According to a new report from CNN, ex-President Donald Trump — who hasn’t spoken publicly in front of a camera since leaving office — has been following news out of the Republican conference in the House, where Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) supported keeping Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) in a position of leadership. Cheney has faced criticism from Republicans like Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) after she voted in favor of impeaching Trump after he incited a riot at the Capitol on January 6. According to CNN, Trump has been “livid and fuming” over McCarthy’s support for Cheney.
On Friday, CNN reported as follows:
‘McCarthy did… manage to anger one key constituent. According to a source familiar, a stir-crazy Trump has spent the last two days livid and fuming to aides and allies about what he views as a betrayal by McCarthy for standing by Cheney and not punishing her for her vote to impeach. This just over a week after McCarthy made an appeal to Trump by visiting him down at Mar-a-Lago and extracting a public commitment that the former President will work to elect a Republican House majority in 2022.’
In the time since he left office, Trump has been staying at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where he’s gone without any substantial personal access to social media after platforms booted him in the wake of his incitement of violence at the Capitol. If Twitter decided to handle Trump’s account differently, then the nation might be facing angry tweets from Trump this week about Liz Cheney and other House Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment — but Trump was banned from Twitter, so there are no tweets.
Going forward, arguments in Trump’s second impeachment trial will soon be starting after the House formally charged him with incitement of insurrection. Trump’s legal team has already wheeled out arguments including a claim that the ex-president’s lies about the security of the election, which provided the pretense for the riot, were merely his free speech and protected by the First Amendment. They’ve also claimed that, fundamentally, the ultimate truthfulness of his claims about the election isn’t even conclusively determinable, which is ridiculous. At no point did any credible governmental authority ever even partially accept the idea of systematic election fraud.
