Mike Johnson flexes Trump support as House mutiny fizzles

By 
 April 15, 2024

House Speaker Mike Johnson (LA) is flexing Donald Trump's "100%" endorsement as backlash against the Speaker shows signs of fading ahead of the election in November.

"I spent hours with the president on Friday. He and I talked frequently…. He's 100% with me, and he said, 'We'll get this job done.'" Johnson told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo on Sunday.

Johnson flexes Trump support

Johnson has faced simmering anger from Republican voters and a vocal minority of GOP lawmakers who say he has done little to advance a conservative agenda, particularly on border security.

But the appetite for Republican infighting seems to be fading, after last week's blowup over FISA ended with a bi-partisan vote to renew the scandalous spying program that was used to target Trump in 2016.

Despite Trump's urging to "kill" FISA, Republican dissenters ultimately came around to helping pass it with only minor tweaks.

The passage came on the same day that Trump met with Johnson at Mar-A-Lago and praised the "very good" job the Speaker is doing.

Trump's show of support is a major boon for Johnson, whose principal adversary in the GOP conference, vocal Trump backer Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA), has been dangling a "motion to vacate" above Johnson's head as he prepares to bring a vote on aid to Ukraine.

Dissent fades

Johnson has fended off critics like Greene by citing the high-stakes elections in November and the need for Republicans to remain united.

"What Marjorie's done with a motion to vacate is not helpful for our party, for our mission to save the country," he told Fox.

"Because if we don't grow the House majority, keep the House majority, win the Senate, and win back the White House for President Trump, we are going to lose the Republic."

Greene told Bartiromo, in her own interview last month, that Johnson could have threatened to shut down the government in order to extract concessions on the border, instead of negotiating with Democrats to keep the government open and funded.

"If Speaker Johnson really wanted to secure the border like he promised all of us, he would promise the American people that he would have told Chuck Schumer, 'We will not pass any government funding bills until our border and funding bills have the H.R. 2 in it, or the Laken Riley Act, or at least some measures within them, but he didn't. He completely failed in that," she said.

It appears likely that as the election nears, voices of dissent within the GOP will grow quieter, especially when Trump has the bullhorn.

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