Had McCarthy handed in his resignation on Friday by 5pm, Gavin Newsom would have had no choice but to set a date for a special election to fill his seat— a seat that has an R+31 partisan lean. There is no good reason for McCarthy to not have done so and to instead officially resign at the end of the month, most of the time in between a recess anyway. Now Newsom doesn’t have to call a special election at all. He can— or he can leave a deep red seat empty for a full year… and that’s exactly what he will do.
You think he’s bitter? Mortified over his humiliation? Furious that the conference he helped build replaced him with a nobody, bumpkin from northwest Louisiana? On Friday he did his first sit-down TV interview since he announced he bailing. It was with Bob Costa for Sunday Morning and it aired yesterday. He’s no Jamie Raskin that’s for sure. Take a look; it’s kind of lame.
I didn’t mean to say the show was lame; they put together a decent enough segment and Costa tried to get something worthwhile out of him. It’s that McCarthy was lame. McCarthy is lame. He has nothing profound or insightful to say. Not even anything especially interesting to say. He’s not a person who’s sharing any self-reflection, probably because he doesn’t have any to share. The Republicans may not have gained anything by replacing him with MAGA Mike. But they didn’t lose anything either.
Vaguely newsworthy was some table about Trump— but just vaguely, since it came from McCarthy, not from Trump. He kind of endorsed Trump and when Costa asked him, with a straight face, if he’d be willing to serve in Trump’s cabinet, he said, “In the right position. Look, if I am the best person for the job, yes. Look, I've worked with President Trump on a lot of policies. We worked together to win the majority. But we also have a relationship where we're very honest with one another.”
That gave Costa an opening: “You praise Trump's policies. You say he's a good guy. But many Americans, they look at his language, they listen to his speeches, and they hear an authoritarian. Some say even a fascist on the horizon in this country. What do you say to those people who have those real concerns?”
McCarthy: “Look, I don't see that, and this is what I tell President Trump, too. What President Trump needs to do in this campaign, it needs to be about rebuilding, restoring, renewing America. It can't be about revenge.”
Costa: “He's talking about retribution, day in, day out.”
McCarthy: “He needs to stop that. He needs to stop that.”
Costa: “You think he's going to listen to you saying, ‘Stop that. Stop that’? He hasn't listened to anybody before.”
McCarthy: “That's not true. He will adapt when he gets all the facts.”
Costa: “He's not backing away from his calls for retribution.”
McCarthy: “Yeah, but remember, you have a check and balance system. And I think, at the end of the day…”
Costa: “Where's the check and balance on him in the Republican Party?”
McCarthy: “America doesn't want to see the idea of retribution. If it's rebuild, restore and renew, then I think you'll see that. And look— that's him. But I'm not gonna change who I am. And I'm not gonna stop giving him the advice. And look, I lost the job of Speaker. Maybe I don't have the best advice. But I know one thing is, I love this country. I want tomorrow to be better than today. And I'm gonna do everything in my power, and I'm gonna be engaged in the process to make it better.”
And there you have it-- Kevin McCarthy in one paragraph.
lying sack of shit... or the most clueless imbecile ever to have lived in CA.