McCarthy was a fan of Scarborough before pretending not to know him
Kevin McCarthy has posted multiple videos of his friendly interactions with Joe Scarborough to YouTube.
On Wednesday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to answer reporters when he was asked about false accusations of murder that Donald Trump has made against MSNBC host and former Republican Rep. Joe Scarborough.
McCarthy said he had not read a Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing Trump for the smear and added, “I was not here with Joe Scarborough, I don’t quite know about the subject.”
But before distancing himself from the co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” McCarthy had a long-term and publicly friendly relationship with Scarborough, as can be seen in television clips and social media posts.
In seven videos posted to McCarthy’s own official YouTube channel, his appearances on “Morning Joe” over the last decade are on full display.
In the videos, the two men repeatedly discuss their shared conservative values and ideas.
“Kevin, I do want to thank you as a small-government conservative. You get it, and keep up the fight internally within the Republican Party,” Scarborough told McCarthy in a February 2011 appearance. “Thank you very much,” McCarthy replied.
In that appearance, and in others that McCarthy has posted, he brought along charts illustrating conservative economic ideas he was promoting. McCarthy even gave Scarborough the charts as a souvenir of his visits to the program.
McCarthy’s birthday even came up as a topic in a January 2017 appearance on MSNBC.
“Happy birthday today,” Scarborough said to McCarthy. “I hope Theresa May’s entourage is going to give you a cake for a present, if they come bearing presents.”
McCarthy promoted his appearances on “Morning Joe” on his Facebook page. He alerted supporters when he was about to appear on the program, in one instance writing, “About to go live on MSNBC’S Morning Joe,” and adding, “Be sure to tune in!”
He also used Twitter to share clips of his “Morning Joe” appearances. “Was up early this A.M. with @Morning_Joe to react to the President’s State of the Union,” McCarthy wrote in February 2013. “Be sure to watch @Morning_Joe this morning at 7am,” he tweeted in 2011.
McCarthy and Scarborough also interacted on Twitter.
“Such an important issue Thx for helping!” McCarthy tweeted to Scarborough in 2013, agreeing with him about the need to fix the VA’s backlog of benefits cases. Nineteen minutes later, McCarthy sent another tweet to Scarborough, alerting him to an op-ed he had written about the issue. “Keep up the fight,” McCarthy noted.
After a 2011 appearance on “Morning Joe,” McCarthy tweeted, “Thanks @JoeNBC for a great discussion on need to eliminate 1 of the barriers to job creation: gov’t overspending.”
In contrast to McCarthy’s retreat on Trump’s smear, a few other Republicans have criticized Trump’s decision to advance the conspiracy theory, including Sen. Mitt Romney and Rep. Liz Cheney.
“He’s the commander in chief of this nation, and it’s causing great pain to the family of the young woman who died. So I would urge him to stop it,” Cheney told reporters.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
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