President-elect Donald Trump provided a path on Thursday for House Speaker Mike Johnson to save his job as Speaker in the next Congress.
Johnson’s Speakership is in jeopardy after he tried to rush a spending measure packed full of pork, which drew ire from Trump and Elon Musk, the president-elect’s designated chief of axing government waste.
Trump’s roadmap for Johnson appears to set a series of reasonable demands, although achieving Trump’s requests might be difficult in the context of a potential government shutdown before Christmas.
Johnson will “easily remain speaker” if he “acts decisively and tough” and eliminates “all of the traps being set by Democrats” in the spending package, Trump told Fox News’s Brooke Singman.“Anybody that supports a bill that doesn’t take care of the Democrat quicksand known as the debt ceiling should be primaried and disposed of as quickly as possible,” he said.
“If the speaker acts decisively, and tough, and gets rid of all of the traps being set by the Democrats, which will economically and, in other ways, destroy our country, he will easily remain speaker,” Trump added.
Mutiny is building among Republicans to oust Johnson. With a small incoming Republican House majority, Johnson can only lose one Republican vote to remain speaker in early January.
Punchbowl reported Wednesday evening on Johnson’s precarious position:
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) already said he wouldn’t back Johnson for speaker. Massie had been leaning that way but said this latest CR debacle was a “tipping point.”
And we hear from multiple sources there are more Republicans – at least two – who are in Massie’s camp. Some Johnson critics are already privately floating names behind the scenes of alternatives they’d prefer for speaker, such as House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan or House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. Jordan and Emmer both ran for speaker after the conference ousted Kevin McCarthy. They both lost. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise could also be in the mix.
Arizona GOP Rep. Eli Crane told us he was “undecided” about voting for Johnson and confirmed there’s talk behind the scenes about a potential alternative. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) is leaning “no,” we’re told. Reps. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.), Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) and Cory Mills (R-Fla.) have been non-committal. Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) is always a wild card.
TRUMP doesn’t want to just lift the debt ceiling- he’s keen to get rid of it, telling me in a phone interview “The Democrats have said they want to get rid of it. If they want to get rid of it, I would lead the charge.”
— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) December 19, 2024
He sees it as a fake thing. No real value re: debt control
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
