House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is refusing to stand up for the 13 House Republicans who voted for their districts last Friday, when they helped pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill. That bill was negotiated by Republican senators and passed with 19 of their votes, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s. Those members, like Michigan Rep. Fred Upton, are getting death threats. Those threats have instigated by their extremist colleagues like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, and McCarthy is still saying nothing. Worse, he’s recruiting more of the deplorables.

McCarthy announced Monday that he was endorsing candidates in Wisconsin, Texas, and Illinois with his “Young Gun” group. That’s the program he started back in 2008 with has-beens Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan. Those candidates “have met a series of rigorous goals and surpassed program benchmarks to establish a clear path to victory,” the website for the program says.

The one in Wisconsin, Derrick Van Orden, said of the 13 people who voted to repair bridges and roads in their districts, they “just voted themselves out of a job, and rightly so,” and called it socialism. “There’s absolutely no excuse for doing that,” he told Breitbart News. Texas candidate Monica De La Cruz tweeted, “I still can’t believe 13 Republicans voted for this unfundable bill, $3 trillion worth of social policy, infrastructure, and climate change programs,” clearly showing her fitness for the job by confusing BIF (hard infrastructure) with the Build Back Better bill—which hasn’t yet been voted on. Another of them, Esther Joy King in Illinois, called it a “Radical Left” bill created by Nancy Pelosi. “We have to fight this wasteful bill,” she tweeted, “with all we’ve got!”

Those are the best and brightest, McCarthy implies with his Young Guns endorsement. People who are already attacking their would-be colleagues in the GOP caucus. They’re all parroting Trump, of course, who also attacked the 13 at a “private event hosted by the House Republican campaign arm Monday night in Florida.” Just read that again. The House Republican campaign—the National Republican Congressional Committee—had an event with Trump, where Trump attacked congressional Republicans. “I love all the House Republicans. Well, actually I don’t love all of you. I don’t love the 13 that voted for Biden’s infrastructure plan,” was how one attendee remembered it in talking to the Washington Post. One of the 13 was apparently in the room:

So not only is McCarthy not telling the deplorables in the caucus to call off the crazies they’ve sicced on their colleagues, he’s trying to reinforce their ranks, because he is still in thrall to Trump. McCarthy has not provided any comment on the treats to his members or on their calls to have the 13 stripped of their committee assignments.

Meanwhile, McCarthy has also remained silent on the implied death threat one of the extremists, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, made against Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and President Joe Biden. The 13 Republicans shouldn’t be at all surprised that McCarthy isn’t standing up for them agains the extremists, not when he won’t say a word about Gosar literally making and releasing a video playing out his homicidal fantasies against political opponents.

McCarthy’s silence is becoming an issue. He is steadfastly refusing to respond to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call for him to join in condemning the “horrific video” and supporting investigations by the House Ethics Committee and law enforcement. “Threats of violence against Members of Congress and the President of the United States must not be tolerated,” Pelosi said. The House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee also released a statement calling no him to act. “In any other job in America, if a coworker made a video killing another coworker, that person would be fired,” Reps. Matthew Cartwright (Pennsylvania), Debbie Dingell (Michigan), Ted Lieu (California) and Joe Neguse (Colorado), the group’s co-chairs, said. “Mr. McCarthy needs to decide whether he will finally stand with the American people on the side of law and order or he will continue to support violence and chaos.”

“There was a time when making light of murdering a colleague would elicit unified outrage. But not in McCarthy’s GOP. In McCarthy’s GOP they want to punish members who voted for infrastructure. That’s right, infrastructure. But condoning violence—that’s A-OK,” Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said Tuesday. “It’s sick.”