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Sen. Elizabeth Warren doubles down on calling GOP leader Kevin McCarthy a ‘liar and traitor’

Warren has been an outspoken critic of Republican leadership, especially as members have criticized the ongoing investigation into the Jan. 6 attack.

Senator Elizabeth Warren.

May 1, 2022

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has doubled down on calling Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, House Minority leader, a “liar and traitor.”

Warren has been an outspoken critic of Republican leadership, especially as members have criticized the ongoing investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol building.

She initially made her comments about McCarthy, a defender of former President Donald Trump despite new recordings of him calling for Trump to resign in the attack’s aftermath, when she appeared last weekend on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

On Sunday’s broadcast of “Keller At Large” on Boston’s WBZ-TV, the senior senator from Massachusetts reiterated her characterization of the California congressman and called upon him to resign.

“I think that truly betrays a nation and he is a man who could be in line, if the Republicans ever take back control, to be speaker of the House, to be in line himself to be president of the United States,” Warren told show host Jon Keller.

“He has a higher standard to meet and shame on him.”

McCarthy, in the audio recordings uncovered by the New York Times, is heard after the Jan. 6 attack blaming Trump for the violence and vowing to push him to resign immediately. But he, like other GOP colleagues, later backtracked due to fears of a backlash from Trump loyalists who control the Republican Party.

“Their whole goal is to just follow one man,” said Warren in reference to Trump. “And if they can get that one man in power, that’s what they want to do.”

It’s no secret that President Joe Biden’s approval ratings since taking office leave much to be desired, even among fellow Democrats. A new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News found that just 42 percent of respondents have a positive view of his job performance.

On Saturday night, the president even joked about his popularity, or lack thereof, at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington.

“I’m really excited to be here tonight with the only group of Americans with a lower approval rating than I have,” Biden told the audience of more than 2,000 media figures, politicians, and Hollywood celebrities.

Warren, who lost against Biden in her 2020 campaign for president, told Keller that she is gearing up to run for re-election to the Senate and won’t be making another bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2024.

“Joe Biden is running for president in 2024 and I am supporting him,” she said.

The path to victory for Democrats, she said, is focusing on the country’s economic problems. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Warren called upon fellow Democrats to rally behind Biden’s stalled agenda in Congress in order to avoid massive losses in November’s midterm election.

In light of high inflation that has forced many Americans to make tough financial decisions, Warren said that issues like taxing the wealthy, imposing a minimum corporate tax, and canceling student loan debt, are popular with the majority of Americans and should be embraced by her party.

“What we want to do is popular, but we actually need to do it,” she said.

Warren, a member of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, also said she supported Biden’s response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but that more can be done economically, politically, and diplomatically, including spending more on weapons and humanitarian relief on top of the $14 billion in emergency aid that was allocated in March.