Speaking to the three top House Republican leaders over the past three days at the House GOP retreat here in Doral, Fla., revealed how President Trump is both the glue holding the fragile majority together and an earthquake that threatens to fracture it.
I sat down with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for a fireside chat at the House Republican retreat this week — which took place at the Trump National Doral resort — and got some rare insights on how he sees his relationship with the president.
Once news of the interview was public, I got plenty of suggestions from Democrats and outsiders on what to ask him about — mostly having to do with how he could accept Trump’s demands and actions.
But Johnson told me he “fully” supports Trump’s move to freeze federal grants — a response that surprised approximately zero reporters in the audience. Remember, Johnson said last week he would not “second-guess” Trump’s pardoning of violent Jan. 6 rioters, despite saying the day before inauguration that he expected the pardons to be on a case-by-case basis.
Johnson, who has become part of Trump’s inner circle, acknowledged that he doesn’t criticize the president. His guiding principle is Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.
But he also insisted he is not a “yes man” when I asked how he handles his disagreements with Trump behind closed doors when they have differences of opinion on legislation and strategy.
“I don’t agree with my wife 100 percent of the time,” Johnson said. He noted that he was on Trump’s impeachment defense team. “One of the reasons I think he respects this relationship that he and I have is that I give him counsel.”
Johnson went on:
→ “The job of a counselor, or somebody who is ostensibly one of an adviser, or somebody who brings a different perspective is, you’re not supposed to be a yes man. I’m not. And I think that’s healthy. I think he respects it.”
JOHNSON’S REACTION TO TRUMP FLOATING seeking a third term made me think of the adage coined by the conservative writer Salena Zito in 2016: Take Trump seriously, but not literally.
In a speech to Republicans on Monday, Trump said he did not think he could seek a third term but then turned to Johnson and asked: “Am I allowed to run again, Mike?”
“That was tongue in cheek,” Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, told me of Trump’s quip. “Of course, I can’t change the Constitution, but you know, there are means to do that. I don’t think he’s suggesting a constitutional amendment. So I think he’s having sport with the media.”
→ “I take everything he says seriously, but I think that was clearly tongue in cheek. We laughed about it.”
This is the second time Trump has joked to House Republicans about seeking a third term, and Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) last week proposed a constitutional amendment, which has virtually zero chance of passing, that would allow Trump to seek a third term.
You can watch my full 25-minute fireside chat with Johnson here.
THOUGH YOU WON’T CATCH GOP LEADERS EXPLICITLY saying they are defying Trump, read between the lines and you’ll see one Trump demand that could spur the first major fissure between congressional Republicans and the president: The debt limit.
Trump, furious at the prospect of Democrats potentially having leverage over Republicans with the must-pass task to raise the debt limit this year, has demanded that Republicans not let Democrats extract any concessions as a condition of raising the nation’s borrowing limit — which is expected to require action by this summer.
That made GOP leaders initially consider including a debt limit hike in their ambitious Trump agenda legislation on taxes, border, energy and more, which is moving through the special budget reconciliation process that circumvents the need for Democratic votes to surpass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. But it could be impossible to meet demands for fiscal hawks in the GOP who resist raising the borrowing limit.
“I think there’s some concern in the Senate that that might be difficult to do on a partisan basis, and so it may wind up being a bipartisan exercise,”Johnson said in our fireside chat, saying the strategy decision is not final.
That is exactly the opposite of what Trump wants.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) gave a stronger signal that the borrowing limit could be packaged with something like disaster aid or regular government funding
“Right now, it’s been more discussed on the side of the government funding and disaster recovery bills, as opposed to budget reconciliation,” Scalise told me in a sit-down this week, nothing there are GOP members in the House and Senate who have signaled they will never vote for a debt ceiling increase — at least not without extremely deep spending cuts.
→ “Getting spending under control is a big priority. We can do that in budget reconciliation. If you’re working on a government funding bill, that’s a different coalition. If you’re working on the debt ceiling, it’s a different coalition. So you know, there’s going to be a lot of different things we do throughout the year that involve different coalitions within Congress.”
Read more on the GOP leaders’ debt limit quandary here.
EVEN AS HE PUTS GOP LEADERS between a rock and a hard place on some issues, Trump is perhaps the most important force in keeping the razor-thin GOP majority together as legislation.
Take it from the House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who predicted Trump will be a “significant force” in getting Republicans on the same page.
“I’m pretty sure you’re not going to want to be the one in your district where the president shows up to tell everybody you’re the one blocking the advancement of his agenda,” Emmer told me in a one-on-one at the GOP retreat.
Emmer pointed to Trump’s influence in helping Johnson get reelected to the Speakership on the first ballot on the opening day of Congress. Trump called initial holdouts Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) and Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) to help sway them to switch their votes and back Johnson.
“This time, with 218 members — soon to be 217 and no margin for error — the game begins and ends in the House. The president sets the tone, the House has to perform, and then the Senate will have to get on board,” Emmer said.
BOTH TRUMP AND VICE PRESIDENT VANCE stressed the need for unity on the reconciliation strategy in comments to House Republicans on Monday and Tuesday.
Trump’s comments bordered on pleading: “Everything is so hard — always have two or three or five or something people that just don’t want to do it. And you just gotta do it. You just gotta do it. Make life easy.”
BUT WHILE REPUBLICANS project unity and say they are eager to pass the Trump agenda, there was an undercurrent of anxiety that ran through the GOP retreat about delivering on the litany of Trump’s promises on tax cuts, border investments and more.
Privately, members and staff acknowledged there will be plenty of speed bumps and hurdles over the next few months as they craft the bill. And while Republicans say they know no one will get everything they want, it remains to be seen how much some of the staunchest groups — SALT Caucus on one side, fiscal hawks on the other — are willing to bend.
Read more on Trump’s legislative agenda demands squeezing House Republicans
OTHER NUGGETS FROM INTERVIEWS WITH JOHNSON, SCALISE, AND EMMER:
- JOHNSON says the Speakership has strengthened his faith: “It has been strengthening of my faith. I believe God has pleased our efforts and that he has a plan for our country. And I know some people are offended to hear me say that, but I don’t really much mind it.”
- JOHNSON also said there is a commitment to keep the reconciliation bill deficit neutral.
- SCALISE signaled two likely areas Republicans will turn to to seek “savings” to pay for the reconciliation bill: work requirements for welfare programs (likely Medicaid) and rescinding electric vehicle mandates.
- EMMER, a top crypto advocate in Congress, is not concerned about the President Trump and Melania Trump meme coins that were released last week. Emmer said he had “no problem” with meme coins in general. “There are people who think these coins, tokens, whatever, are really big, and then after time, they’re not so big,” he said.
And while he said he hadn’t thought a lot about the Trump meme coin specifically, Emmer said: “I just know that when it comes to Donald J. Trump or his family, no matter what they do, somebody’s going to criticize him.”
I’m Emily Brooks, House leadership reporter at The Hill, expanding to cover the wider right-wing ecosystem, influences, and debates in Washington, D.C. Send me observations and tips: ebrooks@thehill.com.
