Trump’s big Mike Johnson decision
A messy Capitol Hill endgame has the president-elect pondering a change in House leadership. Speaker Mike Johnson is facing doubts from President-elect Donald Trump, and they couldn't come at a worse moment.
By Rachael Bade 12/23/2024 06:01 AM EST1/2
After the House passed a shutdown-averting spending bill Friday, a very relieved Speaker MikeJohnson proclaimedto reporters thatPresident-elect Donald Trump was “certainly happy about this outcome.”
Not by a long shot.
Amid the chaos in Washington, I was in Palm Beach talking to people close to the past and future president and called up other confidants afterward. This much became clear to me:Not only is Trump unhappy with the funding deal, he’s unhappy with Johnson, too.
He’s unhappy that he didn’t get the debt ceiling hikehe made clear he wanted. Hefelt blindsidedby the initial deal Johnson struck with Democrats. And, in the end, he wasunimpressedwith the entire chaotic process, which left the incoming administration questioning whether Johnson is capable of managing an even thinner majority next year.
• “The president is upset — he wanted the debt ceiling dealt with,” said one Trump insider, who like others was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Trump and Johnson.
• “In the past couple weeks,we’ve questioned whether [Johnson has] been an honest broker,” said another.
• “No one thinks he’s strong. No one says, ‘Damn, this guy’s a fighter,’” went another reaction I got to Johnson’s bid to keep the speaker’s gavel.
• “I don’t see how Johnson survives,” said a fourth.
House GOP agrees to raise threshold needed to oust speaker
Johnson and his allies have good points to make in his defense — that the president had unrealistic expectations of what was possible, that Joe Biden is still president and Democrats control the Senate, thus limiting how much could be achieved. But when it comes to Johnson staying as speaker, all that matters is how he’s perceived in Trump’s eyes.
Maybe this is just another instance where Trump toys with one of his minions just watch him squirm — just ask Kevin McCarthy, Johnson’s predecessor, what that’s like. But Republicans tell methere’s no way Johnson will win the gavel again without Trumpnot only endorsing him but actively whipping for him.
And, as of this weekend, it’s an open question at Mar-a-Lago about whether Trump will lift a finger to help him.Trump is sitting back and watching the coverage, I’m told, mulling whether it’s worth it to defenestrate another speaker. “If he wanted to bury Mike Johnson,everyone knows he could — and he hasn’t,” said one of the previously quoted Trump confidants. “While the president thinks there could have been a better deal, he also hasn’t pulled the ripcord. Where we end up in a week or two is largely undecided.”
Inside Trump’s exasperation
Frustration with Johnson started well beforethis week’s meltdown on the Hill. In several conversations with Johnson after the election — as reported previously in Playbook — Trump mentioned his interest in quickly raising the debt ceiling to clean the slate for 2025. One of the Trump insiders called
the borrowing limit a “cleaver hanging over his head in the middle of the year”— something that would give Democrats major leverage to oppose the spending cuts he is seeking, given how thoroughly Republican loathe voting to raise it: “He brings it up in every conversation — he says the debt ceiling is going to be the thing that [Senate Democratic Leader] Chuck [Schumer] uses” to obstruct his agenda.
The way Hill Republicans see it, Trump never explicitly endorsed attaching the debt ceiling bill to the year-end spending package until two days before the shutdown deadline. If Trump — never shy about what he wants — was that serious about raising the borrowing limit in the lame duck, they argue, wouldn’t he have been tweeting about it for weeks, publicly demanding lawmakers act?
Another Trump official bristled at that suggestion, arguing that it’s not Trump’s job to get into the minutiae of legislative strategy: “He said, ‘Deal with the debt ceiling prior to me coming into office.’ … Let’s not play semantics.”
The situation escalated on Tuesday when Johnson unveiled his deal with Democrats, which included a host of measures that had little to do with keeping the government open.
Multiple Republicans on the Hill said the speaker’s team let the incoming administration know exactly what would be in the bill — including pay raises for members, transferring ownership of Washington’s RFK Stadium and restricting investments in China —though they acknowledged that didn’t necessarily mean Trump himself knew.
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