Did President Trump just totally make up a quote from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)?
The president on Wednesday morning tweeted out a quote he attributed to McCarthy expressing support for his Mexico tariffs, with McCarthy apparently saying that "any measure the president takes on the border" is "totally veto proof."
But hours have passed since this tweet was posted, and nobody can figure out where Trump actually got the quote from. Politico did some digging and couldn't find it anywhere, writing that it "seems to exist in just one place: Trump's Twitter feed." McCarthy's office pointed Politico to an interview he gave to Fox News' Laura Ingraham, but the quote is nowhere to be found in this segment, although he did say "we support the president."
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So what happened here? It's not totally clear, and the White House didn't respond to Politico's request for comment. Media Matters' Matthew Gertz proposes a theory, though: "Trump watched the relevant segments and then he or his aide attempted to do multiple tweets responding, and by the third one the actual McCarthy quote was forgotten so they just made it up."
Regardless, McCarthy later on Wednesday wouldn't actually say whether he would prevent a veto override on Trump's Mexico tariffs, as NBC News' Leigh Ann Caldwell reports, meaning the "veto proof" tweet may not exactly age well.
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