Dem Jamie Raskin floats Trump as next Speaker of the House, cites Republicans

In what would prove to be a clever path to remove Donald Trump as an obstacle in the 2024 race for the White House, U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., floated the idea of Trump becoming the next speaker of the House — assuming the Republican Party takes control of the lower chamber, which isn’t guaranteed with counting STILL going on a week after the election.

Of course, he cited Republicans in making such a suggestion Sunday during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” claiming that some members of the GOP are talking about it.

Raskin was responding to a loaded question from growingly partisan CBS host Margaret Brennan as she employed the “election denier” catchphrase frequently used by the corporate media to besmirch Republicans, even though the derogatory term is never applied to the many Democrats who have denied election results.

“Election deniers didn’t prevail in the key battleground, but CBS tallied it, and at least 155 House Republicans in the new Congress have raised unfounded doubts about the validity or integrity of the 2020 election,” she said, setting Raskin up beautifully. “These are going to be your colleagues that you will be working with. What change is that going to affect in the working?”

“That’s a statement about the political contamination of the GOP by Donald Trump,” Raskin said. “And again, [House Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy and other leaders within the Republican Party are now required to make a decision about whether they’re going to try to rid themselves of Donald Trump and his toxic influence on the party.”

Brennan followed up to say that the 155 Republicans are McCarthy’s constituency and that he will “need to consider the views of everyone.”

“Well, it’s a real problem for Kevin McCarthy now, because there are certain pro-Trumpists within his House caucus who refuse to accept that he’s really with Trump, and they want to get rid of McCarthy,” Raskin replied. “And some of them, they have names very early in the alphabet, like [U.S. Rep. Andy] Biggs. And they might just vote for Trump when they, you know, take the roll call for speaker.”

He added that the “hard-right Freedom Caucus people are in search of another candidate,” suggesting that Trump’s name “has been floated” here. When Brennan suggested that was not a real option, Raskin claimed that “they talk about it repeatedly.”

“And if Trump decided he wanted to do it, it would pose a profound problem for their party, because they refused to do the right thing early on,” he opined. “I mean, today, it seems like the spell has been broken. It’s begun to dissolve. We don’t have Republicans around the country claiming that they really won when it’s been certified that they lost their elections.”

Sowing seeds of discontent, the Trump-hating Democrat when on to suggest that outgoing Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger — aka Pelosi Republicans — “are going to force” the question of whether the GOP is Trump’s party or does it stand for something else?

As for control of the House, the latest numbers according to Fox News show that the GOP has 212 seats and Democrats have 204, with 19 seats still in play — 218 is needed to have the majority.

Tom Tillison

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