How Trump Is Complicating McCarthy’s Attempts to Avoid a Shutdown

When a group of House Republicans thwarted Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s attempt at averting a government shutdown, he fumed that he was being stymied by lawmakers who wanted to “burn the whole place down.”

But he spared any public ire for the most powerful member of his party who has been encouraging a shutdown: former President Donald J. Trump.

“I’d shut down the government if they can’t make an appropriate deal, absolutely,” Mr. Trump said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

On his social media website, Truth Social, Mr. Trump went further, suggesting on Sunday that Republicans should dig in because President Biden, in Mr. Trump’s view, will take the blame.

“The Republicans lost big on Debt Ceiling, got NOTHING, and now are worried that they will be blamed for the Budget Shutdown,” he wrote. “Wrong!!! Whoever is President will be blamed, in this case, Crooked (as Hell!) Joe Biden!”

Mr. Trump’s view of how shutdowns work was shaped by his own experience as president, when the longest government shutdown in history took place from December 2018 to January 2019. He incurred the public blame for it, as he publicly embraced the idea of a shutdown while holding contentious talks about a budget agreement with two Democratic leaders, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the House speaker at the time, Nancy Pelosi of California.

“I’ll be the one to shut it down,” Mr. Trump told the leaders in a contentious Oval Office meeting in December 2018 shortly before the shutdown. “I will take the mantle. And I will shut it down for border security.”

There is no reason to believe that Mr. Biden would be granted outsize blame, if any at all, for a shutdown that a group of Republican holdouts in Congress are encouraging. Mr. McCarthy has privately noted what Mr. Trump said publicly at the time in 2018, according to a person with knowledge of Mr. McCarthy’s comments.

In an earlier post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump suggested he believed the shutdown could “defund” the federal investigations he’s facing, although people have told him that such a belief was not likely to become reality, according to a person briefed on the conversation.

Mr. Trump’s eagerness to push for chaos has only gone so far, however: The former president has not been calling lawmakers to try to push a shutdown.

Yet Mr. McCarthy, whom Mr. Trump supported at the last minute when he ran for speaker, is facing an existential threat to his leadership, with his Republican critics looking to force him from his role amid the calamity of a likely shutdown.

Aides to Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump declined to comment.

People close to both men maintain that the looming government shutdown was not a strain on their relationship, nor was it a sign of a bigger rift. Nonetheless, a person close to Mr. Trump acknowledged that his support for a shutdown was providing encouragement to Mr. McCarthy’s adversaries.

Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a leading supporter of a shutdown, said in an interview that one of Mr. Trump’s posts on social media endorsing a shutdown may have had an influence on some members of Congress.

“I think there might have been a few people on the fence who were persuaded by that statement,” Mr. Gaetz said. “I view that as consequential.”

Yet Mr. Trump is not being faulted, at least overtly, for his stance. In Congress, some Republicans dismissed the notion that Mr. Trump could do something to push Mr. Gaetz and his allies in the other direction, away from a shutdown.

“I think it certainly helps with some of these folks when they hear from the former president, like during the speaker negotiations or the debt ceiling,” said Representative Mike Lawler of New York, a Republican member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. But he said it was Mr. Gaetz who was “creating a crisis.”

A person close to Mr. Trump maintained that the former president did not view the situation in terms of helping Mr. McCarthy, nor did he view the speaker as being especially imperiled. Mr. Trump “doesn’t think Kevin needs rescuing,” the person said. In Mr. Trump’s view, the person said, a government shutdown isn’t a terrible thing so long as it’s not consequential.

And there has been another issue at play: Mr. Trump’s bid for the White House.

The person close to Mr. Trump insisted the former president had not been frustrated with Mr. McCarthy over his lack of an endorsement in the Republican presidential primary. Yet others who have spoken with Mr. Trump throughout the year said he had raised Mr. McCarthy’s lack of a formal endorsement several times.

Mr. McCarthy has all but endorsed Mr. Trump in recent weeks — taking public shots at his chief rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, and talking up Mr. Trump — but he has delayed making it official.

Earlier this year, Mr. McCarthy’s reasoning, according to three people with direct knowledge of his thinking, was that he was eventually going to endorse Mr. Trump but needed to hold off for fund-raising purposes. He has said that major donors who are essential to funding House Republican campaigns would cut off funds if he endorsed Mr. Trump and that he needed to raise as much money as possible from donors who do not like the former president before making the decision official, the people with knowledge of his thinking said.

Another person in contact with Mr. McCarthy, while not disputing that he expressed those sentiments about fund-raising, said that he was one of the most prolific fund-raisers in the Republican Party, and that he expected to raise money regardless of Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump has also had an eye on expunging his impeachments. He asked Mr. McCarthy and his allies what they’re going to do to clear his impeachments — though it remains unclear whether they have any power to do so.

Despite the lack of formal support, Mr. McCarthy has made sure to tend to the relationship with Mr. Trump since he said in a television interview earlier this year that he was uncertain the former president was the strongest nominee in the general election. That comment enraged Mr. Trump, who told his aides he wanted it fixed.

More recently, Mr. McCarthy has struck a different note, saying: “President Trump is beating Biden right now in the polls. He’s stronger than he has ever been in this process.”