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Trump: I'm not interested in being Speaker of the House

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Photo by Meg Kinnard / AP
Photo by Meg Kinnard / AP

Donald Trump says he is not interested in being Speaker of the House if Republicans take control of that chamber of Congress in the November elections.

The US Constitution stipulates that the vice president of the US should preside over the Senate, but it says nothing about how the House of Representatives chooses its presiding officer. House rules govern the election for speaker, and the vote is almost always along party lines, but the rules don't say that a speaker must be an elected member of the House.

Some Republicans have floated the idea that GOP House members would choose Trump as speaker if they win a majority of House seats in the upcoming election.

At a March 26 rally in Georgia, GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz promised to nominate Trump to be speaker.

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

Trump responded to the cheering crowd, "Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody. Well, that was interesting."

But Trump has now made clear he doesn't want the job.

In a March 29 interview with Just the News reporters John Solomon and Amanda Head, Trump said he's more interested in pursuing "something else."

"I think that it's not something I wanted," Trump said.

"A lot of people bring it up. It's brought up all the time. No, 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."

There is speculation that what Trump really wants is another term as president, which he would see as confirmation of his stated view that he was unfairly deprived of office in a "rigged election." He said last November that he'd wait until after the midterm congressional elections to make a decision on whether to run again.

If Trump had been interested in the speaker's job, it seems he'd have about even odds of getting it. In generic party preference polls released March 30, Democrats have a very slim lead — one point in the Politico/Morning Consult poll, and two in the Economist/YouGov poll.