Kevin McCarthy Breaks With Trump, Tucker and Marjorie Taylor Greene: Ashli Babbitt Shooter ‘Did His Job’

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy broke from the MAGA wing of the Republican Party — and its most popular voices Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene — by declaring that Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt was not murdered by a police officer.

The comments illustrate the growing divide between those in the Republican Party who see the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol as a stain on the country and former President Trump, and those who have sought to rewrite the attack as a minor disturbance in which those who violently beat police and ransacked the Capitol Building have been unfairly persecuted.

Greene, the Georgia Republican who was elected to Congress despite her believe in the deranged QAnon conspiracy theory, falls firmly in the latter camp.

At her first Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, Greene claimed Babbitt was “murdered” and compared her killing to the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols.

That comparison can be traced back to Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who bizarrely argued last week after watching graphic video of the Nichols beating that Babbitt was “murdered… far more clearly” than he was.

Babbitt was shot during the Jan. 6 attack while trying to leap through a window-paneled door that rioters had bashed through. Per the Washington Post:

Just before she was shot, Babbitt was among a group of rioters bashing in the glass-paneled doors that led to the Speaker’s Lobby, down the hall from the House chamber, where lawmakers were being evacuated.

“There’s a gun! There’s a gun!” someone shouted when an officer, on the other side of the doors, aimed his weapon in the direction of the mob.

Despite the warning, someone appeared to hoist Babbitt up so she could step through an opening in the door created after its glass panels were shattered. A bullet struck her and she fell back on the floor.

Prosecutors determined it was reasonable for the officer to believe he was firing in self-defense or to protect members evacuating the House chamber.

The claim that Babbitt was murdered is hard to reconcile with video of the shooting (and a basic grasp of reality). Despite the facts of the case, Trump and his boosters, including Carlson, have sought to cast her as a martyr.

The Babbitt case is one piece of a broader attempt to rewrite the events of Jan. 6. While Republicans initially expressed horror at the hours-long attack, in which Trump supporters hunted with the intent to lynch Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, within weeks some began a campaign to downplay the events of that day.

Carlson has described the attack, in which a mob armed with guns, pipes and other weapons beat police, wounding 150 officers and resulting in the suicide of four cops, as a “nonviolent election protest.”

His absurdist characterizations conflict with the countless hours of video of the attack as well as reporting from his own colleagues who witnessed it first hand.

McCarthy, who condemned the attack but eventually forgave Trump for inspiring it, told reporters on Thursday that he did not believe Babbitt was “murdered.”

After bringing up Greene’s comments this week, a reporter asked McCarthy: “Do you think Ashli Babbitt was murdered or you think the police officer who shot her was doing his job?”

“I think the police officer did his job,” McCarthy said.

Watch above, via C-SPAN.