Former President Donald Trump endorses Ohio Republican for speaker
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Former President Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to become the next speaker of the House in a social media post early Friday.
“He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete and Total Endorsement!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site, while praising Jordan’s political record as well as his college wrestling achievements.
Jordan and Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., have started to mine support in the fractured Republican conference to replace Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who was ousted as speaker in an unprecedented vote earlier this week.
Trump flirted with the idea of running for speaker himself before backing Jordan. The Constitution does not require the speaker to be a member of Congress, though someone outside the body has never been elected to the position.
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Jordan is a close Trump ally and one of the leading Republicans in the impeachment investigation of President Joe Biden. He was a staunch defender of Trump during the former president’s two impeachment trials.
“Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, D.C., representing Ohio’s 4th Congressional District,” Trump wrote.
Jordan co-founded the Freedom Caucus and is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
“He is STRONG on Crime, Borders, our Military/Vets, & 2nd Amendment,” Trump wrote.
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In an interview Friday with CNN’s Manu Raju, Jordan said, “I appreciate the president’s endorsement,” calling Trump the “leader of the party,” and saying, “I think he’s going to be our next president.”
Scalise told Fox News that he and Trump had a conversation around the former president’s endorsement of Jordan, saying, “We spoke, obviously.” He noted that there are “a lot of friendships in this race,” per CNN.
“At the end of the day, it’s a lot of one-on-one conversations over the last few days I’ve been having with my colleagues and a lot of introspection about how we get things back on track. The problems that we have internally, they don’t go away with a new speaker,” Scalise said.
Jordan told Raju he believes the speaker’s race comes down to “who can unite the conference, who can unite conservative Republicans and our party around the country, and then who can go tell the country what we’re doing and why it’s important to them, to their family, to their business, to their community.”
Speaker Pro Tem Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., has set Wednesday as the date for a speaker vote in the House.
