A former top aide to Rep. Jim Jordan says House Republicans need the Ohio congressman as their next leader, not Majority Leader Steve Scalise, because the party is about to face two years of Democrat investigations into President Trump.
Russell Dye, who spent nearly a decade as communications director for Jordan and the House Judiciary Committee and now works as a Republican strategist at Watchtower Strategy, made the case on Breitbart News Saturday with host Matthew Boyle.
“We need that wartime consigliere. We need a fighter,” Dye said.
Dye said Democrats are gearing up to launch investigation after investigation targeting Trump, his family, and anyone who has worked with him, and argued no House Republican is better positioned to counter that than Jordan.
“If you ask Democrats and Republicans in D.C. who the best congressional investigator is … it is Jim Jordan,” Dye told Boyle.
He pointed to incoming Democrat committee chairs who are already promising aggressive oversight. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), in line to chair the House Oversight Committee, put out a two-word statement after the election results came in: “Lawyer up.”
Jordan jumped into the leadership race Wednesday, the same day Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) told his staff he would not seek the post. In his letter to colleagues, Jordan wrote that he is “battle-tested on the oversight front and I know the Democrats’ playbook.”
Scalise launched his own bid the same day, telling colleagues that “socialists are coming to Washington with a radical agenda” and vowing to win back the House majority.
Republicans lost control of the House on Tuesday in what CBS News projected as a Democrat sweep that also flipped the Senate. Jordan told Breitbart News Daily back in April that the midterms would come down to two sentences — “They’re crazy. We’re not” — and predicted Democrats would use any majority they won to tie up the president for two years.
Dye argued Democrats would far rather face off against Scalise, who he said has never led a serious congressional investigation, and called for “new blood” at the top of the conference.
This is a rematch of the 2023 leadership fight that broke out after House Republicans removed then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Scalise won the conference’s nomination that time but withdrew before a floor vote, while Jordan fell short of the votes needed to win outright.
House Republicans will pick their next leader by secret ballot during the week of November 10.
