Maggie Haberman Says Trump Didn’t See McCarthy Ouster Coming — But Likes Attention From Being ‘Talked About’ As Next Speaker
New York Times correspondent and CNN analyst Maggie Haberman said ex-President Donald Trump didn’t think ousted Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy “needed rescuing” as of last week — but now sees the race for a new speaker as a way to get attention for himself.
The political world was stunned Tuesday night when McCarthy was voted out as speaker of the House, and then announced he would not run for the position again.
Almost immediately, amid the chaos and gnashing of teeth that ensued, chatter began about drafting Trump to be the next speaker of the House. As the annoying dude at every DC bar will tell you, actually the speaker of the House doesn’t need to be a member of Congress.
On Tuesday night’s very special edition of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 entitled “The Speaker’s Fate,” host Anderson Cooper asked Haberman about Trump’s failure to wade in and try to save McCarthy, and Haberman gave him her Trumpworld-source-informed insights:
COOPER: Maggie, what do you think about the former President’s not exactly stepping in to help McCarthy?
MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I think it was clear, this is where it was headed, Anderson, last week, when Matt Gaetz was threatening a shutdown, and Donald Trump was encouraging a shutdown, and had been for days and days and days.
Whether his intention was to give cover to Matt Gaetz, or not, that is what it did. And it gave cover to other people to join Matt Gaetz, in this push against McCarthy. And so, that is how we ended up here.
Donald Trump will always leave as many options open as possible, so he never has to foreclose anything, and then he can end up on the side of where something is going. That is often how he decides what he’s doing. I think he waited to see where McCarthy was. He didn’t especially feel like waiting in, for all of the reasons we just heard.
And another one, which is that McCarthy? And this, Trump did raise a lot. And frankly, this came up more than the endorsement issue. Trump wanted his impeachments expunged, from the record. He wanted McCarthy to introduce this, and push this. McCarthy did not do that. Impeachment of Biden was less of an issue for Trump than his own record.
And so, you put all of this together. And I think it is true that Trump had not been especially focused on this, in the reason — the days leading up to this. I think he’s pretty focused on it right now.
Because, I think that he sees this as some kind of an activity that he can be talked about in, witness people are talking about him, running for Speaker, which, Donald Trump has a long history of people, running non-organic drafts, for him. This has the same feel. But it’s not surprising to me, because I think that he’s — somebody said to me, close to Trump, last week, he doesn’t think Kevin needs rescuing, now. And I messaged that person today, and said, do you still — does he still think Kevin doesn’t need rescuing? And I didn’t hear back.
But he decided he was not going to invest capital in this. And, I think, he saw where this was headed. And McCarthy’s not good for him, in a primary, of his own. And I think that’s something else that gets missed here.
Watch above via Anderson Cooper 360.
