MAGA Republicans Want Trump to Be Speaker. He Can’t.

After Kevin McCarthy’s delightfully ignominious—but entirely predictable—ejection from the House Speakership, some conservative commentators and Republican politicians are proposing McCarthy’s replacement be none other than Donald J. Trump himself. Both uproarious laughter and wide-eyed concern are understandable responses to this proposal. So let’s break it down.

It’s true that Trump isn’t a member of Congress, so you might think that that would disqualify him from the Speakership. Unfortunately, the Constitution offers no qualifications for who can serve as Speaker—merely that this person is chosen by the House itself. So yes, in theory, Trump—at least at one point in the recent past—could have potentially been elected Speaker.

On the other hand, despite the fact that there are no expressly stated Constitutional qualifications to be Speaker, no non-Congressperson has ever become Speaker in the nearly-250-years that the House of Representatives has existed.

Moreover, as lawless and chaotic as it may seem, the 118th Congress has, in fact, passed many critical procedural rules. As one Congressman has already reminded Sean Hannity on Twitter, one of them, Rule 26(a), forbids someone from serving in Congressional leadership if under felony indictment. Donald Trump is under multiple felony indictments. So short of an improbable rule change, he’s not eligible to serve even if he wanted to—and he almost certainly doesn’t, based on his tepid response to the question when prompted by reporters.

At the time of writing, both Steve Scalise (McCarthy’s number two) and Jim Jordan (deranged culture warrior) have thrown their proverbial hats in the ring to fill the vacancy. Neither of them would be a particularly good Speaker, though Jordan would undoubtedly be far worse due to his fixation on nonsense culture wars and conspiracy theories and lackluster track record of meaningful legislation.

So let’s worry about that and less about whether Trump would take a job for which he is procedurally ineligible, probably couldn’t get the support for, and clearly doesn’t want.