And of course, the reason Republicans were discussing withdrawing their endorsement was because this video was seen as an almost certain moment where candidate Trump was going to lose that presidential race. He'd been caught on video saying that it was OK to assault women if you're a celebrity. So that would have put McCarthy in pretty unusual political territory to keep backing Trump through that moment.

That's right. And with McCarthy embracing Trump, everyone really in the conference was able to rally around him. And of course, we know that Trump ultimately prevailed. And Trump really became kind of a unifying factor for what had been this very fractious conference of House Republicans. And Trump himself often talk about how much he liked McCarthy.

He would

call him my Kevin.

And that

really sent a signal to, again, a lot of these hard right members who had given McCarthy a hard time, that, you know, Trump and McCarthy at least were, you know, pretty good buds. Of all the nicknames that he's come up with, my Kevin sounds pretty good, my Kevin. Okay with you? It's all right with me. All right. Goodbye, my Kevin. But where things started getting extremely difficult for McCarthy was, of course, after the 2020 election when Trump lied about winning.

If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us. Right. How does McCarthy navigate that?

Well, initially, he goes out in Fox and says that Trump did

win. And President Trump won this election. So everyone who's listening, do not be quiet. Do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to

happen before our very eyes. So

sort of gives hard right-house Republicans the red meat of election denialism.

Exactly. But in kind of classic Kevin McCarthy fashion, he wants it both ways. No one thinks that he actually really wants to overturn the presidential election. But come January 6th, lawmakers are faced with the choice of voting to certify Biden's election or to overturn it. And for a lot of members, this is really sort of a tormenting vote for Republicans. And they're asking McCarthy, how should we vote? What should we be telling our constituents about this vote? What should we do, basically? Please tell us what to do. And McCarthy won't really give them any guidance. He didn't tell his members that they needed to stand by Trump and vote to overturn the election. But he also wasn't really giving them any cover or argument for why they shouldn't. He tells them it's a vote of conscience. There are members who are not sure of how he himself is going to vote. And of course, when it comes to the vote itself, he votes to overturn the election.

And so what happens with McCarthy when that day turns into a violent attack on the Capitol? Well,

McCarthy is absolutely furious with Trump, both in private and public. He blames him directly for inciting the insurrection. He says that Trump's behavior is atrocious. And he says, I'm sick of this guy. And he tells lawmakers that he plans to ask Trump to resign. And then he goes out on the House floor and publicly says, the president bears responsibility for Wednesday's

attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump. Accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest, and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term. Right. I remember that speech, a pretty unambiguous message of disapproval from Kevin McCarthy towards Trump and really a kind of line in the sand moment where he's saying we can't come back from this with Trump.

Yeah, exactly. But he somewhat immediately backtracks after that speech when it's clear that it did not go over well at all with the hard right members of his conference. And within three weeks time, he actually travels down to Mar-a to meet with Trump. The latest example, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. He met with the former president at his Florida resort yesterday. And he ends up appearing side by side with him in this moment that is immortalized in a photo. United and ready to win in 22, McCarthy tweeted after

the meeting. Right. And the process makes this pretty epic backflip on Trump being responsible for January 6th. Yeah,

that's right. And it just keeps happening over and over with McCarthy in the months after January 6th. You know, at one point, he expressed an openness to the concept of having a bipartisan committee investigate the attack on the Capitol, but then he ultimately opposes it. Right.

And

then we saw it happen again when Liz Cheney was under attack from the right for speaking out against Trump and his role in inciting the attack on the Capitol.

McCarthy

at first defended her when those hard-right lawmakers were calling for her to step down from leadership. But then McCarthy changed his mind and threw his support behind ousting her from leadership.

Right. And then the common theme here in all these public moments of really contradiction, especially around January 6th, seems to be a profound willingness by McCarthy to really say or do whatever he has to do in the moment to survive that moment vis-a these hard right House Republicans. Very clearly, there's almost kind of nothing he won't do or undo to please this group of lawmakers.

Yeah, I mean, it's just a string of contortions. He's essentially willing to try out a position until it's clear that he's at risk of alienating the support of the right wing flank. And then he immediately will backtrack from that position.

So I think, Katie, that brings us more or less to now, this moment. We should say we're talking to you on Monday afternoon where Kevin McCarthy is supposed to be the presumptive Republican House leader and yet is facing a huge problem actually getting elected. And what's a little confusing about that is that every story you've told us so far in this conversation seems to end with Kevin McCarthy trying to please these hard-right House members who now apparently still won't vote for him. So how does that work? Why won't they just give him the love he so desperately craves from them? And what is it looking like for him to try to win them over despite their opposition? Well,

I think to start, you have to understand these lawmakers that are giving him a lot of trouble really are disruptors, and they see that as their primary role in Congress is to kind of tear down the place. But I think beyond that, they have an inherent distrust of McCarthy, in large part for all of the reasons we've just been talking about. They see him as someone who is willing to contort his position over and over and over again. So there's sort of a well of mistrust between this group and McCarthy. And that's part of the reason we've seen him offer the group really just a whole laundry list of concessions. He has toughened up his language about starting potential impeachment proceedings against the Homeland Security Secretary. He's promised some hard-right lawmakers some pretty plum committee assignments. But probably the crown jewel of all of those concessions came over the weekend when he said that he would be willing to enact a rule change that essentially would allow any five lawmakers to set up a vote to oust him as speaker. Wow. And that was one of their top demands. But I think it was really a sign of his desperation and of his realization that the clock is ticking. Now, so far, they've rejected that because they actually want the threshold to be just one lawmaker. In their mind, any single lawmaker should be able to call for a vote to oust the Speaker at any given time. Right,

which would be pretty extreme and unusual. Absolutely.

So

McCarthy's answer to hard-right House Republicans not trusting him, in part because he's made himself hard to trust, because his strategy of constantly switching positions has kind of backfired, his answer is to basically just kind of keep switching positions and see what sticks on the dartboard of giving these House hard-right Republicans what they want.

Yeah, and at least so far, it has not been a successful strategy. I think it really speaks to how entrenched these Republicans are that he offered them a pretty significant concession, and he seems to have not picked up a single vote from that concession. So

given that McCarthy hasn't, at the time we're recording this, secured the votes necessary to become Speaker, with very few hours left before that vote, what do we think could happen on Tuesday when the voting starts? Well,

I think first it's important to note that this type of scenario is extremely unusual. Normally, the election of the speaker on the House floor is a pro forma ceremonial event. But what you're going to see happen is that lawmakers will congregate on the House floor. The House clerk will do the roll call. And each lawmaker, they need to say a name. They need to vote for a person.

And

if McCarthy is unable to get a majority of those votes, then lawmakers have to vote again. And the idea is they will just keep voting until someone, whether it's McCarthy or someone else, gets a majority of the votes to become Speaker. And so there's not a ton of precedent for this because actually the last time that a Speaker wasn't able to sew up the vote on the very first time lawmakers voted was in 1923. So we're talking about a once in a hundred year event occurrence. Right.

So there could be a scenario in which there's one vote, McCarthy doesn't get it. There's another vote, he doesn't get it. And on and on it will go in a kind of humiliating cascade of not becoming speaker. That's

right. And at that point, you have to imagine that there will be other lawmakers, ambitious lawmakers, who start thinking, well, if Kevin can't get to a majority, maybe I can. And who might throw their hat in the ring to emerge as sort of a consensus candidate. Right.

And is such an alternative candidate emerging beyond McCarthy?

Not yet. What the hard right flank of lawmakers has said is that they believe it is going to need to come to McCarthy failing on multiple ballots before someone feels politically safe enough to put their name out there. But so far, and this has worked in McCarthy's favor, so far there's no viable other candidate that has emerged.

So the way Kevin McCarthy is likeliest to become Speaker is by making a final set of contortions familiar to us now based on the biography you have just outlined in which he makes himself the kind of leader that these hard-right House Republicans require, despite the fact that there are only a small, tiny group of them demanding he be this way.

Yes. Even if he is able to win the speakership, it will be because he has made a series of concessions that will leave him an extremely weakened, disempowered speaker.

Right. And we should say perhaps not just weak and disempowered, but someone whose speakership is likely to be shaped in this really disproportionate way by a right wing of his party that more and more seems to be rejected by the voters, right? I mean, this is the Trump wing, the Tea Party, you know, populist hard right wing of the party that we just saw lose in a major, major way in the election in November. That's why Republicans have such a thin majority. And that means that this speakership, this chamber of the House is headed in a direction that most Americans and even most Republicans don't really want. And yet its leader will have to keep performing for this small group of hard-right Republicans.

Yeah. And that will affect all of his decisions about what to prioritize in this coming Congress. hearings to have, whether they embark on impeachment proceedings for President Biden or any number of his cabinet officials. It will absolutely dictate what type of legislation they pass, including whether or not they pass, again, sort of the nuts and bolts of governing that we talked about. And so it's a hugely consequential dynamic.

And as you've told us, this is really a bit of McCarthy's own making. When we think about his relationship to this wing of the party, recruiting candidates like this, empowering them through concessions, and now realizing how hard it is to govern when they have the power.

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, he has helped shape a House Republican conference that is extraordinarily difficult to govern. And one of the reasons why he is currently in the position to be able to lead them is because he made so many contortions and concessions that, again, this really unwieldy party. And so it's somewhat fitting that he potentially is going to become the leader of this group of lawmakers who don't really have an appetite to be led.