Kevin McCarthy Doesn't Know if Trump Is 'Strongest' GOP Candidate

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy provided a mixed response when asked whether Donald Trump is in a good position to reclaim the White House for the Republican Party.

McCarthy has operated with a razor-thin majority since he took the gavel in January, arguably in large part due to Trump's vouching for the California representative. The former president publicly endorsed him as House speaker, even as other Trump acolytes like Representatives Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert helped halt the nomination 14 times before McCarthy succeeded on the 15th roll call.

"Can he win that election?" McCarthy said Tuesday morning on CNBC's Squawk Box. "Yeah, he can. The question is, is he the strongest to win the election? I don't know that answer."

Squawk Box's Joe Kernen initially asked McCarthy about Trump's rising poll numbers post-second indictment, in which he currently awaits a trial date pertaining to his alleged mishandling of classified documents following a Department of Justice investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith.

Kernen asked whether it would be good for the Republican Party if Trump is the candidate to take on Biden in would what be a rematch of the 2020 election.

"Can Trump beat Biden? Yeah, he can beat Biden...I think if you want to go sheer policy for policy, it's good not just for Republicans; it's good for America," McCarthy said. "Trump's policies are better straightforward than Biden's policies."

When pressed by Kernen about whether Trump can defeat the entire GOP field and win a general election with legal entanglements hanging over his head, McCarthy said he thought Trump could still be victorious—which is when he openly questioned whether Trump is the "strongest" candidate in that scenario.

Hours later, McCarthy backtracked on his comments, telling Breitbart News that "the media is attempting to drive a wedge between President Trump and House Republicans."

Trump is "stronger today than he was in 2016," the speaker added.

Newsweek reached out to the Trump campaign via email for comment.

The speaker's comments come on the same day that Trump's numbers against President Joe Biden in a hypothetical 2024 election rematch have never been better, according to Morning Consult.

About 57 percent of potential Republican primary voters support Trump's candidacy, the pollster reported Tuesday. And for the first time since tracking began in December, he also leads Biden by 3 percent outside the surveys' margins of error.

Eli Yokley, a political analyst at Morning Consult, told Newsweek that Trump still appears to be in the GOP's strongest position to take on Biden.

"His current advantage is driven in part by his standing among his own party's voters, who have shown no signs of turning on him amid his intense legal scrutiny," Yokley said. "Trump's political strength has always been his ability to animate his own base.

"The pivotal question for any Republican candidate, if they can overcome Trump's massive advantage among the Republican electorate, is whether they will be able to reactivate the former president's supporters in an eventual contest with Biden, the likely Democratic nominee."

An Emerson College poll from June 22 showed Trump leading Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, consistently his biggest challenger in virtually every poll, by 39 percentage points, 59 percent to 21 percent. That's actually a decrease in Trump's lead compared to the same poll two months when the former president led by 46 points.

Lisa Parshall, a political science professor at Daemen University, told Newsweek that Trump is a frontrunner "with unique vulnerabilities" due to the indictments and other active investigations, including his role on January 6, 2021, and whether he tried to overturn 2020 election results in Georgia.

"The presumption has been that, as in 2016, Trump's loyal base means that he will continue to exercise his hold on the Republican Party organization. Party leaders are looking ahead to the general election," Parshall said.

"Whether McCarthy is thinking in terms of his own immediate self-interest in retaining his speakership or the bigger picture, there is a pragmatic if not a principled endpoint of GOP elite support for Trump as the 2024 nominee—to retain power they need to win elections.

"To me, McCarthy's remarks signify that party leaders are trying out a pivot from Trump without alienating his loyal MAGA base."

Parshall said that pivot could mean an alternative candidate who can still inherit the MAGA support base without Trump standing at the pulpit—in a similar vein to the policies McCarthy touted on CNBC.

"Screw you," former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon said on his War Room podcast earlier today, in response to McCarthy's comments. "I'm going on a jihad now, I've had it. He gave away the country for his donors, the same fat cats he's up there [with] right now."

Bannon was alluding to the budget compromise arranged between Biden and McCarthy to avoid a government default. Bannon previously told Newsweek that the speaker "double-crossed people, he lied to people" about the debt ceiling, calling it a Democratic bill at heart.

He today also referred to McCarthy, Rupert Murdoch—the founder and executive chairman of the Fox Corporation—and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell as the "unholy trinity" that is apparently shying away from Trump the more the next election nears.

Laura Loomer, a conservative activist and major Trump supporter, tweeted on Tuesday that Trump "needs to be more selective with his endorsements." She referred to McCarthy as a "snake...showing his true colors."

"I love Donald Trump, but a lot of his issues would go away if he just surrounded himself with better, smarter people and didn't care about being friends with the idiots who run the GOP," Loomer said.

Newsweek reached out to Loomer via email and Bannon via text for comment.

Update 6/27/23, 3:48 p.m. ET: This story was updated with new comments from Kevin McCarthy.