Just hours after roiling his MAGA allies over comments questioning Donald Trump’s electability, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) on Tuesday appeared to walk back his statement in an interview with a right-wing outlet.
McCarthy earlier in the day during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” said of a potential 2024 Trump rematch with Joe Biden, “Can he win that election? Yeah he can. The question is, is he the strongest to win the election? I don’t know that answer.”
To say the remarks didn’t land well in Trump circles would be an understatement.
A Trump ally told CNN of McCarthy’s comments, “I’ve been fielding calls on this since it happened.”
“People are not happy. What was he thinking?”
McCarthy, who has not endorsed a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, walked back his remarks in a subsequent interview with the right-wing outlet Breitbart in which he said Trump was “stronger today than he was in 2016.”
McCarthy blamed the media for trying to use his comments to divide the former president from his Republican congressional allies.
“As usual, 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,” McCarthy told Breitbart.
“The only reason Biden is using his weaponized federal government to go after President Trump is because he is Biden’s strongest political opponent, as polling continues to show.”
