“Why Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy did not have more of an effect (which was none) than it did.”
For me, I had hopes that Trump would learn from all his bad calls in his first term that kept backstabbing him. Then he gets behind Ronna Romney and McCarthy (who even threatened to impeach Trump)
“McCarthy said he would alert the former president of his plans to begin an impeachment trial if he did not resign.”
There is an outside possibility that this is more coordinated than it seems. Don’t get me wrong. I consider it unlikely. But it’s possible this whole thing is being orchestrated to get Trump into the Speaker’s position - at least temporarily. In order for that to work, Trump would have to appear to not want it, and he would have to appear to support McCarthy. Why? Because if we reach a protracted stalemate, he may be the only person in a position to get both GOP factions to agree on someone. If he were perceived as being the cause of the stalemate, or contributing to it, then that would never happen.