Video indicates how McCarthy and Luntz mixed friendship and business

When GOP pollster Frank Luntz in mid-March assembled a group of Trump voters to find out why they were hesitant to take a coronavirus vaccine, he invited several Republican politicians to join him in the discussion. One was McCarthy — at the time also Luntz’s guest in Luntz’s 7,000-square-foot penthouse apartment in the Clara Barton building in Penn Quarter. McCarthy appears in one of the small Zoom boxes of about 20 participants, while Luntz sits in front of a huge spiral staircase. In an interview in January, with the same backdrop, Luntz said that was his home: “I live about seven long blocks away from the Capitol.” Luntz did not mention during the Zoom call that McCarthy was in a separate room in the same apartment, according to an audio version of the session that is longer than the 30-minute “highlights video” released by the de Beaumont Foundation, which sponsored the discussion. A few minutes after McCarthy’s box disappears from the screen, a man wearing the same clothing as McCarthy can be seen bounding down the spiral staircase behind Luntz.