Meadows, who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff, said that if Republicans regain the House majority in 2022, they should install the former President as speaker in January 2023.
“I would love to see the gavel go from (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi to Donald Trump,” Meadows told Bannon. “You talk about melting down — people would go crazy.”
Meadows may be the most prominent Trump ally to float the idea, but he isn’t the first.
In June, the former President had this exchange with conservative radio talk-show host Wayne Allyn Root:
ROOT: “Why not, instead of just waiting for 2024, and I’m hoping you run in 2024, but why not run in 2022 for the United States Congress, a House seat in Florida, win big, lead us to a dramatic landslide victory, taking the House by 50 seats, and then you become the speaker of the House?”
TRUMP: “You know, it’s very interesting. That’s so interesting. And people have said, run for the Senate, OK, run for the Senate, but you know what? Your idea might be better. It’s very interesting.”
In a subsequent interview with Fox News, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy seemed to give the idea even more credence.
“You know, I have talked to President Trump many times,” McCarthy told Fox’s Brian Kilmeade. “He tells me he wants to be speaker, and I think he should be president.”
(McCarthy’s office subsequently told CNN that he misspoke, meaning that Trump wanted him to be speaker.)
Let’s deal with this first: Yes, Trump could be speaker of the House. There is no requirement that the speaker be a member of Congress; the person simply has to get a majority of House members to support their bid for speaker.
And there’s no question that some in Trumpworld — most notably Meadows — don’t love the idea of McCarthy becoming speaker of a new House Republican majority in 2023. Trump did offer praise for McCarthy on Friday for his marathon overnight speech on the House floor.
To be clear: It would still be a massive long shot for Trump to wind up as speaker. There’s a reason that the House has never picked someone outside of its ranks to serve as its leader.
Plus, Trump quite clearly has designs on running for president in 2024 — and it’s hard to see how a pit stop as speaker of the House furthers that cause.
Of course, because we are talking about Trump here, ruling any idea out — no matter how wild and wacky — is a fool’s errand.
The Point: There’s enough unhappiness with McCarthy among the Trump wing of the party that this idea will keep coming up. Whether the former President actually pursues it is a different question.
