Trump is now effectively in control of the US House of Representatives | Sidney

Even before the midterm elections – when the vaunted “red wave” dried up – influential Republicans, over drinks in Washington, casually discussed the fate of Kevin McCarthy as a short-timer.

The man who would be the speaker of the House had already been taking a victory lap before a single vote was counted. “I’m better prepared now,” he recently told New York magazine. “If I’m not going to be acceptable to the body having that scenario this time, no one’s acceptable,” he boasted to Punchbowl News. The failed frozen yogurt shop owner from Bakersfield, California, envisions himself at last standing as the hero of his Horatio Alger success story atop the greasy pole. McCarthy now trumpets that he has won the confidence of the far-right Freedom Caucus that previously opposed his elevation. He clutches its leader, his twitchy former foe Jim Jordan, as a great friend. “Probably my biggest advocate is Jim Jordan,” he has said.

McCarthy’s bravado discloses a hint of insecurity. The talk of the steakhouses is that he will not last long.

Donald Trump’s ragtag minions of horned madmen and militias could not seize the Capitol on January 6. But when the 118th Congress is sworn in on 3 January, Trump’s coup will have broken through more than a police barrier to enter a new phase. That’s because Trump will, for all intents and purposes, become the de facto speaker of the House. If and when Nancy Pelosi ever so gently passes the gavel to Kevin McCarthy, “it would be hard not to hit her with it,” McCarthy said to the raucous laughter of a Republican crowd in 2021. The ultimate power will be held in the hands of Trump. From his gilded tropical palace, he will phone dictates to Jim Jordan and other acolytes who will transform the House of Representatives into his 2024 presidential campaign committee, virtual law firm and bludgeon for revenge. The House will be his hammer.

Trump still looms over the party, contemptuous of the bitter Republican finger-pointing blaming him for the midterm disappointment. Rupert Murdoch’s overnight order to Fox News to hype Florida Governor Ron DeSantis cannot suddenly cancel the Trump show Murdoch has been instrumental in producing, though for years he reportedly privately called him “a fucking idiot”. Trump is hardly dislodged.

In the 117th Congress, 147 Republicans out of 213 refused to certify the results of the electoral college. The margin of the slim new Republican majority will uniformly be election deniers, who will pad the Freedom Caucus before which McCarthy cowers. When the “red wave” was revealed to be a mirage, while the votes were still being tallied and the House Republican majority still uncertain, representative Matt Gaetz of Florida labeled McCarthy “McFailure”, pledged his eternal fealty to Trump and called for a challenge to McCarthy as speaker. Jason Miller, a former Trump official and his echo, went on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast to declare that if McCarthy “wants a chance of being speaker, he needs to be much more…