McCarthy has bit the hand that feeds him and is beginning to see just why that’s a bad idea.
On Tuesday, the speaker questioned whether Trump was the best candidate for the Republicans in the 2024 US presidential election and has spent the last two days trying to unring the bell.
“Can he win that election? Yeah, he can win that election,” McCarthy told US media, referring to a hypothetical rematch between Trump and US President Joe Biden. “The question is: ‘Is he the strongest to win the election?’ I don’t know that answer.”
According to media reports based on insider accounts, Trump and those close to him exploded in fury over McCarthy’s comments, compelling him to issue a hasty phone apology to Trump and to tell a conservative media outlet in no uncertain terms on Wednesday that “Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016,” when he won the election and became president.
Despite that victory, Trump notably lost the 2020 election to Biden by roughly 8 million votes.
McCarthy has notably avoided giving his endorsement to a candidate for the 2024 nomination, although it’s unclear if any candidate has explicitly sought his endorsement as of yet. Still, his silence about Trump’s campaign before Tuesday already had many in the GOP puzzled.
McCarthy then committed another faux pas by using Trump’s name and likeness on a fundraising email that, despite being worded in pro-Trump language, broke one of the real estate magnate’s cardinal political rules: don’t use his name without his consent. The Trump name is itself part of the former president’s brand, slapped on everything from luxury hotels to steaks before being turned into an election campaign and political movement.
Following complaints from Trump, McCarthy was compelled to take down the offending ad as well.
Still, McCarthy’s election to the position was not without its caveats: he made extensive policy promises to a small but combative minority of GOP lawmakers who are part of the Freedom Caucus, a far-right, adamantly pro-Trump faction in the House that grew out of the Tea Party movement.
His relationship with that faction has waxed and waned in the six months since, although until a few weeks ago he was able to generally retain their loyalty while quashing some of their more troublesome pet projects, such as a fondness for impeachment filings against Biden and his staff.
However, after McCarthy cut a deal with the White House in the monthslong debt ceiling fight that avoided a government default, but which the minority faction found objectionable, the speaker’s job got a whole lot harder. In recent weeks, their stonewalling of essential bills has become so frustrating that McCarthy has begun acquiescing to more and more of their demands, as the effort to impeach Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland demonstrates.
“I am maybe not on his Christmas card list,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), a former chief of the Freedom Caucus, told US media about his antagonistic relationship with McCarthy.
Biggs has threatened to torpedo three must-pass bills this year - the 2023 Farm Bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, and the 2024 budget - if McCarthy doesn’t back away from the position he took in the debt ceiling deal of recognizing the compromised-upon 2024 spending limits as spending targets instead of as the upper limit, as it’s seen by many in the GOP.
In recent days, McCarthy has backed a $120 billion slashing of the 2024 budget from the spending cap, in effect reducing it to 2022 levels. However, some in the GOP are accusing him of using “gimmicks” to promise savings.
“One place I’m pretty firmly planted is, we had an agreement on fiscal year 2022 discretionary spending levels as a fundamental component of the speaker’s contest and the agreement that resolved that. I believe that needs to be honored,” Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) told US media.
“I don’t know how, precisely, we’ll get it resolved.”