Putin paid Trump? Republicans think McCarthy's statement has to be a joke.
By Mike DeBonis and David Weigel May 17 at 9:00 PM
Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s Republican colleagues were ready Wednesday to accept the House majority leader’s explanation that he was joking in his private comments last year suggesting that then-candidate Donald Trump was being paid by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“It was a bad attempt at a joke,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters Wednesday evening, moments after The Washington Post published an account of the remark based on a recording of a June 2016 meeting of GOP leaders. “That’s all there is to it. Nobody believes it to be true.”
Among those willing to give the Californian a pass was another GOP figure whom McCarthy identified as possibly being on Putin’s payroll: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).
McCarthy found Rohrabacher on the House floor Wednesday evening and assured him the remark captured on the recording obtained by the Post — “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy said — was not to be taken seriously.
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