Speaker Johnson’s ‘epic’ weekend with Trump shows strengths and limits of his power

WASHINGTON (AP) – There was a speaker in the House Mike Johnson get behind the president-elect Donald Trump’s follow until Saturday evening UFC fight in Madison Square Garden, his stature overwhelmed by the enormous stage around him.

And Johnson attacks with the musicians Kid Rock and Jelly Roll.

And there was Johnson on Trump’s plane, looking across the seat in front of him, a table of four filled with McDonald’s meals for the president-elect, his son Donald Trump, Jr. Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — the speaker laughs over the backrest.

“Epic,” Johnson said of it all when he arrived back at the US Capitol.

The photos from Johnson’s wild weekend with Trump provide a snapshot of his proximity to power, the former religious rights attorney just a year on the job as House Speaker, now dining at Mar-a-Lago, flying on Trump Force One, performing ringside in Manhattan — and riding shotgun to Trump’s second term in the White House.

Taken together, the photographs, which boomeranged around social media with stunned disbelief and mocking comments, provided a vivid display of Trump’s command of the Republican Party. It focused on not only a political force that has swept control of the government in Washington, but a cultural moment for the hypermasculine, party-goers, men and some women who drive the movement forward.

And for the office of speaker of the house, among the highest ranking in the American government, second in line of secession to the president, it was like nothing seen in modern times.

“It’s a sign of how precarious Johnson’s position is,” said Jeffery A. Jenkins, a professor of public policy, political science and law at the University of Southern California who has written extensively about Congress and its leadership.

Jenkins said it shows that Johnson with his easy hold on power in the House, “is dependent on the president-elect in ways that past speakers have not been.”

Speakers of the House tend to maintain a degree of independence, if not measurable distance, from the White House, even when the president is a member of their own party. It is a way of exercising the authority of Congress as a co-equal branch of government.

There have been exceptions to be sure. Johnson’s predecessor, former chairman Kevin McCarthy, was an early confidant of the former president and someone Trump referred to as, “My Kevin.”

But in the modern era, speakers have tended to show off the power of the hammer as they stood their ground before the President.

Lecturer emerita Nancy Pelosi led the House to impeach Trump, twice, and famously stood up to him during a White House meeting — hint — and warned him about the power she brought into the room.

This image also became an enduring image, the first woman to become speaker of the House, literally standing up to the president, just like one of her leaving the White House – her dark sunglasses slipped on, her rust coat swinging out the door.

Former Republican Speaker John Boehner exerted his power more quietly: Boehner simply left then-President Barack Obama waiting by the phone for a call that never came to secure a hard-fought budget deal. The deal had collapsed.

For Johnson, who has worked for the past year to mend his past criticism of Trump and draw closer to the former president as they both bid for power in November’s election, the weekend was seen as time well spent in securing these ties and crafts. agenda ahead.

Over the course of a day of meetings and two nights of gala dinners at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club and residence, Johnson emerged as someone in the president-elect’s orbit and presumably aligned with his power.

“It was just a great celebration of America,” Johnson said of the weekend’s events, especially the UFC fight.

“What happened at Madison Square Garden on Saturday night was kind of a microcosm of what we’re experiencing around the country,” he said.

“I kept telling everybody that there’s an energy out there … it’s an almost euphoric felling that people have that America is back,” he said. “And it was fun to be a part of that.”

Newt Gingrich, himself a former speaker of the House, said that Johnson understands that he is on one of the “wildest” rides of his career, along with Trump on his way back to the White House.

“If you ever needed an image of the new Republican Party — try to imagine Boehner or Ryan in that setting,” he said, referring to other recent Republican speakers, including Paul Ryan,

Gingrich said he and his wife, Calista, joined one of the Mar-a-Lago events with the speaker and marveled at the scene: actor Sylvester Stallone for a minute. Kennedy the next. And he wrote an essay about how many millions of Americans Trump reached with the images at the UFC fight.

“Trump is basically running a three-ring circus along with a vaudeville act,” Gingrich said, all while preparing to lead the government and engage on the global stage.

“It’s just fun,” Gingrich said.

As for Johnson’s religious background, Gingrich said, the speaker is “someone who understands that you are true to your own faith, but you go through the world as the world is.”

He said he texted with Johnson in the morning.

“I think Mike is having the time of his life,” he said. __

Associated Press writers Michelle Price and Farnoush Amiri and Will Weissert in West Palm Beach, Fla., contributed to this story.