Reframing the Republican National Committee's recent formal rebuke of two House conference members, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said on Wednesday that those engaged in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot did not use ''legitimate discourse,'' The Hill reported.
McCarthy was not rebuking the RNC's Feb. 4 censure of Reps. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Liz Cheney of Wyoming over their service on the House panel probing the 1/6 events, but he did try to refine the language used in the censure to describe the actions of the Capitol rioters.
The resolution accused the pair, who both serve on the House select committee investigating the event, of ''participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.''
''I think anybody, we all know this, that entered this building, that rioted, is not legitimate discourse,'' McCarthy said, per The Hill.
McCarthy added that he believed the excerpt of the RNC resolution did not refer to the rioters. Instead, he suggested that the language was condemning unjustified subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 select committee after the event.
''What they believed because if you watch what the Jan. 6 committee is doing, they subpoenaed people who weren't here on Jan. 6, who were actually down in Florida,'' McCarthy said on NBC News.
''They've gone after people and their records and that weren't even a part of Jan. 6. That's the portion that they were talking about,'' he added.
In a separate interview, McCarthy said the RNC should have clarified their language better.
''I think had they explained out what they were talking to, this wouldn't be controversial at all, because they weren't referring to people who have broken into this building,'' he said.
McCarthy's defense of the censure is at odds with the response of his party colleague, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
McConnell denounced the RNC censure on Tuesday, saying it was "not the job" of the committee to intervene and reiterated his opinion the events of Jan. 6 constituted a "violent insurrection," The New York Times reported.
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