Trump backs Johnson in speaker’s race

Washington
CNN
—

President-elect Donald Trump said Monday that Speaker Mike Johnson has his “complete” and “total” approval, a big boost for the top House Republican ahead of a critical vote this week.

Trump’s endorsement comes as some House conservatives have warned they are not committed to endorsing Johnson in the speaker’s race. The president-elect’s endorsement could help Johnson lock in the votes he needs, especially after he navigated a chaotic government funding battle earlier this month that drew the ire of some members of his right flank.

But Johnson faces an extraordinarily narrow margin and can only lose a single Republican vote to still win the hammer, leaving little room for error. One House Republican, Representative Thomas Massie, has already said he does not plan to vote for Johnson, and Kentucky Republicans told CNN on Monday that Trump’s endorsement does not change his position.

Members had been preparing for a Trump endorsement, a source told CNN. But the same source warned that it might not be enough.

Johnson’s allies are keeping a close eye on members who haven’t committed to endorsing him yet, including Rep. Victoria Spartz.

The source told CNN that Spartz is considered unpredictable and that there are “also six or seven other members” who similarly remain wild cards.

Over the past several weeks, Johnson’s surrogates have mounted an expansive whipping operation, but intense challenges remain in getting Johnson to 218 votes — the magic number needed to win the gavel.

A Republican member familiar with the spread told CNN that while the vast majority of GOP members understand how “monumentally stupid” it could be to have a full-scale speaker campaign, not all members are swayed by an argument that the party must unite to enter the inauguration.

“A large majority of Republicans are rational, but not all members of the Republican Conference are rational,” the member lamented.

Trump praised Johnson on Monday, saying he works “hard” and “will do the right thing.”

“The American people need IMMEDIATE relief from all the destructive policies of the last administration. 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 and total support. MAGA!!!,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

After Johnson struck a deal with Democrats on spending in mid-December, Trump injected a last-minute demand to raise the debt ceiling, prompting Johnson to reach for a Plan B. A revised GOP plan ultimately succeeded failing to garner enough Republican votes to pass and causing grumbling among Johnson’s right flank that the speaker was not up to the job. It also led some to wonder if Trump would stick with Johnson ahead of the speech race.

Massie said earlier this month that he had no plans to endorse Johnson in the speaker’s race. In response to Trump’s endorsement, Massie wrote on X: “I respect and support President Trump, but his support for Mike Johnson is going to work the same way as his support for Speaker Paul Ryan. We’ve seen Johnson work with Democrats to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans and blow the budget.”

Separately, a CNN count of members ahead of Trump’s endorsement showed nearly a dozen others had not yet committed to Johnson. Johnson will face a vote in the House of Representatives on Friday when the new Congress meets.

Another challenge is that so far the House Freedom Caucus, which includes some of the members most weary of re-electing Johnson, has not come up with a unified list of demands, creating a situation where each member is acting a little as a free agent. .

For some members, there is concern about how the party will begin to pass individual spending bills again that deal with reducing the nation’s debt and deficit. That could be difficult, as House Republicans have repeatedly shown they don’t have the votes to pass all 12 spending bills with only GOP votes. Not to mention the fact that Republicans will continue to need Democratic votes even in a Trump administration to keep the government funded, since Republicans don’t have the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass bills on their own.

Johnson is also telling people he’s not open to reducing the number of members it would take to force a vote to remove a speaker after the GOP conference agreed to raise the threshold. As part of a cross-conference negotiation in November, Republicans decided to increase the number of members it would take to force a vote on what is known as the motion to vacate from one member to nine. A source familiar with Johnson’s thinking says the speaker does not believe he can reverse course on what he sees as a conference-negotiated position.

When former speaker Kevin McCarthy went 15 rounds to get the speaker’s gavel in 2023, he eventually acquiesced to conservative demands to lower the threshold for the motion to remove a single member, a move that ultimately led to his ouster.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.