Jonathan Martin reports House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called for Republican members of congress to be permanently banned from Twitter
Published
Citation From the April 21, 2022, edition of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show
RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): 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 that it happened. I think this creates a real problem for Mr. McCarthy. I think he must at least apologize, I would not be surprised if there were not calls for his resignation, for him lying and denying that he did this when in fact he did it. But of course, he answers to his caucus.
And Jonathan, let me ask you about another bombastic allegation, or at least bombastic reality that you guys portray the same chapter of the book, which is that Mr. McCarthy, also, according to your reporting, called for more members of his caucus, other Republican members of Congress to have their Twitter accounts cut off, the same way that Trump was cut off from Twitter. He's also denying that he said that.
JONATHAN MARTIN (GUEST): I can't quite do a Maddow-style justice here, but I'll try. If you take yourself back to this period, January of 2021, remember, President Trump was widely seen after January 6th as potentially inciting a second attack on the Capitol. And so, Twitter took action, and removed him from that platform.
And so what McCarthy is talking about, is he's hearing from his fellow GOP leaders on this call, about some of the more bombastic tweets from far-right members of the House caucus, who are, you know, looking for any rationalization about the attack on January 6th. And McCarthy says out loud on this call, you know, "Can't they take their Twitter accounts away too?" Which is striking, given his tough talk today about taking on high tech companies, Big Tech companies in this private conversation that we have on tape.
He suggested that those Big Tech companies, he wants to crack down on, actually should crackdown on members of his caucus. The very members who he is now courting assiduously to try to keep happy so he has the votes to become Speaker next year.
And it's a striking moment in this conversation, because he's almost pulling his hair out, you can sort of hear the anguish in his voice, as he's talking about, "What else do I have to deal with beyond President Trump? And my own members?" And he's deeply frustrated in that period. And once again, the McCarthy office denied that fact, and it is a fact, it's on tape, that he said this, sort of pining away, hoping that Twitter could strip some of his own members of their accounts.