Donald Trump for Speaker of the House? Really?

Infantile pandering from a party that's never been less serious about results

This week, a crappy House Republican member spearheaded the ouster of a crappy House Republican leader, turning Washington D.C. into a cacophony of angry Republicans and delighted Democrats, with no sign of any plan to follow up this mess with anything better than reshuffling deck chairs on the RMS Elephant.

To get an idea of just how unserious all this is, look no further than the fact that the mutiny’s ringleader, Matt Gaetz, took to the House floor Thursday to nominate Donald Trump for Speaker of the House, an idea Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green and Troy Nehls also endorse (Jim Jordan claimed to believe that would be “fine” as well, but has since confirmed he wants the job himself, and Trump ultimately endorsed Jordan).

On the merits, the idea—which was actually born sometime in 2021 as a hare-brained internet fantasy to get Trump back in the White House via the presidential line of succession—is asinine. Never mind the tiny details that he was a comprehensively poor manager of the federal government’s executive branch, or that he’s currently kind of busy with a presidential campaign and a litany of prosecutions (which disqualify him from the job under House Republicans’ own rules anyway); when it comes to the most basic thing we need from a good speaker—getting a majority behind the best possible legislation—Trump was abysmal.

Even before Covid, spending skyrocketed under Trump because he signed most Swamp budgets without a fight, and ultimately gave in before long when he did resist. On the first major legislative battle of his presidency, repealing ObamaCare, Trump’s attacks on House conservatives (including his current opponent Ron DeSantis) for rejecting the initial replacement bill made clear that he didn’t give a damn about the pesky details of legislation, and just wanted something he could take credit for signing.

It should tell people something that Trump’s only major legislative accomplishments were a tax cut package, which is the GOP presidential equivalent of a Bingo card free space, and a godawful bill to release a bunch of criminals that was enthusiastically backed by an alliance of liberal Democrats and squish Republicans.

It’s enough to make one question if anyone behind this idea has the slightest clue what a speaker actually does (and no, Marjorie, the answer is not “throw daily rallies in the People’s House”): set legislative priorities, get problem members of the caucus on board with legislation, hash out discontent over the fine print of disputed bills, deal with parliamentary procedure, decide who gets on committees...in other words, all the boring, messy, detail-oriented stuff Trump’s presidency established he was uniquely unsuited for. There’s no glory in it, and certainly no stack of executive orders prepared by subordinates to rely on to make you look good.

Indeed, the fact that he would be so spectacularly bad at the job is, perversely, the one thing giving the scenario any legitimate appeal. There’s something undeniably tempting about the thought of inflicting Speaker Trump on our lackluster House GOP, both his full-blown sycophants and the milquetoasts who refuse to take a stand on the presidential primary, and forcing them to deal with his laziness and incompetence up close on a daily basis. Putting Trump in a situation where he’d be in over his head is also tantalizing (which is why, despite his bluster, he’d never actually do it).

It’s a nice fantasy, but if we’re being honest, odds are that not even that would impress upon his Republican enablers the need to grow the hell up. These people lived through his pandemic response, Stop the Steal, and all the ways he sabotaged the midterms, and he’s still acceptable to them.

Make no mistake: none of these people (with the possible exception of Marjorie) are dumb enough to actually think Trump is speaker material, just like most of his professional boosters are fully aware of what kind of president he really was. These calls are purely performative, for audiences of vocal Trump fans in safe districts who want to hear it. Quaint values like job qualification and the public good are no longer even considerations for most of our “public servants.”

To be truly transformative, a worthy speaker candidate needs the willingness to stand up to both the GOP establishment and the MAGA chorus with equal conviction, in the service of conservative results. The only candidate fitting that bill who comes to mind is Chip Roy (Thomas Massie is a close second, but for all his strengths, at the end of the day he’s still a libertarian with all the defective thinking that entails).

More importantly, most of the time the chances of getting the votes needed to install such a reformer are nonexistent, because problem members are the majority of the caucus. The only realistic possibility of getting a worthwhile speaker is with the backing of an incoming president, riding enough victory momentum to pressure members into voting for someone they otherwise wouldn’t.

We actually had such an opportunity in 2016, after Trump’s stunning victory with a campaign promising an alternative to the failed ways of the old guard. But what happened? Just one week after Election Day, Trump and Mike Pence “quickly signaled” to Freedom Caucus members who had been planning to oust then-Speaker Paul Ryan, the poster boy for the old guard, that they “weren’t interested in an internal GOP battle on the heels of their triumph,” Politico reported at the time. “Ryan also told the GOP Conference on Tuesday that Pence called to say he and Trump support the current leadership regime.”

Contrast that with DeSantis, a Freedom Caucus alum who, contrary to the mindless refrains of online MAGA trolls and the grifting liars who inform them, was actively condemning Ryan’s negligent leadership earlier that same year, and whose present-day fight against woke madness offends the ex-Speaker’s sensibilities.

Add it all up, and we have the perfect makings for another such opportunity, with a leader who wouldn’t squander it—unless, of course, Republican primary voters squander him.