Trump has had a greatly weakened political position after several failures on the national stage recently, not the least of which was the abysmal Republican mid-terms and the bipartisan Jan. 6th panel recommending that the Justice Department charge Trump ‘with inciting or assisting an insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to make false statements to investigators, and conspiracy to defraud the US government.’
Also he was caught dining with anti-Semites; his business was found guilty of fraud; and his tax records were finally released.
But after originally seeming to back away from Kevin McCarthy’s bid to become Speaker of the House, Trump was taking credit Saturday for McCarthy’s long and hard-fought victory.
As McCarthy lost vote after humiliating vote in the House, Trump took credit for his eventual victory saying he deserved credit for “greatly helping McCarthy attain the position of Speaker of the House.”
Trump placed a potentially critical phone call to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), whose “present” vote solidified McCarthy’s defeat on the 14th ballot late Friday night. The former president also spoke on the phone with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), another vocal McCarthy holdout.
McCarthy, who showed he was willing to give up anything in his 2nd bid to become Speaker of the House, after failing in 2015, and deal with anyone, praised Trump after he secured the gavel, saying, “I don’t think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning.”
As Matt Prigge from UpRoxx says, “It’s worth noting that Trump’s influence didn’t exactly speed up a process that took so long that it turned the GOP into a laughing stock. Moreover, McCarthy’s win is perilously close to a Pyrrhic Victory. Republicans only scored a narrow majority, while a rogue faction of MAGA extremists, like Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert, are bound to turn every vote into a headache.”
Plus, now the MAGA minority in the House can ask for a new Speaker of the House election any time they choose, so we could have one of these votes every week or force Speaker McCarthy to do exactly what they, and only they want.
I’m not sure that is really a victory.
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