House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff is painting a grim picture over Republicans' growing chances of winning back the House in the 2022 elections, including a possible Kevin McCarthy speakership.
"That can never be allowed to happen," Schiff told KCBS Radio's "The State of California" on Thursday. "He would be a terrible and tragic speaker."
Schiff – serving his 11th term in the House of Representatives – laid waste to McCarthy's professionalism, politics and personal character in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
"He was really made for a moment like this when his party and his party leader care nothing about the truth, they say truth isn't true and they're entitled to their own alternate facts," Schiff said of the GOP's majority backing of former President Donald Trump. Schiff went on to call Trump's likely nomination for president in 2024 and chances of winning "an unmitigated disaster."
U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks during a weekly news conference at the U.S. Capitol September 30, 2021 in Washington, DC.Alex Wong/Getty Images
Schiff later told a story about an incident with McCarthy in which the Republican allegedly twisted a private conversation the two had about the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections in representing it to the media. When Schiff asked him about it on the House floor, McCarthy replied: "Yeah. I know, Adam. But you know how it goes."
"That's not how I operate," Schiff concluded. "But it is how he operates."
The Southern California representative, who sits on the U.S. House select committee investigating the riots, referenced Republicans' willingness to quickly circle back to Trump as party leader following the insurrection – including McCarthy himself, who famously dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. just weeks after the insurrection.
"It has revealed the Republican leadership to be essentially vacant, not to stand for anything except the preservation of their own power or the achieving of power," Schiff said. "It's a terrible tragedy that in the wake of one tragedy...the Republicans again capitulated to Donald Trump."
Schiff is making the rounds in promoting his new book "Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could."
McCarthy represents California's 23rd Congressional District. KCBS Radio has reached out to his office for comment but has not yet heard back.
