This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross.

You know the audio tapes recently released of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy recorded

in the days after the attack on the Capitol?

In a January 10 recorded phone call, McCarthy said he was thinking of asking Trump to resign.

In another part of the call, McCarthy expressed his concern about extremist rhetoric from

Republican lawmakers and said he didn't want to look back and think, quote, we cause something

or we miss something and someone got hurt.

Those tapes and more were obtained by my guest Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns,

as part of their reporting for their new book, This Will Not Pass, Trump, Biden, and the

Battle for America's Future.

They described their book as being in part about how telling Trump what he wanted to hear

became a way of life for an entire political party, and how the gulf between what Republican

leaders said privately about Trump and their public deference had gone unchallenged for

half a decade.

Martin and Burns are national correspondents for the New York Times and political analysts

for CNN.

Our interview was recorded yesterday.

Jonathan Martin, Alex Burns, welcome to Fresh Air.

I want to start with one of the tapes and this is part of the phone call on January 10th

with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Steve Scalese, the second ranking House Republican, and Liz Cheney, the House member who

has stood firm in her denunciation of Trump's behavior and is serving on the House Select Committee

...