Mark Meadows says he'd like to see the House speakership shift from Pelosi to Trump: 'She would go crazy'

• Meadows said that Speaker Pelosi "would go crazy" if Trump ran the House after the 2022 midterms.
• "You talk about melting down ... people would go crazy," the former White House chief of staff said.

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said he would "love to see" the House speakership shift from veteran Democratic Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California to former President Donald Trump after the 2022 midterm elections.

During an interview Thursday on former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon's "War Room" program, Meadows basked in the prospect that the former president could reenter government leading a potential Republican majority in the lower chamber.

"I would love to see the gavel go from Nancy Pelosi to Donald Trump. You talk about melting down ... people would go crazy," he told Bannon.

"As you know, you don't have to be an elected member of Congress to be the speaker. She would go from tearing up a speech to having to give the gavel to Donald Trump," he added, referring to the now-infamous scene when Pelosi tore her copy of the then-president's State of the Union address in February 2020.

He then emphasized: "Oh, she would go crazy."

Bannon then said that Trump could come in "for 100 days to sort things out and then step out and announce his 2024 campaign," which the former president has been teasing to supporters since he left the White House in January.

Meadows' remarks come as he faces potential criminal contempt charges for ignoring a subpoena to appear before the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection.

The former Trump advisor and ex-congressman from North Carolina last week declined to appear for a deposition and turn over documents requested in the probe.

Bannon, who also flouted a subpoena from the January 6 committee, was indicted on two charges of contempt of Congress last week and turned himself in the FBI on Monday. On Wednesday, he pled not guilty to the two misdemeanor counts of criminal contempt.

While on the Bannon program, Meadows, who recently said that the 13 House Republicans who backed the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package should be stripped of their committee assignments, went after GOP leaders in Congress.

While speaking with Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida on the congressman's "Firebrand" podcast on Thursday, Meadows awarded a "D" grade to Republican leadership — namely House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California — in assessing the party's efforts to block President Joe Biden's legislative agenda.

"Listen, you need to make Democrats take tough votes. You need to make sure that when you've got them on the ropes that you don't throw in the white towel of surrender and that's what's happened," he told Gaetz, referring to the 228-206 vote for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

"If you're going to be the speaker of the House, you've got to be able to control those members," he added, needling McCarthy for allowing GOP defections in backing the legislation, which will appropriate long-sought funding for the nation's highways, bridges, and roads.

Republicans, who lost control of the House after the 2018 midterm elections, hope that Biden's sagging poll numbers tied to issues like inflation and illegal border crossings at the US-Mexico border can propel them back into the majority.

Democrats currently have a 221-213 edge in the House — 218 seats are needed to control the chamber.