Kevin McCarthy Says National Security Secrets Are OK in the Bathroom
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had a bizarre explanation for why it’s OK that Trump stored classified national security documents in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.
The most powerful House Republican in Congress says it’s OK Donald Trump hid top secret government documents in his lavish resort’s bathroom, because, well, at least the door locks.
“Was that a good look for the former president to have boxes in a bathroom?” a reporter asked Kevin McCarthy.
“I don’t know,” McCarthy started, glancing up in sardonic thought. “Is it a good picture to have boxes in a garage that opens up all the time? A bathroom door locks.”
Kevin McCarthy’s remarks follow the second indictment of the already twice-impeached and liable-for-sexual-abuse former president. Trump was indicted for taking boxes upon boxes of classified government documents upon leaving the White House and subsequently mishandling them. He repeatedly refused government appeals to return the documents, flouting subpoenas and eventually forcing the government to conduct a search in his swanky Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
In the search and investigation, it was discovered that Trump hid the documents everywhere from a Mar-a-Lago ballroom to a bathroom, and showed off the secret documents (from agencies like the CIA, Defense Department, and NSA) to a representative of his PAC as well as staff members.
McCarthy’s comments were in reference to classified documents from the Obama administration found in President Joe Biden’s home garage earlier this year. Biden, like Mike Pence who also found classified documents in his possession after leaving the White House, has cooperated with government efforts to retrieve them. Trump definitively has not, and was actively involved in both removing the documents from the White House, and in showing them to an array of individuals without government clearance.
Beyond the marked differences between Trump and other former White House occupants, the comparison between a garage door and bathroom door itself is obviously meaningless. If it needs to be spelled out: Bathroom doors generally lock with a simple click from the inside. Anyone who might have had a vested interest in taking a peep at a CIA or NSA document wouldn’t have too much trouble getting through a bathroom door. Garage doors may actually be a degree more secure, but you don’t see Hakeem Jeffries making the comparison McCarthy is anyhow—because it’s dumb!
McCarthy’s remarks followed similarly sophomoric ones from Senator Lindsey Graham. Some seven years after warning “if we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it,” Graham took to the Sunday show circuit to snarl and stutter at ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, refusing to definitively say it was wrong for Trump to take and hide secret government documents.
Meanwhile, other Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene and do-nothing Representative Tim Burchett are going even further, calling to literally defund the Department of Justice.