May 4, 2022

Report: Kevin McCarthy Suggested Invoking the 25th Amendment to Oust Trump

“What the president did is atrocious and totally wrong.”

Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly/Zuma

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New leaked audio reveals just how close Republican leadership came to supporting the movement to oust former President Donald Trump in the days after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. The audio was obtained by two New York Times reporters who detailed the conversation in their new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future.

Publicly, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has toed the party line, but behind closed doors, he brainstormed ways to remove Trump from office. “What the president did is atrocious and totally wrong,” McCarthy said in a call on January 8, 2021.

McCarthy didn’t stop there. He also reportedly discussed the possibility of using the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office before he demurred because, “That takes too long.”

McCarthy had long publicly denied ever threatening Trump’s power, but last month, audio clips revealed that he had in fact told Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) that he intended to call President Trump and tell him that he should resign. The new audio reveals just how deep McCarthy’s private opposition to Trump went, no matter how loudly or repeatedly he attempts to deny it.

“I do think the impeachment divides the nation further and continues the fight even greater,” he said. “I want to see about us meeting with Biden, sitting down, make a smooth transition.”

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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