GOP leader: Evidence of Trump's crimes 'doesn't give me any pause'

At his weekly press conference, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the revelations of Trump’s wrongdoing and bigotry following Michael Cohen’s testimony don’t bother him.

“From what I’ve seen, and what we’ve investigated, that doesn’t give me any pause whatsoever about this president,” McCarthy told a reporter.

“Nothing that you heard from Cohen yesterday makes you question the president at all?” the reporter pressed.

“No. I didn’t hear anything during the process, no,” McCarthy said.

The exchange represented, yet again, another endorsement of Trump’s unethical and possibly criminal conduct, along with a blessing of his blatant racism.

In the hearing, Cohen revealed that federal prosecutors in New York are investigating Trump for unspecified crimes. He also testified under oath that there was a conduit of information flowing from Wikileaks to Trump that Trump sought to weaponize for the presidential election.

Cohen described an illegal payment scheme to hide the affair between Trump and porn star Stormy Daniels, and provided physical evidence of the hush-money transfers. Cohen also explained how Trump had lied about having business in Moscow and that Trump was negotiating to build a Trump Tower there during the campaign.

Cohen even discussed how Trump has been engaged in financial crimes, hiding his assets from tax agencies and putting them into a fake charity.

Yet none of these revelations gave McCarthy any “pause.”

Republicans ignored these issues for two years under McCarthy’s old boss, then-Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan repeatedly downplayed Trump’s scandals and bigotry to pass the Republican Party’s legislative agenda.

At the end of Ryan’s sad tenure, the nation was saddled with repeated federal government closures and a GOP tax bill that benefitted the extremely wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

Voters reacted to this state of affairs by kicking Republicans out of power and handing the reins to the Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. McCarthy leads the minority instead of the majority because Ryan once did what he continues to do.

But it looks like Republicans are still all-in for Trump’s criminality and unethical behavior.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.