WATCH: GOPer blows off questions about Kevin McCarthy's lies to attack Pelosi over Jan 6th riot
During an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" to make an appeal for more support for Ukraine, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) was pressed by host Dana Bash to address House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy's comments about asking Donald Trump to resign and subsequent lies that he brought it up.
Spartz, a freshman House member who was born in Ukraine, was confronted by the CNN host with the audiotape of McCarthy's remarks and was asked to comment on them, only for the lawmaker to dance around making any judgment about the GOP leader before lashing out at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
"He's the leader of your Republican caucus. What's your reaction?" Bash pressed.
"Well, I think you know we'll have a lot of politics," Spartz replied. "We'll do all these different debates, but I'll be honest, we need to really deal with serious issues right now. We have war in Europe, we have a serious situation on the border, let's deal with serious issues. I know there's a lot of politics, a lot of drama. I'll tell you one thing, our Republican Party is a very diverse party and we have a difference of opinion which is good. We don't have a top-down approach, we have to have debate about issues and ideas. I think it's healthy."
"That's absolutely true," Bash agreed before getting back to her original question. "But one thing that's not a policy debate is the question of telling the truth and it doesn't seem that he did. Does that bother you, particularly on something as grave and as important as what happened on January 6th?"
"Well, I think they need to explain," the GOP lawmaker demurred. "I don't know, I don't have a review of the personal conversation, who said what. Leader McCarthy and president Trump, they need to do an explanation of what's happening and explain what's happening. I wasn't there, I didn't hear it."
"There is a lot of things people try to spin, so I'm not going to comment. but I think they should discuss what's happening and explain what it was and why it is, but ultimately, people have different opinions. People change views," she continued. "That's okay, that's a part of political process, to communicate and have different views and learn about the issues and maybe change opinions and have debate and deliberation. That's very healthy."
"It's not necessarily people telling the truth, but people can change an opinion based on learning about circumstances," she pressed on as Bash sat silently. "I wasn't there. but I tell you one thing that I was very surprised, I was in the chair on January 6th, that after we had breaks, we were in the chambers, it took us almost an hour before Nancy Pelosi stopped the session. That was surprising for me because it posed a lot of risks for the members inside and for also our Capitol police."
"We never got an answer to that question, hopefully someday we will," she added before Bash moved on.
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