An old face accompanied President Donald Trump on Marine One after a turbulent week for top MAGA officials.
Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy accompanied the president on Wednesday as they traveled to and from the dignified transfer of two slain U.S. soldiers at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
It is unclear why the Californian, 60, traveled to Washington. He has been out of office since December 2023, when he abruptly resigned after he was ousted from the speakership and replaced by Louisiana’s Mike Johnson.
The fallen soldiers they traveled to welcome home, Sgts. William Nathaniel Howard, 29, and Edgar Brian Torres Tovar, 25, were both from Iowa.
The timing of the visit grabbed the attention of Washington politicos. Jake Sherman, who founded the Congress-focused news site Punchbowl, said it was “an interesting moment” for McCarthy to be spotted with Trump.
Sherman referenced Trump’s massive loss in the House earlier Wednesday, when a group of Republicans delivered a sharp rebuke of the House leader by signing onto a Democratic effort to force a healthcare vote.
Punchbowl reported in January that McCarthy was launching a new public affairs firm in Washington with five allies, but he has remained very much away from the nexus of power in the nation’s capital. He has not landed cushy board positions like other top figures to leave Congress, but he is on the boards of C3 AI and Anivive Lifesciences.
Others noted that the timing coincides with controversy surrounding a lengthy Vanity Fair article that is engulfing West Wing officials, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles.
Wiles, 68, spilled all sorts of secrets about the Trump administration, including that the sober Trump still has an “alcoholic’s personality,” that Elon Musk took Ketamine as he willy-nilly ran the Department of Government Efficiency, and that Vice President JD Vance is politically calculating and a conspiracy theorist.
The shockingly candid tell-all has spiked Wiles standing in prediction markets to be the first Cabinet-level official to be dismissed from the Trump administration.
Polymarket, which has long had Wiles at below a three percent chance of being the first axed, now lists her as having a 16 percent chance of being MAGA 2.0’s first significant departure.
Those betting on a Wiles-McCarthy swap may be disappointed to hear that Wiles, too, accompanied the president to Dover on Wednesday. Also making the trip was Casey Wasserman, chair of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee. McCarthy is also a member of the committee.
Trump, 79, has said that Wiles still has his support despite her airing the administration’s dirty laundry. He went as far as to suggest that he may actually have the personality of an alcoholic after all.
