Speaker 1: Democracy is messy sometimes, but it is our system, this
Speaker 1: conference that you see. This House Republican majority is united.
Speaker 2: After twenty two days of complete turmoil in the US
Speaker 2: House of Representatives, with Republicans unable to find a candidate
Speaker 2: they could agree on to replace the House Speaker Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 2: on Wednesday, Republicans finally settled on someone they could accept,
Speaker 2: and its representative, Mike Johnson of Louisiana. He's a staunch
Speaker 2: ally of Donald Trump, and he was a leader in
Speaker 2: pushing to overturn the results of the twenty twenty presidential election.
Speaker 2: His selection as Speaker reinforces the right word shift of
Speaker 2: the Republican led House, and now Johnson has to act
Speaker 2: quickly to try to get his splintered party to agree
Speaker 2: to a spending package to avoid a government shutdown, and
Speaker 2: to decide on funding for Ukraine in Israel. I'm wes
Speaker 2: Kasova today on the Big Take. Are intrepid Congress editor
Speaker 2: Meghan Scully is here short on sleep, but still sharp
Speaker 2: of mind to tell us where things go from here. Meghan,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people, even here in Washington
Speaker 2: yesterday afternoon, we're saying Mike who, And in fact I actually,
Speaker 2: in preparation for this interview, just googled him and when
Speaker 2: I hit them in the search box, two results popped off.
Speaker 2: The verse was major League Baseball, which you'd expect, and
Speaker 2: the second was Mike Johnson.
Speaker 3: So tell us about Mike Johnson.
Speaker 4: I think we were all googling him yesterday, even those
Speaker 4: of us who cover Congress for a living. You know,
Speaker 4: he has one of those very generic names, and it
Speaker 4: was like, which one is that he was a very
Speaker 4: sort of junior member of the House leadership team. But
Speaker 4: as the House Republicans sort of went through speaker nominee
Speaker 4: after speaker nominee after speaker nominee, you know, he ultimately
Speaker 4: was the last man standing, and he ended up getting
Speaker 4: two hundred and twenty votes on Wednesday on the first round.
Speaker 4: If you remember back in January, it took former Speaker
Speaker 4: Kevin McCarthy fifteen rounds and four or five very painful
Speaker 4: days to finally claim the speakership.
Speaker 2: And the other candidates who came forward after he was
Speaker 2: unceremoniously shown the door also couldn't get it through, and
Speaker 2: Representative Jim Jordan went three rounds trying to get votes,
Speaker 2: and on every round he lost ground with his fellow Republicans.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, he had like an incredibly shrinking fan base.
Speaker 4: And then the two other nominees, Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer,
Speaker 4: never even made it to the floor for a vote.
Speaker 4: They gave up before they even got there. And you know,
Speaker 4: we're now measuring time in Washington as Tom Emmers. How
Speaker 4: many Tom Emers can you last? It's one Emer is
Speaker 4: about four hours and fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: So what is it about Mike Johnson that let him
Speaker 2: get the votes where other Republicans couldn't.
Speaker 4: I think he was unknown outside of Washington, so he
Speaker 4: wasn't somebody who you know back home. Voters didn't have
Speaker 4: a sense one way or another about him. Either you
Speaker 4: love Jim Jordan or you hate Jim Jordan, but you
Speaker 4: sure know who Jim Jordan is, right, We all had
Speaker 4: to google who Mike Johnson was, so he didn't come
Speaker 4: with all the baggage that some of these other candidates
Speaker 4: came with. But really, I think the thing that helped
Speaker 4: him the most was sheer exhaustion and frustration of the
Speaker 4: House Republican caucus. They just wanted to get this over with.
Speaker 2: So Johnson, even though he's not well known outside Washington,
Speaker 2: is very well known among Republicans. And we mentioned Jim
Speaker 2: Jordan before, he was unacceptable to Republicans, and yet Johnson's
Speaker 2: views on many of the issues are very much in
Speaker 2: line with the Jim Jordan right wing of the party.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 4: It is? So it's interesting. The right wing of the
Speaker 4: Republican Party sort of separates itself into these two different caucuses,
Speaker 4: the Republican Study Group and the House Freedom Caucus. The
Speaker 4: House Freedom Caucus is sort of what grew out of
Speaker 4: the Republican Study Group, and Jim Jordan was one of
Speaker 4: the founders of the Freedom Caucus. They're sort of the
Speaker 4: more bomb thrower types of the party, the ones who
Speaker 4: get on x and other social media and really you know,
Speaker 4: vent their frustrations. Many of them were the one among
Speaker 4: those who ousted Kevin McCarthy in the first place. So
Speaker 4: that's the House Freedom Caucus. Mike Johnson is the former
Speaker 4: chair men of the Republican Study Group, which is kind
Speaker 4: of the more sedate conservatives. You know, make no mistake
Speaker 4: about it, Mike Johnson is incredibly conservative economically, he believes
Speaker 4: in very small government, and also culturally, he is very
Speaker 4: much against abortion rights. He argued in two thousand and four.
Speaker 4: As an attorney, he argued against same sex marriages, So
Speaker 4: there is not a lot of moderate that runs through him.
Speaker 2: Also, one important thing is that Johnson was one of
Speaker 2: the leaders of the effort to question the results of
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election in order to keep Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: In office after he lost to Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: He helped write some of the legal arguments for the
Speaker 4: case in Texas that would have overturned some of these outcomes.
Speaker 5: He was the one who actually drafted the House Republican
Speaker 5: legal brief signed by one hundred and twenty six Republicans
Speaker 5: that supported the Texas lawsuit to try and overturn the
Speaker 5: electoral results of four states. Not only did he ask
Speaker 5: members to play a role in it, he actually is
Speaker 5: the name on the amicus brief that was submitted.
Speaker 4: And he was one of many Republicans who voted not
Speaker 4: to certify the twenty twenty election results.
Speaker 2: And that's the same as say Jim Jordan. So is
Speaker 2: it the case that it wasn't so much that Republicans
Speaker 2: didn't accept Jim Jordan's views, it was that they didn't
Speaker 2: like Jordan himself.
Speaker 4: I think that was a big part of it. I
Speaker 4: think Jordan also was toxic in areas like the Hudson
Speaker 4: Valley in southern California, these very purple districts, districts that
Speaker 4: Biden actually carried in twenty twenty and Republican House members
Speaker 4: won in twenty twenty two. So Jordan, remember, as chairman
Speaker 4: of the House Judiciary Committee, is one of the lawmakers
Speaker 4: leading the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, and that
Speaker 4: doesn't fly so well in these more Biden friendly districts.
Speaker 4: So you know, Jordan brought that baggage into this. He's
Speaker 4: also just known as being extremely close to former President
Speaker 4: Trump and just being very much an antagonistic member of
Speaker 4: the House Conference.
Speaker 2: And Johnson too is a very strong supporter of Trump
Speaker 2: and in fact got his strong endorsement as speaker. Yes,
Speaker 2: so tell us a little bit more about Johnson himself.
Speaker 2: How long has he been in Congress and what's he
Speaker 2: known for as a legislator.
Speaker 4: Johnson is just fifty one years old, which in a
Speaker 4: Congress where most lawmakers are in their sixties, seventies, and
Speaker 4: even eighties, he is quite young in this bunch. He's
Speaker 4: also from Louisiana, he comes across as incredibly folksy. One
Speaker 4: of our reporters likens listening to him to listening to
Speaker 4: a Republican Jimmy Carter. He's very affable and is soft
Speaker 4: spoken and very eloquent in his speech. He's Christian and
Speaker 4: deeply religious, and his beliefs have been an undercurrent throughout
Speaker 4: his political career. He's very opposed to abortion rights. He's
Speaker 4: opposed to same sex marriages. He has spoken personally about
Speaker 4: the abortion issue, saying that he himself was the product
Speaker 4: of an unplanned pregnancy. He was elected in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: the same year that Trump was elected president, and has
Speaker 4: been in the House ever since. He is a member
Speaker 4: of the House Judiciary Committee, so he's on Jordan's committee,
Speaker 4: but he'sn't known for being quite as as I said,
Speaker 4: antagonistic as Jordan and some others on the panel. He
Speaker 4: also is on the House Armed Services Committee. He has
Speaker 4: significant military interests in his district, and he's very much
Speaker 4: a hawk, which sets him apart from some of the
Speaker 4: fierce ultra conservatives who have really pushed for even cutting
Speaker 4: defense spending. He's a very strong believer in small government.
Speaker 4: He's actually even in a local radio interview called government
Speaker 4: a monster that should be starved, which is an interesting
Speaker 4: position to have considering he's going to be the one
Speaker 4: negotiating government spending. Remember, we have a November seventeenth deadline
Speaker 4: when federal government spending will run out without some sort
Speaker 4: of an agreement with Democrats to keep the doors open.
Speaker 2: And he's only in his fourth term, elected in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Usually speakers have much more experience than that.
Speaker 4: Yes, he is definitely the most inexperienced speaker in generations.
Speaker 4: I've seen some estimates going back one hundred and forty years.
Speaker 4: But he also is very telligenic and comes across well
Speaker 4: on TV. And among the many things that we heard,
Speaker 4: you know, working in his favor when House Republicans were
Speaker 4: meeting behind closed doors earlier this week, was that he
Speaker 4: could really get out, get on TV and sell the
Speaker 4: Republican message in ways that some of these other Republicans
Speaker 4: who had run and who had been in Congress for
Speaker 4: a much longer period of time could not.
Speaker 2: After the break, can Mike Johnson actually lead this fractie
Speaker 2: Republican caucus? Megan, you mentioned earlier that Republicans have another
Speaker 2: deadline facing them to keep the government open, and now
Speaker 2: that Mike Johnson has the Speaker's gabble, he's going to
Speaker 2: have to try to get Republicans to agree in a
Speaker 2: way we've seen they simply haven't been able to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So Johnson is sort of in an unusual position here
Speaker 4: where he's walking into these negotiations that are going to
Speaker 4: involve finding an agreement within the Republican conference. But then
Speaker 4: the House does not have the last stand spending, so
Speaker 4: he's going to have to negotiate with the Democratic controlled
Speaker 4: Senate and with the White House. So Johnson, going back
Speaker 4: four weeks ago, voted against the temporary starf gap spending
Speaker 4: bill that kept the government open.
Speaker 6: And although this bill originated in the republic controlled House,
Speaker 6: it was actually bought to the floor by Speaking McCarthy
Speaker 6: and in the end supported by more Democrats than it
Speaker 6: was Republicans.
Speaker 7: Today wasn't the choice we wanted to have. We tried
Speaker 7: to pass the most conservative stop gap measure possible. We
Speaker 7: had members from all sides of the aisle work on it,
Speaker 7: we put it on the floor, but unfortunately we didn't
Speaker 7: have two hundred and eighteen Republicans that would vote for that.
Speaker 4: This was the deal that McCarthy orchestrated with Democrats to
Speaker 4: keep the government open, and that really served as the
Speaker 4: last straw for hardliners who had been opposed to McCarthy
Speaker 4: since his election back in January, and they had had
Speaker 4: it with him. And then by October third, two days
Speaker 4: after the start of the new fiscal year, McCarthy was
Speaker 4: out of a job as Speaker and out of the office.
Speaker 4: He's still in the House. Now we have Mike Johnson
Speaker 4: as Speaker. Johnson voted against that short term spending bill.
Speaker 4: At the time, he was just a low ranking member
Speaker 4: in leadership. He didn't carry this weight of responsibility that
Speaker 4: he does now as Speaker. So he's bringing to this
Speaker 4: job this voting record that was very much in line
Speaker 4: with conservatives in the party. But now he is this
Speaker 4: responsibility to try to come up with something that could
Speaker 4: pass both chambers of Congress and make it to President
Speaker 4: Biden's desk for signature, otherwise the government's going to shut down.
Speaker 2: And while he was trying to rally support for his
Speaker 2: bid to be speaker, he gave a hint of where
Speaker 2: he now stands on that issue.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So on Monday, he circulated this memo to House Republicans,
Speaker 4: and in the memo he talked about being supportive of
Speaker 4: a continuing resolution that's what we call these stopgap temporary
Speaker 4: spending bills that would run until either January or April.
Speaker 4: What was done about this is that many ultra conservatives,
Speaker 4: particularly the eight who voted Kevin McCarthy out of office,
Speaker 4: did so because they are adamantly opposed to these crs
Speaker 4: as we call them, because it holds government spending at
Speaker 4: prior year levels, and what they want to do is
Speaker 4: cut government spending from prior year levels. So they don't
Speaker 4: want to be spending any more in the current fiscal
Speaker 4: year than they absolutely have to. So the fact that
Speaker 4: he floated this plan, it was very vague, It did
Speaker 4: not get into detailed specifics on items like Ukraine and
Speaker 4: Israel funding, but it did lay this marker down that
Speaker 4: he was now pro continuing resolution and he still got elected,
Speaker 4: which is pretty surprising considering where we were just a
Speaker 4: few weeks ago.
Speaker 2: And so why are these very hard right members who
Speaker 2: were furious at McCarthy for doing this accepting Johnson who
Speaker 2: says he'll do the same thing.
Speaker 4: I think there's a couple of things going on here.
Speaker 4: One I think that these hardliners never trusted McCarthy in
Speaker 4: the first place. They balked at his election in January.
Speaker 4: They were the ones who drove the fifteen rounds of
Speaker 4: painful voting that we all remember. And also they were
Speaker 4: furious with McCarthy for doing a deal with Joe Biden
Speaker 4: in May to avert a debt default. And with that
Speaker 4: came some strings in terms of government spending and cuts
Speaker 4: to government spending, but it went nowhere near as deep
Speaker 4: as these ultra conservatives wanted to go. They are hoping,
Speaker 4: in terms of looking at where Mike Johnson is on
Speaker 4: the political spectrum, that he's more like them than Kevin
Speaker 4: McCarthy was, so he they feel, is going to fight
Speaker 4: harder for these cuts. They might be more tolerant of
Speaker 4: what Mike Johnson comes back with in terms of a
Speaker 4: deal with the White House than they ever were with
Speaker 4: what Kevin McCarthy came back with.
Speaker 2: And then the other big question on the table is
Speaker 2: foreign policy and funding for Ukraine and also for Israel,
Speaker 2: and funding for Ukraine has been very unpopular among these
Speaker 2: right wing members, and.
Speaker 4: Even Johnson himself has been not particularly supportive of continuing
Speaker 4: funding to Ukraine. There's going to have to be some
Speaker 4: kind of give here though, because there is no way
Speaker 4: that the White House is going to move forward, and
Speaker 4: the Senate Democrats or and even Senate Republicans, senators like
Speaker 4: Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, are very supportive of
Speaker 4: continuing funding to Ukraine. So Johnson's going to have to
Speaker 4: give here somewhere, and where we might see that happening
Speaker 4: is perhaps, you know, in the total size of the
Speaker 4: package and also in terms of oversight of where this
Speaker 4: money is going and accountability in terms of how Ukraine
Speaker 4: is spending it. I'm guessing that that will be sort
Speaker 4: of the bone that he throws to the hard right,
Speaker 4: and so of where we go from there. In terms
Speaker 4: of Israel, there's wide bipartisan support for funding one of
Speaker 4: our staunchest allies.
Speaker 1: Turmoil and violence of rock to Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: We all know what intentions continue to build in the
Speaker 1: Indo Pacific. The country demands strong leadership of this body
Speaker 1: and we must not waiver. Are our nation's greatest ally
Speaker 1: in the Middle East is under attack. The first bill
Speaker 1: that I'm going to bring to this floor in just
Speaker 1: a little while we'll be in support of our dear
Speaker 1: friend Israel, and we're overdue and getting that done.
Speaker 2: When we come back. How long can Mike Johnson last
Speaker 2: is speaker.
Speaker 3: Began?
Speaker 2: You mentioned earlier that one of the things that did
Speaker 2: in Kevin McCarthy was this deal to keep the government open,
Speaker 2: which the hard right did not like and therefore used
Speaker 2: to get rid of him. And they were able to
Speaker 2: do this because of a rule that allows just a
Speaker 2: few members to essentially call the speakership into question. Does
Speaker 2: Mike Johnson have the same sword hanging over his own head?
Speaker 4: He does, and it's actually just one member, and in
Speaker 4: this case it was Matt Gates from Florida, who is
Speaker 4: a very very much a hardliner and very much in
Speaker 4: the camp of former President Donald Trump. The way the
Speaker 4: rule works, and this was negotiated actually by Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 4: during his lengthy election to be House Speaker, and this
Speaker 4: was one of the concessions he made to hardliners was
Speaker 4: that it would take only one of them to offer
Speaker 4: a petition to overthrow the speaker, considering that Republicans hold
Speaker 4: a narrow narrow majority of the House, and if Democrats
Speaker 4: all all vote in unison against the speaker, Republicans cannot
Speaker 4: lose more than four votes. So basically, the way I
Speaker 4: keep describing it as is that the coalition to overthrow
Speaker 4: a speaker could all fit into a Honda Civic. So
Speaker 4: that's what you need. And Mike Johnson certainly is walking
Speaker 4: into this job knowing that he could face the same
Speaker 4: fate as his predecessor. However, he does come into the
Speaker 4: job with right now there's a lot of feelings of
Speaker 4: goodwill and relief on the Hill. You know, we saw
Speaker 4: him after being nominated going to the microphones with half
Speaker 4: the Republican conference behind him cheering him on and very happy,
Speaker 4: very glad to have this behind them. And in the
Speaker 4: past he has the support of people like Matt Gates
Speaker 4: who never supported Kevin McCarthy, who may have begrudgingly voted
Speaker 4: present to allow him to claim the speakership back in January,
Speaker 4: or who continued to vote against him. But Mike Johnson
Speaker 4: has sort of won the hearts and minds of that
Speaker 4: camp for now. That doesn't mean that they're not going
Speaker 4: to change their minds, or it also doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: that he might not lose at some point. The moderates,
Speaker 4: the Biden district Republicans who I talked about earlier. However,
Speaker 4: they have been much less willing to really go against
Speaker 4: Republican leaders and are just by nature more of a
Speaker 4: go along, get along bunch. I think a lot of it, too,
Speaker 4: stems from the fact that, aside from the exhaustion that
Speaker 4: I cited earlier, is that Johnson comes across, whether you
Speaker 4: agree with his very conservative views on society and on
Speaker 4: the economy, on government spending, and the size and shape
Speaker 4: of the government, he comes across as somebody who is
Speaker 4: very likable, which was not the case with Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 4: Even Kevin McCarthy's supporters would sometimes bristle at his approach
Speaker 4: or comments that he made in the hallways. He always
Speaker 4: looked much more opportunistic. All politicians are opportunistic, you know,
Speaker 4: to some degree. But I think that for many Republicans
Speaker 4: who were perhaps on the fence with Mike Johnson, or
Speaker 4: who like you and I were doing googling him, he
Speaker 4: just comes across as a more earnest person, somebody, as
Speaker 4: as one Republican said, is just good on TV.
Speaker 3: Megan.
Speaker 2: Being likable, as you say, will get you pretty far
Speaker 2: in Washington. But these days it won't necessarily protect you
Speaker 2: for long. You've been covering Congress for a long time.
Speaker 2: Do you think Mike Johnson will last for years in
Speaker 2: this job?
Speaker 4: So I'm stopping making predictions right now. Because I thought
Speaker 4: the Phillies were going to be in the World Series,
Speaker 4: so I thought the government was going to shut down
Speaker 4: on October first. So clearly my barometer is broken. I
Speaker 4: will say that goodwill will get you pretty far. It'll
Speaker 4: at least get him several months into this job and
Speaker 4: through these initial hurdles over government spending, Ukraine funding and
Speaker 4: aid for Israel. Remember, we have an election coming up,
Speaker 4: so there's no guarantee that Republicans are going to hold
Speaker 4: onto the House anyway, So we could be seeing a
Speaker 4: speaker Hakem. Jeffries come January of twenty twenty five. So
Speaker 4: this is a debate that gets us up to essentially
Speaker 4: November twenty twenty four, to election day. I do think
Speaker 4: that what we're going to see, given his level of experience,
Speaker 4: is that the rest of the Republican leadership team is
Speaker 4: going to be much more active here. Interestingly, his number two,
Speaker 4: the House Majority Leader, is Steve Scalise, who is one
Speaker 4: of the failed speaker nominees. It never even made it
Speaker 4: to the floor, but is actually widely liked within the
Speaker 4: Republican Caucus. He is also from Louisiana, so you have
Speaker 4: this sort of home state relationship that is built in here,
Speaker 4: and I think we're going to see Scalise really sort
Speaker 4: of helping guide the agenda in the coming weeks and
Speaker 4: months ahead.
Speaker 3: Mean hope you can look forward to getting a little
Speaker 3: bit of sleep now.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for being here. Thanks thanks for listening
Speaker 2: to us here at The Big Take. It's a daily
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Speaker 2: supervising producer of The Big Take is Vicky Vergalina. Our
Speaker 2: senior producer is Catherine Fink, and they produced this episode.
Speaker 2: Our original music was composed by Leo Sidron. I'm West Kasova.
Speaker 2: We'll be back tomorrow with another Big Take.