McCarthy rewards the pro-Trump radicals who put him in power | CNN Politics

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is keeping his word to radicals who put him in power and rewarding those who can keep him there, paving a smooth start to his tenure that may, however, be storing up trouble down the road.

The California Republican handed hard-right House members with plum committee assignments, dumped several high-profile Democrats from key panels to please the conservative media universe, launched investigations into the “weaponization” of government against Republicans like former President Donald Trump and gave a pass to Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene when she heckled President Joe Biden during the State of the Union address or suggested “national divorce” between red and blue states. He’s refused to demand the resignation of New York Rep. George Santos, a serial fabulist, who might be an embarrassment but whose seat remains critical to the GOP’s tiny majority.

This week, in his most stunning move yet, McCarthy is giving Fox News host Tucker Carlson exclusive access to security footage of the January 6, 2021, US Capitol insurrection. The move may fuel Carlson’s false claims and conspiracies about a heinous attack on American democracy. The Fox primetime star has in the past baselessly claimed people working for the FBI orchestrated the invasion of Congress.

McCarthy is currying favor with a past critic and supremely powerful media host he’d love to get on his side as he tries to rule his conference and court the conservative base. He’s already used the effort in fundraising appeals. And his move may also help whitewash Trump’s culpability for the insurrection, weeks after the ex-president played a role in helping him win the speakership.

After appeasing demands from GOP holdouts and finally securing the speakership on the 15th roll call vote last month, McCarthy’s opponents argue that he’s now cravenly paying back the most extreme members of the most radical GOP conference in modern American history. But perhaps, he’s also purchasing goodwill among his members that could give him more maneuvering room when he needs votes later in the year over critically important issues like raising the government’s borrowing limit, agreeing on a budget and sending more military aid to Ukraine.

Yet there’s little in McCarthy’s past as a Republican leader that suggests he has such political dexterity. And the most riotous members of the House GOP seem highly unlikely to accept McCarthy’s concessions and fall in line. Nor does the uncompromising ideology of some of the political and media influencers he’s courting suggest they’d be content to cede power to him.

And as McCarthy parries accusations that he’s acting from naked political motivations, he’s adopting superficially principled justifications that mock his critics. He told The New York Times he handed over the security tapes because he had “promised” to do so. The speaker gave such an undertaking to Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a GOP source told CNN’s Melanie Zanona, in his quest to secure the gavel, but the apparent deal did not specify that Carlson should get the footage. McCarthy suggested to the Times he was also acting in the interests of transparency. “I was asked in the press about these tapes, and I said they do belong to the American public. I think sunshine lets everybody make their own judgment.”

Except, he’s not giving them to the American people so anyone can see them, or releasing them to all media, at least yet. The speaker is specifically offering access to a conservative TV host who has made no secret of his agenda. Had he wanted to create that ray of sunshine, McCarthy could have posted them online, tasked congressional committees to examine them or invited other media outlets to also view them.

The credibility of Fox News – Carlson’s television home and the apparent destiny of the tapes – has, meanwhile, taken a hit following revelations from text messages and emails in a court filing this week that some of Fox’s biggest stars and executives privately dismissed Trump’s lies about voter fraud after the 2020 election but allowed them to dominate its airwaves. Just as McCarthy is apparently unwilling to challenge the power of conservative media, Fox appeared unwilling to alienate a conservative audience that wanted to believe Trump won. CNN has reached out to Fox News and Carlson with questions about how the security footage will be handled but had not received a response as of Thursday evening.

McCarthy also tried to cast his stance on Santos, who lied about large portions of his biography and career resume, as a democratic one.

“The voters of his district have elected him,” McCarthy said of the freshman in January, suggesting that to demand the resignation of the New York Republican would be an affront to democracy – even though it appears voters had no idea of the truth about Santos when they sent him to Washington. McCarthy has since hinted that his position could change if the House Ethics Committee “finds something” against Santos, who won a district that Biden carried in 2020 and that could be tough for the GOP to hold.

McCarthy’s stances have led to criticism and enraged Democrats, who say his release of the footage to Carlson could endanger the security of the Capitol. But in America’s bitter political climate, appealing to activist political bases is often the first consideration – especially in the radicalized Republican Party of the Trump era. In the modern GOP, earning the anger of the media is an essential element of appealing to grassroots voters and often seems a major motivation of top party figures.

Previous Republican speakers like John Boehner and Paul Ryan tried to manage their radical right-wing conferences while staying faithful to the institutional responsibilities of their leadership position. It was a balancing act that eventually doomed their tenures. McCarthy appears to be taking the opposite tack, throwing his lot in completely with the extremists who have outsized influence due to the far-smaller-than-expected House majority the GOP managed to win in the 2022 midterms.

But his accommodation of his conference might only work in the short term.

In a sign of growing trouble, a border security bill that McCarthy had hoped to pass early in the new Congress is still in limbo after moderates voiced fierce opposition to a three-page draft drawn up by conservative Rep. Chip Roy from Texas. The dispute underscores the fatal flaw in the GOP majority between right-wingers keen to appeal to the base and moderates who won seats in states like New York and California, where they could face difficult reelection bids in 2024.

CNN also reported this week on bitter splits between factions of the GOP on the question of more aid for Ukraine. McCarthy has tried to finesse this divide by saying he favors support for the Kyiv government but is also against a “blank check” for President Volodymyr Zelensky – in a nod to lawmakers like Gaetz and Greene who oppose multi-billion dollar US aid packages. The speaker’s position is allowing him to avoid alienating either faction so far, but it will come under fierce pressure when massive requests for arms and ammunition for Ukraine arrive on Capitol Hill.

McCarthy also appears to be navigating into a perilous position on a looming showdown with Biden over the need to raise the government’s borrowing authority, or the debt ceiling, later this year. If the authority is not granted by Congress, the US could default on its obligations, shredding its credit rating and throwing the American and global economies into turmoil. But McCarthy is standing with the most radical members of his conference who are demanding huge spending cuts, which Biden has refused to accept, in order to lift the debt ceiling.

The California Republican may end up with a fateful choice between backing the lawmakers who elected him speaker and crashing the economy, since, if he tried to grant Biden such authority by using some Democratic votes, it’s possible he’d be toppled.