The high drama early Saturday morning in the House concluded after former President Donald Trump closed the deal with a phone call, not Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, presidential adviser Dick Morris told Newsmax.
"I think it was enormous," Morris told "Saturday Report" about Trump's last-second call to avert an adjournment to Monday and bringing a 15th vote that would elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., as House speaker. "I think what we really just witnessed was the new Republican leadership team: McCarthy and Trump, Trump and McCarthy."
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Outside of the calls reportedly placed to the final six holdouts, most notably Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., Morris told Rita Cosby the mandating of the separate appropriations votes was vital. It was also the deal-maker for the Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md. — on the appropriations committee — to be 15th holdout to flip to vote for McCarthy earlier Friday.
"For God's sakes, now we have a budget process," Morris told Cosby. "When congressman Joe Blow says, 'I want a bridge in my district,' like [anti-Trump Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell did, it can be voted on separately, and the House can vote it down and poor McConnell doesn't get his bridge or the votes from it.
"So I think that these are enormous changes — reforms that Trump really led the fight for. And God bless him. Thank goodness we have him."
DeSantis, who once served in the House with many of those GOP members, would not have had the political cachet to pull off what Trump did at the stroke of midnight, according to Morris.
"And for those who like Ron DeSantis, he couldn't have done this," Morris said.
It is McCarthy's House and still Trump's Republican Party, according to Morris.
"They work beautifully together, despite centrifugal forces," Morris admitted, saying even some staunch Trump supporters were never McCarthy, but ultimately stepped aside to allow the centrist to become speaker of 118th Congress.
"Most of those 20 people that were objecting to McCarthy were Trump supporters; they were MAGA conservatives," Morris said. "And Trump could have just sat back and let the factions fight it out; instead, he got involved and pushed hard for McCarthy and he showed that the Republicans are capable of governance.
"Obviously, he did during his first term; but he showed it again last night. And I think that McCarthy would not be speaker today were it not for Donald Trump, and I think that all is well for the Republicans' ability to use this House majority to advance the causes that Trump and the people believe in."
Ultimately, Trump just had to remind his supporters from myriad factions to work together, like even Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., who had called for McCarthy to withdraw, but ultimately voted "present," stepping aside to allow McCarthy to have his moment.
"That's the centrifugal force I was talking about, and the fact that Trump overcame that and was able to talk sense into these people, likely by reminding them of the agenda they had fought for their entire careers in Congress, and telling them, 'Hey, take a victory; take a yes for an answer,'" Morris concluded. "And he got them to do that. I think that it was a great risk to himself.
"If they had not gotten McCarthy, if they had been forced to leave, yield, everybody would have said: 'This means Trump's declining influence; this shows that Trump is losing his grip on the party.' And everybody would have blamed Trump.
"And it's just terrific that he's come through in this amazing way, backing a good speaker, but more importantly, getting these reforms passed."
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