California Rep.-elect and Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is absolutely not having a good time after losing six votes to become Speaker of the House in two days, but former President Donald Trump apparently thinks this is all great.
On Wednesday night, Trump claimed on Truth Social that the current dysfunction will ultimately make the job of Speaker “BIGGER & MORE IMPORTANT!”
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“I actually think that a big Republican VICTORY today, after going through numerous Roll Calls that failed to produce a Speaker of the House, has made the position & process of getting to be Speaker BIGGER & MORE IMPORTANT than if it were done in the more traditional way, much like me again becoming President after having won big in 2016, gotten many Millions of MORE VOTES in 2020 but “supposedly” not winning (BIG LIE!), & then winning again in 2024,” Trump posted.
Trump also said Wednesday that the absolute chaos in the House of Representatives right now “will end up making the Republican Party STRONGER and more UNITED than ever before.”
This is the first time in a hundred years that the Speaker vote has gone to multiple ballots. And rather than making the party more united, as Trump claimed, it has only inflamed tensions within the Republican caucus to a level not seen since at least 2015, when the House Freedom Caucus forced out former Speaker John Boehner.
And as the process has dragged out and left the House of Representatives totally paralyzed, unable to even swear in new members until someone wins a majority of votes, McCarthy has not won back any ground whatsoever. In fact, addition to the 19 Republicans who voted against him from the beginning, he’s lost two more votes since the first ballot on Tuesday—Rep.-elect Byron Donalds of Florida, who was nominated three times Wednesday and voted for himself, and Rep.-elect Victoria Spartz of Indiana, who voted “present” on the fifth and sixth ballots.
But Trump has a reason to deny reality as the dysfunction in the House enters its third day: He endorsed McCarthy. And the former President and master of projection has stuck with McCarthy despite his well-known hatred of losers, saying in a Wednesday post that rumors he’d switched his endorsement to Rep.-elect Donalds were “Fake and Fraudulent.”
Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert of Colorado also confirmed on Wednesday that Trump was calling members of the anti-McCarthy faction to pressure them to drop their opposition.
“Let’s stop with the campaign smears and tactics to get people to turn against us, even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off,” Boebert said on the floor, as she nominated Donalds for Speaker prior to the fifth round. “The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that sir, you do not have the votes, and it’s time to withdraw.”
After Trump reiterated his support for McCarthy early Wednesday, close ally Florida Rep.-elect Matt Gaetz told Fox News: “Sad! This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote.”
But while Trump’s own personal touch has proved incapable of winning over a single Republican vote back for McCarthy, there was one very slight positive sign for the California Republican: Most of the GOP holdouts voted with him on Wednesday night to adjourn for the evening so they could continue negotiating an end to the impasse (although four Republicans, including Gaetz and Boebert, voted with the Democrats against adjournment).
At the same time—and despite Trump’s insistence that the fight will make the job of Speaker “BIGGER & MORE IMPORTANT”—McCarthy has reportedly capitulated even further on demands that would weaken the Speaker role and his own personal power to historically low levels.
For example: McCarthy had said for months he would not agree to a change that would allow just five members to force a vote on whether the Speaker should be removed from their position; currently, such a vote requires a majority of members of the majority caucus.
But McCarthy gave in on that demand before this week’s voting began. And as negotiations continued on Wednesday, he offered to reduce it even further, so that just one Republican member would need to sign on in order to force the vote, according to the Washington Post and Politico.
Until the House elects a Speaker, it can’t take up any other business, including passing a rules package governing House operations, or assigning members to committee. None of the members who are voting have even been officially sworn-in yet.
“I was supposed to become a member of Congress yesterday,” Rep.-elect Greg Casar of Texas said in a Tuesday night video with Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “And we’re still waiting!”
But McCarthy has apparently chosen to prioritize: His own desperate attempt to seize the remains of what was previously the most powerful position in Congress, over the act of basic governance. And as a result of the impasse, some Republicans are prepared for this process to drag out beyond Thursday.
“I still don’t see this getting resolved in the near term,” one Republican representative-elect told Politico Thursday. “Maybe more likely over the weekend and into next week.”
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