California newspaper calls on McCarthy to ‘dump Trump’

A prominent newspaper in Fresno, Calif., within House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) own district, is calling on him to “dump Trump.”

The Fresno Bee’s editorial board — which has had its share of critiques of McCarthy in the past — urged the California Republican on Wednesday to “disavow” former President Trump in the wake of his fourth indictment.

The 98-page indictment, unveiled Monday night, outlines Trump’s pressure campaign against election officials and his efforts to overturn the election results in the state of Georgia. He was charged alongside 18 co-defendants with racketeering and conspiracy to commit election fraud.

Since April, Trump has faced four separate indictments related to hush money payments he made to an adult film actress, his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House, and his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The Bee, on Wednesday, blasted McCarthy for throwing his support behind Trump amid the legal turmoil. In the newspaper’s editorial, the board included the Speaker’s recent post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, in which he calls the most recent indictment “weaponized” against Trump by President Biden and strongly refutes it.

“That tweet is wrong on many levels,” the board wrote. “For one thing, Trump is not the president.”

“The man who beat him fairly, Democrat Joe Biden, is leading the nation. Biden had nothing to do with bringing the Georgia case,” the editorial continued. “That was the decision of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.”

In February, McCarthy reportedly called out the Bee’s editorial page after being asked a question by the opinion editor for the paper, Tad Weber. He claimed the paper “never” asked for his “side” or reached out to his office for comment.

“The Bee opinion has never called me,” McCarthy said in a moment caught on camera and posted to X. “They take an opinion on everything I do, and never once asked me a question. So if you ever decide to ask my opinion, I’d love to give it.”

Weber, however, said the paper had.

The feud between the congressman and the Bee hit a new peak in the 2022 midterm election when the editorial board put out an endorsement of McCarthy’s Democratic challenger, Marisa Wood.