Sources confirmed to CNN
that House Speaker
Kevin McCarthy called Donald Trump
to apologize for this
and Trump beat Biden as he can.
Beat Biden makes it complicated.
If he's got
all these trials
and all of this stuff overhanging
it makes it complicated.
Also helps him when the question is,
is he the strongest to win the election?
I don't know that answer.
McCarthy said that yesterday
morning before 8 a.m.
and he spent the rest of the day
trying to fix it for evidence.
Look no further than Breitbart.
McCarthy gave an interview
to the conservative outlet,
seemingly for the express purpose
of praising the former president
he said, quote, Trump is stronger today
than he was in 2016.
Apparently, Trump
allies are still not pleased.
Joining me now to discuss this and more
so when K.A.
Young's of the New York Times,
Laura Baron Lopez of the PBS
NewsHour and CNN's
Gloria Borger is still with us.
Gloria,
you've watched this relationship
and we all have.
And it's
really fascinating to see the way that I
mean, it is
it is symbiotic
and they both kind of need each other.
But it's clear that
Kevin McCarthy
is hearing other things in his ear
besides go Trump.
Yeah.
Look,
he said the quiet part out loud,
which everybody is saying, which is that
people don't think Donald Trump
may be the strongest candidate
in a in a general election,
but because he owes Donald Trump
big time,
perhaps even for his speakership.
And you'll recall,
we were just talking about this
after January six
when he went on the floor
and he blamed Donald Trump
for the insurrection within
what seemed like minutes.
He went down to Mar a Lago
and did that famous thumbs up pick.
We I think we have that picture.
We have that.
There it is
in case anybody
it doesn't have that imprinted
on their minds. Right.
And then
Donald Trump said, okay,
but you cannot
criticize Donald Trump
if he thinks he owns you
and he thinks he owns Kevin McCarthy.
And he might.
And so McCarthy had to clean up on aisle
six and
and call Breitbart and say, okay, okay,
I changed my mind. Oops.
Those two examples
also to me, combined with one in 2015,
when McCarthy said out loud
that the Benghazi committee was designed
and suggested that it was designed
specifically
to take down Hillary Clinton,
and then that cost him his speakership
and he immediately backtracked.
All three of those taken together
show three
pretty big moments
where McCarthy has demonstrated
that at the end of the day
it's about attaining
and maintaining power.
And he sees Trump
as his avenue to do that.
I want to play
I mention that
some of his Trump's
allies are still not pleased.
One of them is Steve Bannon.
Listen to what he said
Trust me on this.
All they're
talking about is how to offload Trump.
Trump is going to be
the nominee
and Trump
is going to be the president
of the United States again.
If that's not emblazoned on McCarthy's,
quite frankly, below
three digit IQ brain, it ought to be.
I mean, really, I, I,
I don't know if I would say
I'm surprised by the viciousness
of those comments
coming from from Steve Bannon.
But let's also remember,
this is coming out of time too,
that hard-right members in Congress,
hard-right members of the House as well,
have also increasingly threatened to stay
a stalemate and block legislation,
which,
you know, even going back to earlier,
you talked about the episode on Jan six.
One thing that has changed here
is these members in his conference
that he's trying to basically lead
at this point,
Trump
had only has a tighter grip
at this point,
maybe over of that hard flank.
So at a time where you know, his hold on
his on
his coalition is looking
even more tumultuous,
you you have comments like this,
you have a sort of sense of urgency
on his part
to go and claim his support for Trump,
even if it's not pleasing all allies.
Somebody who had Kevin McCarthy's job.
Paul Ryan,
who is not a fan of Donald Trump
because he doesn't have the job anymore.
He can say whatever he wants.
He was out this morning. Listen to that.
Would most people
still not say that we should accept
that the Republicans
should run someone else?
I don't have Kevin's job.
I used to have this job.
What is Kevin's job?
It's making the House work.
His job is to make the house work
and not make life difficult for him.
I don't have that job anymore,
so I'm very clear with.
Look, it's a disaster
if we nominate Trump.
You know,
I think that I've been saying this
for a long time.
I'm for anybody not named Trump right now
who's going to be on that show tomorrow.
John Boehner Yeah.
Well, this is something McCarthy
he can't say.
I mean, McCarthy, it's so ironic here.
He's reached the pinnacle
of his political career.
And he's a political hostage
at the same time.
He can't say what he really thinks,
which is what he said the first time
with a little bit of candor,
which is dangerous in Washington.
And and Paul Ryan just said
what a lot of people think
and what McCarthy may think, but
he can't because of Donald Trump
and the right wing of the party
and the voters axing him and
and the voters he wants to keep control
of the House as well.
He's got to he's got to think about that.
But you spoke to the candor
as well of his comments here.
And it does come, as
you know, you are seeing
members of the
Republican Party start to question
whether or not Trump
is the sole candidate
to galvanize a Trump base
as the only person
who can execute Trumpism
and appeal to grievances
of some of those voters
that we're talking about.
I think it's interesting the candor
that he displayed there,
and it's something that that's echoed
among other members of the party, too,
when they see
people like the seventies
kind of employing that,
some of those same tactics as well.
And the question over
whether or not Trump is the best person
to galvanize to Trump
and they're not just sort of guessing.
They're looking at data.
They all see data.
And that's basically
what Kevin McCarthy was talking about.