As they contend for the White House in 2024, Republican presidential hopefuls are wading into another contentious election: the race to replace Kevin McCarthy, the first House speaker to be ousted in U.S. history.

As congressional Republicans wage a war set in motion by hard-right Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, GOP presidential candidates are offering their own takes and suggestions for the House caucus struggling to find a new leader. The next speaker may very well command a majority under the next Republican president.

On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump seemed to entertain the idea that he could become speaker — the role does not need to be filled by a sitting member of Congress — after Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, said he would nominate the GOP primary’s frontrunner to helm the House. A key ally of Trump and McCarthy, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said she would support the move.

"A lot of people have been calling me about speaker," Trump said from the halls of a New York City courthouse where his business empire is on trial for fraud. "All I can say is we'll do whatever is best for the country and the Republican Party."

“My focus is totally on [running for president]. If I can help them during the process, I would do it,” he added. “But we have some great people in the Republican Party that could do a great job as speaker.”

Hours later, Trump shared a depiction of himself wielding the speaker’s gavel on his Truth Social platform.

"Really? We want a convicted felon to be president of the United States?” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on CNBC on Wednesday morning. “And then you had some jokers on the Hill yesterday saying let's make him speaker. Who are these people?”

But another 2024 contender, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, wasn’t opposed to the idea of Trump atop the House of Representatives.

“This isn’t crazy. We need to shake things up in there,” Ramaswamy wrote on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday morning. On Tuesday, in a video on X, Ramaswamy said Republicans needed to come up with a plan for achieving their goals before picking the “assembly line mover in the House.”

“Once in awhile, a little chaos isn’t such a bad thing,” he said in the video.

As unlikely as Trump’s ascension to speaker would be, no presidential candidate has gotten behind the more likely options, including the second-ranking House Republican, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio. Both men have announced they intend to run for the speakership.

In interviews over the last couple days, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — the distant runner-up to Trump in primary — said that he “opposed McCarthy when it wasn’t cool years ago” and floated “guys who have endorsed me, like Chip Roy and Congressman Tom Massie” as people he would like to see wield the gavel.

Roy, a Texas Republican member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, voted against McCarthy until the 12th of 15 ballots during the marathon speaker’s election in January. On Tuesday, he refused to back McCarthy's ouster. DeSantis praised him as a “real leader on policy.”

Massie, of Kentucky, also opposed the motion to vacate the speakership. On Tuesday, he said Jordan would be his first choice to replace McCarthy.

“​​So those are two good guys, there's a lot more good guys,” DeSantis told Scripps News on Tuesday, prior to the vote. “But I think it's a thankless job, so I'm not sure that they would want to sign up for it.”