McCarthy does damage control after questioning Trumps political strength

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.