comment sparked what Republican lawmakers familiar with the connection described as a dispute between the two men. A furious McCarthy told the president that rioters were invading his office through the windows and asked Trump, “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?” according to a Republican lawmaker familiar with the call.
The newly revealed details of the call, described to CNN by several Republicans informed about it, provide a critical view of the president’s mood as protesters stormed the Capitol. The existence of the call and some of its details were publicly reported and discussed by McCarthy.
Republican members of Congress said the exchange showed that Trump had no intention of canceling the rioters, even as lawmakers begged him to intervene. Several said that this represented an abandonment of their presidential duty.
“He is not an innocent observer, he was rooting for them,” said a Republican member of Congress. “On January 13, Kevin McCarthy said on the floor of the House that the president has the responsibility and he does.”
Speaking to the president from within the besieged Capitol, McCarthy pressured Trump to cancel his supporters and became involved in a heated disagreement over who the crowd was. Trump’s comment about would-be insurrectionists worrying more about election results than McCarthy was first mentioned by Congressman Jaime Herrera Beutler, a Washington state Republican, in a city hall earlier this week, and was confirmed to CNN by Herrera Beutler and other Republicans were informed of the conversation.
“You have to look at what he did during the insurrection to confirm where his mind was,” Herrera Beutler, one of 10 House Republicans who voted last month for Trump’s impeachment, told CNN. “That phrase over there shows me that either he didn’t care, which is impeachment, because you can’t allow an attack on his soil, or he wanted it to happen and everything was fine with that, which makes me so angry.”
“We should never accept this, for whatever reason, under the banner of any party,” she added, expressing her extreme frustration: “I’m really trying not to say the F word.”
“I think it reflects the former president’s mindset,” said Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, an Ohio Republican who also voted for Trump’s impeachment last month. “He did not regret seeing his uncompromisingly loyal vice president or Congress under attack from the crowd he inspired. In fact, it looks like he was happy about it or at least liked the scenes that were horrible for most Americans across the country. ”
As senators prepared to determine Trump’s fate, several Republicans thought the details of the call were important to the process, because they believe it paints a blunt picture of Trump’s inaction during the attack. At least one of the sources who spoke to CNN made detailed notes of McCarthy’s account of the call.
Trump and McCarthy did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump took several hours after the attack began to encourage his supporters to “go home in peace” – a tweet that came at the request of his top advisers.
At Trump’s impeachment trial on Friday, his lawyers argued that Trump did, in fact, try to calm the protesters with a series of tweets as the attack unfolded. But his lawyers handpicked his tweets, focusing on his request to supporters to “remain peaceful”, not to mention that he also attacked then Vice President Mike Pence and waited hours to explicitly urge protesters to leave Capitol.
It is unclear to what extent these new details were known to Democratic impeachment managers in the House or whether the team considered calling McCarthy as a witness. Managers have preserved the option to call witnesses at the ongoing impeachment trial, although that option remains unlikely as the trial ends.
The Republican House leader had given his conference on the details of his talks with Trump on January 6 and after.
Trump himself took no public responsibility.
This story was updated to note that Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler voted for the impeachment of then President Donald Trump.