a moment of realization

Liz Cheney says she was 'stunned' by Kevin McCarthy's post-Jan. 6 visit to Trump at Mar-a-Lago

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) was "stunned" that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) flew down to visit former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago just a few weeks after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the congresswoman said during an episode of David Axelrod's podcast The Axe Files, which was released Monday morning. "I could not imagine any justification for doing that," she added.

The two GOP lawmakers are no longer in league with each other — McCarthy has aligned with Trump, while Cheney is trying to carve out an anti-Trump contingent among congressional Republicans — so Cheney's comments weren't surprising. But she did reveal that McCarthy's trip was when she realized House Republicans wouldn't "be able to move forward and focus on substance and policy because we had leaders who were embracing the president who had just been impeached," adding that the idea that McCarthy, who had previously said Trump bore responsibility for the riot, was "essentially pleading" with the former president to "somehow come back into the fold or whatever it was he was doing ... was inexcusable." Listen to a clip from the interview below.