WASHINGTON – With 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 reflecting his own weakness even in the chamber where both factions of the GOP helped advance January 6. coup plot.
Trump, who previously endorsed the California Republican’s bid for speaker, expressed his support Wednesday in a post on social media platforms like Twitter. “CHICK KEVIN, CLOSE BUSINESS, GET A VICTORY, & WATCH NANCY PELOSI GEDANG COME BACK TO GREAT CALIFORNIA, THE SPEAKER IN US HISTORY WHO HAS LOST ‘HOME’ TWICE! REPUBLICANS, DON’T TURN A GREAT VICTORY INTO A GIANT & DISGUSTING DEFEAT. IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE , YOU ARE LETTING. Kevin McCarthy will do a great job, and it might be a GREAT JOB – JUST WATCH!,” wrote Trump.
He then followed: “WIN THE VICTORY AND GO!!!”
Just a few hours later, McCarthy actually got one less vote in the fourth ballot for speaker than he got in the first three on Friday, after Indiana Republican Victoria Spartz voted “now” instead of voting for McCarthy.
“It obviously can’t!” former GOP Rep. David Jolly, Florida, spoke of Trump’s pressure campaign, which has also included a call to the anti-McCarthy wing. “But it also shows McCarthy’s weak hand. He or his team is clearly leaning against Trump so the statement will be issued, and it shows both sides are ineffective.
“MAGA is becoming an independent force less and less attached to Trump. His words simply no longer carry weight with members, especially those who have their own celebrity in the right-wing echo chamber,” said Rory Cooper, a former top Republican staffer.
Indeed, Trump’s efforts were publicly rejected by Rep. Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado, on the House floor. “I think it really needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you don’t have a vote, and it’s time to step down,” he said of Trump, who he called “my favorite president.”
Rep. Scott Perry – the Pennsylvania Republican who is very involved in Trump’s plan to install a functionary as attorney general to tell the leaders of the states where Joe Biden won in 2020 to cancel the results – is on the anti-McCarthy wing, and remains so even. after Trump’s call to stand down.
Trump’s staff did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Former Rep. Illinois Republican Joe Walsh, who became a fierce Trump critic shortly after taking office, said he is not reading too much into Trump’s inability to influence the House leadership race.
“What happened with this vote does not show Trump’s influence in the caucus. Those 20 are hardcore Trumpers,” Walsh said. “He’s still worshiping the ground he’s on. There’s a lot more here that Trump can’t influence.
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Trump’s efforts to install a candidate loyal to him personally who would swing the election cost Republicans control of the Senate and led to losses in the governorship. His overall record of losing three straight elections has jeopardized the elected leadership of the Republican National Committee.
Trump made a new statement supporting McCarthy this morning after he told NBC News that, after three consecutive ballots Tuesday in which McCarthy failed to win the 218 votes needed to become speaker, he would “see what happens.”
But if McCarthy can win the top post, it is almost certain – barring an unlikely coalition between Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans – that the final speaker, like McCarthy, will be a supporter of Trump and an apologist for January 6. prevail.
Louisiana’s Steve Scalise, whom McCarthy’s critics often cite as an acceptable alternative, is among the 139 House Republicans who voted to overturn Trump’s election defeat in 2020 despite Trump’s mob storming his offices in the US Capitol. Rep. Jim Jordan, and the Ohio Republican behind which anti-McCarthy members consolidated on the third ballot there, participated in the pre-Jan. 6 planning.
Trump himself boasted about the appeal among House GOP factions in an interview with the pro-Trump site Breitbart last month. “I’m friendly with a lot of people who are against Kevin. I think almost everyone really likes Trump, and I go to him,” he said.
Trump, whose machinations in the GOP primaries almost certainly resulted in Sen. Mitch McConnell, who failed to win back the position of majority leader, on Wednesday continued his attack on the Kentucky Republican and his wife, Elaine Chao, who served in the Trump Cabinet as the secretary of transportation.
“If the Republicans want to fight, we must fight Mitch McConnell and his domineering, China loves BOSS, I mean wife, Coco Chow,” he wrote, using his favorite racist insult to Chao.
McConnell, who blasted Trump on the Senate floor for the coup attempt but did not vote to impeach him for the act, has made a show of ignoring Trump ever since. On Wednesday, he appeared with President Biden on a bridge in Kentucky to deliver last year’s $1.7 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, even riding Biden from the airport to the event site along the Ohio River in the president’s limousine.
“It’s the government working together to solve the main problem,” McConnell said as, 400 miles to the east, McCarthy was among his fifth failed vote. “I’m proud of what we’ve been able to do.”
Trump, despite losing the 2020 election by 7 million national votes and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of US elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. Insute of the January 6 attack on the Capitol – the last attempt to stay in office – led to the death of five people, including a police officer, as well as the wounding of 140 other officers and four policemen died.
However, Trump remains the dominant figure in the Republican Party and has announced his candidacy for the presidency again in 2024.
In a statement on his personal social media platform, Trump continued to lie about the election and the work of the January 6 committee, which he called a “hoax” similar to the previous investigation into the 2016 campaign’s acceptance of Russian aid and attempts to extort. Ukraine to help the 2020 campaign.