Trump called on his supporters to reject McCarthy’s opposition for the Speakership

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CNN —

Donald Trump is weighing in on the contentious battle facing GOP leader Kevin McCarthy in his bid to become the chambers next speaker, with the former president calling on his supporters in Congress to stop their opposition tactics against McCarthy and stop playing a very dangerous game.

Look, I think this: Kevin worked hard. I think he deserves to be shot, Trump said Friday in an interview with Breitbart News. I hope he’s going to be super strong and be super good and do what everyone wants.

The former president cited a scenario from 2015, when former House Speaker John Boehner resigned after clashing with conservative GOP hard-liners and was then replaced by Paul Ryan.

This is a very dangerous game. Some bad things can happen. Look, we had Boehner and he was a wonderful man but we ended up with Paul Ryan who was ten times worse, Trump told Breitbart. Paul Ryan is an incompetent speaker. I think he will go down as the worst speaker in history.

McCarthy is vying for the speakership with five staunch Republicans opposing him. With House Republicans holding 222 seats in the next Congress, such opposition would deny him the 218 votes needed to be elected speaker.

McCarthy negotiated behind closed doors the chamber’s rules that his detractors wanted to undermine the speakership, including allowing an individual member to call for a vote to oust the speaker. That’s something the California Republican has fought so far.

McCarthy and Trump had a brief falling out following the January 6, 2021 insurrection, with McCarthy even suggesting in a private recorded phone call that Trump should resign. But the two quickly made amends with McCarthy’s trip to meet Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida just weeks later.

In his interview with Breitbart, Trump did not name the lawmakers who oppose McCarthy’s speakership bid but said he is friendly with many of them and that they are his supporters.

I am friendly with a lot of those people who are against Kevin. I think almost every one of them is very passionate about Trump, and I am about them. But I have to tell them, and I told them, you are playing a very dangerous game, Trump said. You can have some very bad situations. I use the example of Boehner over Paul Ryan. Do you understand what I am saying? It could be a doomsday scenario.

McCarthy said Friday that five conservative holdouts — Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, Bob Good of Virginia and Matt Rosendale of Montana — have not wavered in their opposition to him and offered of a stark warning that House Republicans’ hard-fought narrow majority could be derailed if they don’t bend.

The conversation is still going on, but they’re not moving, McCarthy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, who took to the airwaves to argue that detractors are threatening to put the entire House Republican agenda at risk and that major legislative and investigative decisions will be all. in danger.

McCarthys comments represent a sharp escalation in his campaign of public pressure against critics, including Biggs, who last week announced his own bid for the speaker gavel.

And Trump isn’t the only one signaling House Republicans to tidy up. The conservative-leaning editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote on Saturday that those who want to remove McCarthy do not seem to have any compelling reason to oppose Mr. McCarthy more than wanting to grab the media spotlight or blow everything up.

Investigating GOP dysfunction since Election Day, the editorial board said, Republicans are the gang that can’t shoot straight except for each other.

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