House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said this week that former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign shows that he is “stronger today than he was in 2016.” McCarthy made the comments as legacy media sources shared a quote from him that frames Trump’s campaign in a negative light.
McCarthy referenced recent strong poll numbers for the former president and said that Trump was stronger than he was eight years ago.
He made the most recent comments to Breitbart News in response to coverage of an interview the House Speaker did with CNBC. He was asked about whether Trump could beat President Joe Biden in 2024.
He replied affirmatively and also asked rhetorically if the former president was “strongest to win the election?”
“I don’t know the answer,” he said.
The quote was then utilized by CNN reporter Kristen Holmes without additional context.
McCarthy also said during the CNBC interview that “Republicans get to select their nominee. I think if you want to go sheer policy to policy, it’s not what’s good for Republicans; it’s what’s good for America. Trump’s policies are better, straightforward, than Biden’s policies.”
McCarthy told Breitbart that “the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans as our committees are holding Biden’s DOJ accountable for their two-tiered levels of justice.”
The House Speaker has emerged as a key Trump ally during the tenure of the current Congress. McCarthy backed a successful effort to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a key critic of Trump during his time in the White House.
Schiff was reprimanded by the House over a series of false statements he made regarding alleged connections between Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government.
McCarthy has also signaled support for efforts by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to expunge both of the impeachments of the former president.
IMPEACHMENT ERASER: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says he supports the effort championed by Reps. Greene and Stefanik to expunge both Trump impeachments. https://t.co/Slf8vameIA pic.twitter.com/mr3Kagt0dw
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) June 24, 2023
The California Republican called the efforts “appropriate.”
He said that Congress “should expunge it, because it never should have gone through.”
