Trump Just Shut Down Matt Gaetz' Plan To Nominate Him for Speaker of the House—and the Schadenfreude Is Real

Far-right Congressman Matt Gaetz of Florida is one of former President Donald Trump's most vocal allies in Congress. Gaetz has said that Trump is the greatest president of his lifetime, and even volunteered to abdicate his congressional seat to represent Trump in his second impeachment trial.

More recently, Gaetz has endorsed the idea of appointing Trump as Speaker of the House if Republicans regain their majority in the chamber after the 2022 midterm elections.

Gaetz told the crowd at a Trump rally in Georgia earlier this month:

“Give us the ability to fire Nancy Pelosi, take back the majority, impeach Joe Biden, and I am going to nominate Donald Trump for speaker of the United States House of Representatives."

Though the Speaker of the House is the most prominent legislator in the chamber, who navigates a host of legislative rules and accounting dilemmas, the Speaker doesn't have to be an elected representative. They need only receive a majority of votes from representatives-elect in the body.

Some Trump supporters on social media have laid out a fanciful hypothetical in which Trump become Speaker, impeaches both President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and retakes the White House once the two are found guilty in their Senate trials. As Politifact notes, the plan is "legal but not plausible."

But in a recent interview with far-right disinformation outlet Real America's Voice, Trump quickly threw cold water on hopes that he'd be Nancy Pelosi's successor in 2023.

Watch below.

The former President said of the job:

“It’s brought up all the time. It’s not something I want to do. I want to look at what’s happening and then we’re going to be doing something else. No, it’s not something I would be interested in.”

Social media users cackled at Trump's dismissal of the idea.

Others felt Trump wasn't up to the task in the first place.

But while Trump as Speaker of the House may be laughable, Republicans' prospects at retaking a congressional majority are well within the realm of possibility.