(Bloomberg) -- Republican presidential contenders are lining up against Kevin McCarthy’s compromise on the US debt ceiling, giving a boost to restive conservatives the House speaker is trying to keep in his corner.

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy have all deplored the measure, potentially emboldening the speaker’s critics who have threatened he faces a reckoning over the agreement.

“Our nation was careening towards bankruptcy before the debt deal, and it will still be careening towards bankruptcy after this debt deal,” DeSantis said Tuesday night at a campaign kickoff rally in West Des Moines, Iowa. “This is not gonna solve our nation’s fiscal problems.”

But there has been one notable exception. Former President Donald Trump, the 2024 GOP frontrunner and McCarthy ally, has gone conspicuously silent since the speaker and President Joe Biden reached the deal late Saturday.

Trump had earlier urged Republicans not to make a deal unless all of their demands were met — even if it meant sending the country into an unprecedented default. “That’s the way the Democrats have always dealt with us,” he wrote May 19 on his Truth Social platform. “Do not fold!!!”

Conservatives have seized on Trump’s initial opposition to raising the debt limit, even as his rhetoric softened the closer McCarthy got to a deal. The two spoke by phone about the negotiations last week as Trump played golf in Virginia. He told the speaker, “Make sure you get a good agreement.”

Trump’s silence and the maneuvering by his challengers underscores how his rivals are attempting to run to the right of him. The debt package is putting a spotlight on fiscal policy in a Republican primary race that so far has been dominated by social issues like abortion, gay rights, education and immigration.