House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is in the unenviable position of forever needing to leech political strength from former President Donald Trump to maintain his speakership. That’s not to say that McCarthy lacks his own base within the House GOP caucus. But Trump is the glue that keeps the more volatile representatives bound to the speaker. It’s a relationship that means that even though only McCarthy is currently in office, he can still feel like the junior partner in setting the Republican Party’s course.
This unusual dynamic makes McCarthy’s decision not to endorse Trump ahead of the GOP primaries fascinating. For once, McCarthy, R-Calif., appears to be putting the needs of actually running the House ahead of staying on Trump’s good side — for now, at least. But it’s unclear how long the speaker can maintain this holding pattern before Trump starts making his life difficult.
Trump is, well, Trump, and he regularly needs obsequious displays of loyalty.
It’s not like there isn’t precedent for McCarthy’s staying on the sidelines this early in the process. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., then the House speaker, withheld her endorsement during the 2020 Democratic primaries until April of that year, when former Vice President Joe Biden had all but locked up the race. In 2012, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, endorsed Mitt Romney only when he had effectively wrapped up the GOP nomination. And in the 2008 race, Pelosi said she wouldn’t publicly endorse a candidate as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama dueled for the nomination.
But Trump is, well, Trump, and he regularly needs obsequious displays of loyalty. McCarthy has been more than happy to oblige in the past. In 2021, only weeks after having declared Trump “bears responsibility” for the Jan. 6 attacks, McCarthy traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a photo-op and forgiveness. More recently, after McCarthy wondered aloud in an interview on CNBC whether Trump would be the strongest GOP candidate in the 2024 election, he quickly ran to Breitbart to issue a mea culpa. He called Trump “stronger today than he was in 2016.” (Given that Trump’s 1-1 record in presidential elections is better than most people assumed he’d hold seven years ago, I’ll go ahead and agree with that.) And he laid the praise for Trump on thick, with plenty of red meat about Biden and the “weaponized” Justice Department.
Yet shows of fealty aren’t the same as an official endorsement. And given the effort we’ve seen from Trump’s team to lock up around 60 endorsements from House Republicans, I’d be surprised to learn that Trump hasn’t been leaning on McCarthy to issue one. But, as Politico noted Friday, doing so could trigger a “civil war” inside the caucus.
Because let’s say, then, that McCarthy did come out and endorse Trump. That would automatically be featured in Democratic ads in every swing district between now and November 2024. More immediately, it could alienate the few members who have endorsed other candidates in the race, of whom there are just enough to give the GOP’s vote-counting team a headache. And there probably are a lot of members who haven’t publicly backed a horse at all yet but are quietly hoping for someone other than Trump to come out on top. One House conservative hinted as much to Politico: “The reality is, if we get Trump, there’s probably a good possibility that we don’t keep the House” next fall, said this conservative, who has not endorsed in the primary. “McCarthy knows that. He knows that if Trump’s on top of the ticket, that we probably lose New York and California. … If we lose the House, there’s no way McCarthy stays as minority leader. He’s gone.” On the flip side, though, imagine the furor on the far right if McCarthy actually came out in favor of anyone other than Trump at this point. Yes, it would be great if the third-ranking elected government official had the courage to say that someone under federal indictment who tried to overturn an election shouldn’t return to the White House, but that ship sailed a long time ago. It would also draw the intense ire of the GOP’s chaos caucus, who are already heavily inclined to make the Republican leadership’s lives miserable during the next few months of budget negotiations. So, for now, McCarthy will stand to the side to keep an already fragmented caucus from splintering even further. There’s a deep irony at work here, though. As much as Trump might want McCarthy’s endorsement as a show of strength, let’s remember that Trump’s endorsement did little to help McCarthy in the speaker’s fight this year. It was the rare instance of Trump’s actually returning a vassal’s loyalty — and it proved abjectly worthless.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House. 
