Trump Throws His Weight Behind McCarthy Amid House Speaker Deadlock

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s expected speedy, smooth, shoe-in selection as Majority Leader came to a screeching halt on Tuesday, with the politician failing to secure a majority after three votes were held, as dozens of Republicans jumped ship to vote for MAGA favorite alternatives Andy Biggs and Jim Jordan instead.

Former President Donald Trump has waded into the historic deadlock among House Republicans about who the next speaker should be, urging the party to rally around Kevin McCarthy.

“Some really good conversations took place last night, and now it’s time for all of our GREAT Republican House Members to 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 US HISTORY TO HAVE LOST THE ‘HOUSE’ TWICE!” Trump wrote in a mostly-caps post on Truth Social on Wednesday.

Urging Republicans not to turn the November midterm “GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT,” Trump insisted that McCarthy would “do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB – JUST WATCH!”

The former president added that if Republicans wanted to fight someone, it should be with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell “and his domineering, China loving BOSS, I mean wife, Coco Chow.”

Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy, who broke with his long-term support for the president in 2021 to accuse him of partial responsibility for the January 6 “attack on Congress by mob rioters,” and reportedly engaged him in an expletive-laden shouting match afterwards, surprised some of the former president’s supporters.

“Sad!” Florida MAGA Republican Matt Gaetz said in a statement Wednesday. “This changes neither my view of McCarthy, nor Trump, nor my vote.”

Gaetz and over a dozen members of the pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus launched a brazen effort to dethrone McCarthy on Tuesday, proposing Ohio Representative Jim Jordan, who gained national prominence for his stinging questions during Russiagate and the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, for the top job. Jordan, who received 20 votes during the third ballot, is not running for the speaker’s position, and has endorsed McCarthy.

Gaetz also sent a letter to the Architect of the Capitol J. Brett Blanton on Tuesday to ask why McCarthy had already moved into the House Speaker’s office, despite the fact that he has yet to be elected.

On the other side of the MAGA spectrum, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene urged Republicans to rally around McCarthy, and warned of the implications of not supporting him.

“If the base only understood that 19 Republicans voting against McCarthy are playing Russian roulette with our hard earned Republican majority right now. This is the worst thing that could possibly happen,” Greene tweeted, linking to a report citing Democratic aides that the president’s party was talking about a “coalition leadership.”

First Gaetz and Good, now Gosar.
They never talk to her. https://t.co/vDDOEs4UdT

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) January 3, 2023

The GOP’s failure to elect McCarthy in the first three rounds of voting was the first time since 1923 that it has taken multiple ballots to select a House speaker. 100 years ago, it took nine rounds to pick Frederick Huntington Gillett. 67 years earlier, in 1856, it took a severely divided House two months and 133 votes to pick a speaker.