Byron Donalds: McCarthy is ‘in trouble’ after failing to meet conservative demands

Rep. Byron Donalds, Florida Republican and member of the chamber’s Freedom Caucus, said Sunday morning he thinks House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is “in trouble” following the passing of the stopgap measure that kept the government open on Saturday over the objections of GOP conservatives.

The relatively clean 45-day continuing resolution agreed to in a surprise late Saturday vote does not have any border policy changes, which Democrats opposed, or funds for Ukraine, an addition that many House Republicans strongly opposed.

Mr. McCarthy was only able to get the measure through the chamber with heavy support from the Democratic minority, only angering more Freedom Caucus lawmakers who demanded a tougher stance from their leader.

“I think [McCarthy] is in trouble,” Mr. Donalds, now in his second term, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Part of that is because there has to be some level of strong leadership in our chamber. I’m just going to be totally blunt, there are a lot of trust issues in my chamber right now, where people feel on both sides of our conference that everybody is not going to hold hands and continue to do this work together.”

He told host Shannon Bream that Republicans “did not get anything” out of the stopgap bill, adding that the border is still not secure because “Joe Biden and the Democrats got their way.”

The package also punts on deeper spending cuts that Freedom Caucus members had been demanding as the price of their support.

“I think this is a terrible deal for the American people,” Mr. Donalds added.

He explained that it wasn’t a good look for Mr. McCarthy that it took more Democratic votes to pass the stopgap measure than Republicans who supported it, and that it mirrored the outlines of the deal earlier this year to raise the debt ceiling.

When asked if he would vote for a motion to remove Mr. McCarthy as speaker, he said, “Frankly, I don’t know right now.”

“I’ve got to really think about that, because there’s a lot of stuff going on in that building that’s behind us,” he said. “What Democrats do, I can’t even speak to it right now.”