Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., claimed he traveled to visit former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago after the Jan. 6 Capitol attack because he was “depressed,” former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., writes in her new book.
Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor,” targets the “enablers and collaborators” who were willing to violate their oath to the Constitution out of political expediency and loyalty to Donald Trump,” according to excerpts published by CNN.
“He knows it’s over,” McCarthy told her just two days after Election Day, Cheney wrote. “He needs to go through all the stages of grief.”
But McCarthy that same day went on Fox News and claimed Trump “won this election,” she wrote. “McCarthy knew that what he was saying was not true.”
Following the Jan. 6 attack, Cheney wrote that she learned that McCarthy was worried he was losing his ability to fundraise and secretly flew to Mar-a-Lago just three weeks after the Capitol riot.
“Mar-a-Lago? What the hell, Kevin?” Cheney asked, according to the book.
“They’re really worried,” McCarthy said. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”
“What? You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?” Cheney questioned.
“Yeah, he’s really depressed,” McCarthy said.
Cheney wrote that other Republicans were “angry and disgusted” at McCarthy’s visit.
“Some mocked him, circulating the Trump/McCarthy photo along with the clip from the movie Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise tells Renée Zellweger, ‘You.. complete… me,’” she wrote.
A spokesperson for McCarthy told CNN: “For Cheney, first it was Trump Derangement Syndrome, and now apparently it’s also McCarthy Derangement Syndrome.”
But critics pounced on the book’s claim, mocking McCarthy’s excuse.
“A few weeks ago our 14 year old dog stopped eating. At no point did our vet say to us ‘you should grovel before him and tell him you think he's the President,’” tweeted Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill. “But Kevin's gonna Kevin, I guess.”
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“How humiliating,” tweeted the left-wing outlet MeidasTouch.
“Man cannot live on stolen classified documents alone,” quipped conservative attorney George Conway.
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” crew hammered the former House speaker on Wednesday.
"Kevin McCarthy justifying his trip to Mar-a-Lago by saying three words that nobody has ever said about Donald Trump: ‘He's not eating,’" said host Joe Scarborough. "Now all I can say is this: If Kevin McCarthy's job was to go down to Mar-a-Lago to get Donald eating again, well, he did a hell of a job. Because that ain't been a problem since, wasn't really a problem before. You know, maybe if he said, 'I've got to go down to Mar-a-Lago because Donald is cheating on his wind sprints we'd believe that. But he's not eating, I don't believe it."
"How comforting that when he left, the last vision we saw was the ailing Donald lying in the that bed with an empty bucket of KFC over his head," he added.
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"On his tummy," chimed in co-host Mika Brzezinski. "That's pathetic."
"Come on – 'he's not eating,'" Scarborough said. "You want to go to Mar-a-Lago that badly. Come on, Kevin, make a better excuse than that."
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