How January 6 may have doomed Kevin McCarthy's speaker hopes
Kevin McCarthy's gruelling bid to become speaker of the House of Representatives may finally be decided on the second anniversary of perhaps the most difficult day of his career.

On January 6, 2021, as a mob of Donald Trump's supporters stormed the US Capitol, the then-House minority leader and President Trump engaged in an angry phone conversation.

"You've got to call these people off," Mr McCarthy demanded of Mr Trump, according to Congresswoman Jamie Herrera-Beutler of Washington, whom Mr McCarthy told of the call. "They're your people."

"Well, Kevin, I guess they are just more upset about the election theft than you are," Mr Trump replied.

What followed, according to the congresswoman, was an exchange of obscenities.

Two years later, Mr McCarthy is back in the same halls of Congress ransacked by the mob, attempting - unsuccessfully for three full days - to win the speakership of the House of Representatives.

His circuitous journey to that point is part of the reason he is in such a precarious position today.

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A week after the dust settled from the Capitol attack, Mr McCarthy took to the floor of the House to say Mr Trump "bears responsibility" for the violence and should have denounced it immediately. He said the attempt to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden's presidential victory was "undemocratic, un-American and criminal". While he did not support Mr Trump's impeachment, he backed a formal censure of the president.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, he was telling Republican ****ociates that he would urge the president to resign before his term expired later that month.

"I've had it with this guy," he would be recorded telling a group in a private phone conversation.

Fast forward just two weeks, and Mr McCarthy was travelling to Palm Beach, Florida, to meet with "this guy" in a show of support that seemingly contradicted his earlier public and private words.

"President Trump has agreed to work with Leader McCarthy on helping the Republican Party to become a majority in the House," read a statement from the former president that accompanied a photo of the two standing side by side in one of the oceanside club's palatial rooms.