President-elect Trump offered his complete and total endorsement of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday, days before a House vote on Friday to elect a new Speaker.
“Speaker Mike Johnson is a good, hard working, religious man. He will do the right thing, and we will continue to WIN. Mike has my Complete & Total Endorsement. MAGA!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Trump’s public endorsement could be key to a win by Johnson, who can only afford a handful of GOP defections and be elected Speaker.
Anger from GOP members about how Johnson has handled various issues, including the end-of-year funding package to keep the government open, has thrown Johnson’s Speakership into question.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) has said he will not support Johnson, and several other hard-line conservatives will not commit to supporting him.
Because of the razor-thin House GOP majority, Johnson cannot afford to lose more than one Republican vote for Speaker, assuming every member is present and votes for a candidate.
The signal of support came at the end of a post in which Trump flaunted his electoral victory and took swipes at Democrats for running a “very expensive ‘sinking ship,’” and “embracing DOJ & FBI WEAPONIZATION against their political opponent, ME.”
“BUT IT DIDN’T WORK, IT WAS A DISASTER!!!” Trump said. “LETS NOT BLOW THIS GREAT OPPORTUNITY WHICH WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN. The American people need IMMEDIATE relief from all of the destructive policies of the last Administration.”
Many GOP lawmakers had signaled that the question of whether anyone else would oppose Johnson in the Jan. 3 Speaker vote would largely depend on the president-elect.
“It’s going to be more up to Trump than anybody else. He’s going to weigh in on it, I’m sure,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who would not commit to supporting Johnson, said before the House left for the Christmas holiday.
The support for Johnson from Trump is particularly notable given the tensions between the two over the end-of-year funding package.
Trump made a last-minute demand to raise the debt ceiling as part of a short-term funding bill, wanting to remove the threat of Democrats using it as a leverage point later in 2025. Johnson, though, could not deliver on that request due to Republican opposition.
Instead, House Republicans struck an internal agreement to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion, paired with $2.5 trillion in spending cuts, as part of a reconciliation bill Republicans are planning to push through Trump’s legislative agenda — in a process that bypasses the need to get support from Democrats.
But Trump reiterated his call to raise the debt limit Sunday night, signaling his support for a much different plan.
“The Democrats must be forced to take a vote on this treacherous issue NOW, during the Biden Administration, and not in June,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “They should be blamed for this potential disaster, not the Republicans!”
But also in that post, Trump appeared to blame former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for the debt limit issues: “The extension of the Debt Ceiling by a previous Speaker of the House, a good man and a friend of mine … will go down as one of the dumbest political decisions made in years.”
Updated at 10:36 a.m. EST
