Resolves if Trump is selected by the House GOP Caucus to be the Speaker of the House.
There is no Constitutional requirement for the Speaker to be a member, and this is specifically the strategy Mark Meadows and Steve Bannon have been advocating very publicly for a long time. Matt Gaetz has promised MAGAland that he will nominate Trump, so how do the GOP members avoid choosing him and have to deal with him turning on them?
From Trump's perspective it would make charging him with a crime much riskier because he could literally hold the government hostage and he would command substantial investigative and supoena powers as Speaker so he can launch his own January 6th Committee without Democrats cooperation. Imagine the first State of the Union!!! I think these things I am saying would make Trump salavate, which is why I am concerned we are headed toward this nightmare on autopilot without thinking it through. In which case, some of us might as well make a fortune in fake money.
NOTE: Big tips for good arguments for YES or NO.
Close date updated to 2023-01-03 11:59 pm
Close date updated to 2023-01-06 11:59 pm
Close date updated to 2023-01-14 11:59 pm
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I bet NO. Here are some reasons why:
The Speaker has never been someone who is not a member of the House. The prior should be low.
Trump might not want to be the Speaker of the House. It might involve some duties that take him away from the campaign trail.
The current Republican leaders of the House are establishment Republicans. They have been in the House since before Trump, and many since before the Tea Party (McCarthy was first elected in 2006, Scalise 2008, Stefanik 2014, Palmer 2014). It's unclear why any of them would support Trump.
Trump did not have a good election night. The candidates he recruited to run in GOP primaries under-performed relative to more establishment candidates.
The current split of the House is R221 vs D213. If every Democrat opposes Trump, only 5 Republicans need to vote against him. There are 2 Republicans who voted to impeach Trump who are returning to Congress (Newhouse & Valadao). So it would only take 3 more people to stop him from becoming speaker. The moderate faction, the Republican Governance Group, has 44 members.
This also means that a more establishment candidate, like McCarthy can only afford 5 defections. More than 5 members of the Freedom Caucus have already said that they will oppose him. But an establishment figure might get implicit endorsement from some Democrats - to become Speaker, you only have to win a majority of the representatives who vote. If some Democrats abstain, that would make it easier for McCarthy to win. Democrats are more likely to do this for McCarthy than for Trump. I expect that McCarthy will become Speaker, although it will take more negotiation than usual - both with the Freedom Caucus and with moderate Democrats.
