House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to rewrite history on Thursday by claiming that he never supported Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the election, in a heated exchange with CNN reporter Manu Raju.
The contentious exchange was brought about by a question Raju asked McCarthy about why he is concerned about the efforts to overturn the Iowa election of a Republican, but wasn’t concerned about Trump’s effort to overturn the presidential election.
In Iowa, Democrat Rita Hart is officially contesting the state’s Second Congressional District election after losing to Republican state Sen. Mariannette Miller-Meeks in November’s election by just six votes.
Miller-Meeks’ victory has been certified by election officials in the state.
Republicans argue that Democrats are trying to steal a seat from the winner whose election was already certified.
Raju pointed out that McCarthy had attempted to overturn President Biden’s election victory. “Well, now you’re saying something that’s not true,” McCarthy responded.
McCarthy, who voted against certifying election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania argued that just those two states alone would not be enough to overturn President Biden’s victory.
“It takes 270. If you remove Arizona and Pennsylvania, President Biden is still president. He’s above 270,” McCarthy argued.
At the same time, he said he does not regret supporting the Texas lawsuit that would overturn the results of the election in four key battleground states that were crucial to President Biden’s election victory.
“Should I have supported the Texas lawsuit? The answer is yes. Do you know why? Because they went to the courts,” McCarthy said.
When they failed in the courts, 147 Republicans, including McCarthy, challenged the certification of election results from six states in the House on Jan. 6, in a last ditched attempt to keep Trump in power.
They riled up their base with false claims of widespread voter fraud and leaders like McCarthy regularly appeared on Fox News to spread those lies while refusing to recognize Biden as the duly elected President of the United States.
Their actions led to supporters of Donald Trump storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 to ‘stop the steal’ resulting in the death of five people including a Capitol Police officer.
Since the events of Jan. 6 some Republicans have claimed they were not trying to prevent President Biden from taking office, they were just concerned about election fraud, even though some of the election related case did not even allege fraud and were thrown out in court. They were unable to prove that there was widespread fraud, because there was none.
