Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy clashed with NBC News hosts on Monday in a contentious interview where he pushed back against a perceived double standard applied to President Trump by Democrats and the media.
McCarthy joined NBC’s inaugural coverage shortly after former President Biden issued a series of preemptive pardons for five members of his family on his way out the door.
The former GOP lawmaker was asked how he squares Republican criticism of Biden’s last-minute pardons with Trump’s campaign pledge to issue pardons for a number of individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
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“This is the difference. This president told the American public, while he was campaigning for office, ‘if I’m elected president, I will pardon these people,’” McCarthy fired back. “Compare this to Joe Biden, who said he would never pardon his son, who now, on the very last day in the last 30 minutes, pardons his entire family.”
“Terrible. Terrible,” he continued. “Think about what everybody else had gone through. Why pardon your family? It makes no sense to me…all it does, is, put a cloud over that you did something wrong…. you must know something that other people do not and what? Why do you wait until 30 minutes before? Why did you tell the American public you would never pardon your son and you do it now? The difference here is whether you agree or disagree about what President Trump’s going to do, he told the American public ahead of time. They put that into consideration whether they vote for him for president, so he’s just keeping a campaign promise.”
Asked about concerns that Trump would seek political retribution against political opponents in office, McCarthy said it was Democrats who need to take a long hard look in the mirror.
“See, this is the thing that bothers me most. For the people who oppose President Trump, all they talk about is retribution. I have not seen him put retribution onto anybody when he had the power…he’s talked about it, but I’ve only seen the other side do retribution to him and everybody else.
“I will tell you this – four years ago, when President Trump left office, everybody who worked for him got black-balled. No one could be hired…nobody could work any place and then everybody had to go through attorneys. Everybody was getting prosecuted, everybody was being looked at. President Trump had to go through it and what the Democrats did to President Trump. They helped elect him by prosecuting him…,” he went on.
McCarthy said Kash Patel, Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, will “uphold the rule of law.”
“I’ve watched people sit back and say I want to go after you because you say you might do something in the future. We live in America right? You’re innocent until proven guilty, but now they’re going after this, they will uphold the rule of law, but they saw the other side of this that people [were] using prosecution against them that wasn’t right. I think they’ll be more apt not to use it for that reason.”
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NBC host Savannah Guthrie pushed back, arguing that prosecution against Trump for the possession of classified documents was “not an abuse” of the rule of law.
“This is all fair too okay, that that was on President Trump, but at the very same moment you’re saying that, you had a President Joe Biden, that had the documents inside his garage,” McCarthy retorted.
“This is something that was different… he had a document when he was a senator. I’ve been part of the gang of eight – at no time, at no place… a senator could ever take a classified document. Done deal, but he had one. Did he get prosecuted? No. What did they say? He’s too old, but he’s the sitting U.S. President of the United States.” McCarthy continued.
“So this is what we talk about fair treatment. When people on the other side say ‘oh my God, President Trump may do something in the future,’ he hasn’t. Give us the time and… if he does something wrong, that’s an appropriate time to make an argument, but right now, I just watched a nation have an opportunity to heal. I watched world leaders come to this inaugural. I’ve watched people who spent millions of dollars against him, sit right behind him and are excited,” McCarthy concluded. “I watched titans in business say they’re changing their process… to be fair.”
