Cheney, Kinzinger Both Call McCarthy 'Childish' For Calling Them 'Pelosi Republicans'

Panel gets underway Tuesday with first hearing

The two House Republicans sitting on the House select committee tasked at looking into the deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol Building hit back at the swipe their own leader threw their way for their service.

And this took place just as the committee itself began getting down to work Tuesday by holding its first hearing on the insurrection, which was the worst attack on the Capitol since 1814.

Republican Reps Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, joined the select committee at the invitation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) withdrew his picks for the committee.

McCarthy withdrew his selections after Pelosi vetoed two of them for having taken part in the attempt to decertify Joe Biden's election on January 6 just before the insurrection itself got underway.

In a highly unusual move, McCarthy took a public swipe at two of his own GOP members — Cheney and Kinzinger — for their participation in the select committee.

McCarthy called the pair “Pelosi Republicans.”

Cheney, who lost her post in House GOP leadership because she refused to back Donald Trump's “Big Lie” — his fictitious and baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him due to massive Democratic fraud — responded to McCarthy's jab simply.

“We have important work to do. And I think that’s pretty childish,” she said.

Kinzinger very much echoed Cheney's comments.

“Look, it's childish. We're doing big things right now. We're getting to the answers of the worst attack on the Capitol since the war of 1812. He can call me whatever names he wants. And I just believe that, look, bottom line, I'm an elected member of Congress, I'm a Republican, Kevin McCarthy is technically my Republican leader. And to call members of Congress by childish names, like Donald Trump used to do, I guess is just kind of par for the course,” he said.

Meanwhile, Cheney and Kinzinger joined their Democratic colleagues on the dais Tuesday for the first session of the select committee to investigate the events of January 6.

The panel will hear from four police officers who were in the front line as rioters attacked the Capitol.

Pelosi created the committee after Senate Republicans blocked creation of a bipartisan commission to study the events surrounding that day similar to the commission which investigated the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.