President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after stepping off Air Force One as he returns Saturday, May 30, 2020, at Andrews Air Force Base, Md. Trump is returning from Kennedy Space Center for the SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of Calif. is at left.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy can't escape questions about whether he said he would call on former President Donald Trump to resign. 

Speaking from the southern border on Monday, McCarthy repeated his claim he didn't lie last week when he denied reporting that he called on Trump to resign in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. McCarthy made the trip to South Texas with House Republicans to draw attention to "Biden's border crisis." Instead, the embattled leader had to return to answering questions about his reported comments and his relationship with the former president. 

"Well, first of all, let me just answer your question, since you don't want to talk about the border," McCarthy said when asked if he was lying last week. "The reporter never asked me that question. The reporter came to me the night before he released the book. My understanding was he was saying that I asked President Trump to resign. No, I never did, and that was what I was answering." 

The denial comes after a New York Times report on the new book, This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future, alleged that McCarthy told other GOP leadership he would call on Trump to resign.