Trump has been the head of the GOP since 2016. It is HIS party. The leadership is Trump's picks like Speaker McCarthy and GOP Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel.
Trump is the outsider of the Republican party who has been leading a takeover of the Republican party for 8 years. It’s a process that doesn’t happen over night and there are still a number of old establishment types who wield considerable power in the party, although there has been an encouraging new crop of young MAGA supporters who have started to have an impact (e.g. MTG, Boebert, Crane, Vance, Luna, etc.
Trump’s strategy has been to target the worst of the worst for replacement while trying to find common ground with the rest. McCarthy has led the House GOP caucus since Paul Ryan left. McCarthy was next in line and moved up to take Ryan’s place. That was a House decision, not Trump’s.
Trump and McCarthy had a good working relationship in the second half of Trump’s first term, and he was a definite improvement over Ryan during that period. Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy for speaker was a function of the fact that McCarthy had shown a willingness to work with Trump and support his policies while Trump was President, as well as an acknowledgement that the younger crop of MAGA supporters still didn’t have enough clout to put one of their own in power. As far as McDaniel, there was likely a similar calculation at play.
You are very fobd of liberal talking points, aren’t you.
* fond