Donald Trump is taking credit for Rep. Mike Johnson’s rise to the speakership.
“I just want to congratulate Mike Johnson. He will be a great Speaker of the House, and we were very happy to have helped. I’ve known him for a long time. He’s a tremendous leader and a tremendous man,” Trump told reporters outside a New York courtroom Wednesday.
“At this time yesterday, nobody was thinking of Mike,” Trump said. “And then we put out the word, and now he’s the Speaker of the House. So I want to just thank all of the supporters that I have, and I want to thank all the supporters that Mike has, and again, he’ll be a great Speaker. I think you’re going to be very proud.”
Johnson is a close Trump ally who was instrumental in the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Congress. He sent an email from a personal email account in 2020 to every House Republican soliciting signatures for an amicus brief in a Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate electoral college votes from key swing states then-President elect Joe Biden won.
He was the fourth GOP nominee for speaker in three weeks as Republicans struggled to find a replacement for Rep. Kevin McCarthy who was ousted from the position.
But, Johnson was the only second nominee to bring a vote to the floor. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who Trump endorsed, lost three rounds of voting on the floor before he was removed by the GOP conference.
