Trump Weighs In On Speaker Battle And Winds Up Proving His Weakness In The House, Too
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WASHINGTON ― His influence waning in other parts of the Republican Party, former President Donald Trump on Wednesday tried to boost Kevin McCarthy’s bid for House speaker ― but ended up illustrating his own weakness even in a chamber where both GOP factions helped advance his Jan. 6 coup plot.
Trump, who had previously endorsed the California Republican’s bid for speaker, reiterated his support Wednesday with a post on his Twitter-like social media platform. “VOTE FOR KEVIN, CLOSE THE DEAL, TAKE THE VICTORY, & WATCH CRAZY NANCY PELOSI FLY BACK HOME TO A VERY BROKEN CALIFORNIA, THE ONLY SPEAKER IN U.S. HISTORY TO HAVE LOST THE ‘HOUSE’ TWICE! REPUBLICANS, DO NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT. IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE, YOU DESERVE IT. Kevin McCarthy will do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB ― JUST WATCH!,” Trump wrote.
He followed it up with: “TAKE THE VICTORY AND RUN!!!”
Just a few hours later, McCarthy actually got one fewer vote on the fourth ballot for speaker than he got on the first three on Tuesday, after Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz voted “present” instead of voting for McCarthy.
“It clearly didn’t work!” former GOP Rep. David Jolly, of Florida, said of Trump’s pressure campaign, which had also included phone calls to the anti-McCarthy wing. “But it also shows McCarthy’s weak hand. He or his team clearly leaned on Trump for the statement to be issued, and it showed both as ineffective.”
“MAGA is becoming an independent force less and less attached to Trump. His words just don’t carry much weight anymore with members, especially those with their own celebrity within the far-right echo chamber,” said Rory Cooper, a former top Republican staffer.
Indeed, Trump’s attempts were publicly dismissed by Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, on the House floor. “I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes, and it’s time to withdraw,” she said of Trump, whom she called “my favorite president.”
Rep. Scott Perry ― a Pennsylvania Republican who was deeply involved in Trump’s plot to install a functionary as attorney general to tell leaders in states where Joe Biden won in 2020 to overturn those results ― was in the anti-McCarthy wing, and remained so even after Trump’s call to stand down.
Trump’s staff did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Former Illinois Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, who became a fierce Trump critic soon after he took office, said he does not read too much into Trump’s inability to affect the House leadership race.
“What’s happening with this vote is not at all indicative of Trump’s influence in the caucus. Those 20 are hardcore Trumpers,” Walsh said. “They still worship the ground he walks on. There’s just a lot more going on here internally that Trump can’t influence.”
Then-President Donald Trump and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) step off Air Force One on May 30, 2020, at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
Trump’s attempt to install candidates loyal to him personally who would spread his election lies cost Republicans control of the Senate and led to losses in governorships. His overall record of losing in three straight elections has endangered his hand-picked leader of the Republican National Committee.
Trump made his new statements supporting McCarthy the morning after he told NBC News, following three ballots in a row Tuesday in which McCarthy failed to win the 218 votes he needs to become speaker, that he would “see what happens.”
Yet whether or not McCarthy manages to win the top job, it is almost certain ― barring some unlikely coalition among Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans ― that the eventual speaker will be, like McCarthy, a Trump supporter and an apologist for his Jan. 6 actions.
Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, who McCarthy’s critics often mention as an acceptable alternative, is among the 139 House Republicans who voted to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss even after Trump’s mob had violently stormed their offices at the U.S. Capitol. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Ohio Republican behind whom the anti-McCarthy members consolidated on Tuesday’s third ballot, was involved in the pre-Jan. 6 scheming.
Trump himself bragged about his appeal among the House GOP factions in an interview with the pro-Trump site Breitbart last month. “I’m friendly with a lot of those people who are against Kevin. I think almost every one of them are very much inclined toward Trump, and me toward them,” he said.
Trump, whose machinations in GOP primaries almost certainly resulted in Sen. Mitch McConnell’s failure to win back the majority leader position, on Wednesday resumed his attacks on the Kentucky Republican and his wife, Elaine Chao, who served in Trump’s Cabinet as transportation secretary.
“If Republicans are going to fight, we ought to be fighting Mitch McConnell and his domineering, China loving BOSS, I mean wife, Coco Chow,” he wrote, using a favorite racist insult of his against Chao.
McConnell, who excoriated Trump on the Senate floor for his coup attempt but opted not to convict him on his impeachment for those actions, has made a show of ignoring Trump since then. On Wednesday, he appeared with President Biden at a bridge in Kentucky to tout last year’s $1.7 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, even riding with Biden from the airport to the event site along the Ohio River in the presidential limousine.
“It’s the government working together to solve a major problem,” McConnell said as, 400 miles to the east, McCarthy was amid his fifth failing vote. “I’m proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”
Trump, despite losing the 2020 election by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of U.S. elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol ― a last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― led to the deaths of five people, including a police officer, as well as the injury of 140 other officers and four police suicides.
Nevertheless, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and has already declared his candidacy to seek the presidency again in 2024.
In statements on his personal social media platform, Trump has continued to lie about the election and the Jan. 6 committee’s work, which he has called a “hoax” similar to previous investigations into his 2016 campaign’s acceptance of Russian assistance and his attempt to extort Ukraine into helping his 2020 campaign.
