Last week, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump hosted House Speaker Mike Johnson at his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida amid tensions in the House Republican caucus and gave the speaker his seal of approval.
“I stand with the speaker,” Trump said Friday, while calling efforts by Johnson critics such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to oust him “unfortunate,” according to The Associated Press.
“We’re getting along very well with the speaker — and I get along very well with Marjorie,” the former president said, adding that America has “much bigger problems” than getting Johnson ousted.
So, the question one week later is: Does Trump still feel the same way?
Because if he does, Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul says “he will lose the very supporters who comprise his vanguard.”
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After weeks of deliberations, Johnson unveiled the House’s version of an overseas aid bill — or bills, rather, considering that he separated the items over Democrat objections — that would fund Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and provide humanitarian aid for those in Gaza, according to The Hill.
Those were four “prongs” of a five-prong plan that included a border security bill. That sounds great, too, until you realize — as The Hill pointed out — that the effort to fund security measures to contain the border crisis “is dead-on-arrival in the Senate.”
Johnson thus finds himself in the same position as the former speaker, Kevin McCarthy of California: He needs Democratic support to get some of those “prongs” through the lower chamber.
If he does, however, there’s no guarantee those Democrats won’t simply stab him in the back if a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair comes up because of the slanted nature of the bills — leaving the Republicans without a speaker for an unprecedented second time.
And there’s no guarantee he’ll get that Democrat support, either; The Hill noted that Democrats are willing to vote for the four-prong aid package “as long as the policy provisions don’t stray too far from the Senate’s $95 billion aid package, which combined aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan with humanitarian assistance for Gaza and other global hot spots.”
Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie, one of Johnson’s biggest critics and arguably the lower chamber’s most prominent libertarian-leaning Republican, seemed to be poised to vote for ouster.
“Mike Johnson’s going for the Triple Crown here against our base,” Massie said. “He’s voted for an omnibus that spends more than [former House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi. He’s put his finger on the scales to pass [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] without warrants. And now he’s about to do Ukraine without protecting the American border.
“Those are like three strikes.”
Johnson seems unperturbed by the threats for another motion to vacate and plans for a vote on the bills as soon as Saturday. In an appearance on CNN, the speaker said the bill was necessary to get aid to our allies in Israel and Ukraine.
“Look, we know what the timetable is, we know the urgency in Ukraine and in Israel,” Johnson told host Jake Tapper.
“And we are going to stand by Israel — our close ally and dear friend — and we’re going to stand for freedom and make sure that Vladimir Putin doesn’t march through Europe,” Johnson said.
“These are important responsibilities,” he continued. “A strong America is good for the world … we’re the greatest nation on the planet, and we have to act like it.”
The speaker added that “it doesn’t mean boots on the ground” and “we’re not the world’s policeman” but said “we’re going to do the right thing” — which is to say, pass the bills.
As for whether Trump would support his plan? “I think he will,” Johnson said.
To another Kentucky libertarian, this was a serious red flag.
“If Trump supports this monstrous, unpaid for foreign aid debt buster, he will lose the very supporters who comprise his vanguard,” Paul wrote in a social media post a few hours after Johnson’s CNN appearance. “Mark my words.”
If Trump supports this monstrous, unpaid for foreign aid debt buster, he will lose the very supporters who comprise his vanguard.
Mark my words. https://t.co/X972oGsSog— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 17, 2024
So, will Trump criticize Johnson — and therefore set into motion yet another speaker crisis?
The former president apparently has made clear that he’s not a fan of unchecked aid to Ukraine, and more and more Republicans seem to be becoming skeptical about the endeavor, too.
It isn’t just that the sad math of attrition greatly favors Russian leader Vladimir Putin in the conflict, no matter how much money is poured into Kyiv. It’s also the fact that this money continues to pour in with limited to no auditing on the liquid resources, a red flag in a country known for its corruption.
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Furthermore, Republicans had pretty much made Ukraine money dependent on whether or not President Joe Biden and the Democrats wanted to get serious about border funding. Adopting the “pronged” approach almost certainly ensures the GOP will get nothing in that department unless some moderate Democrats come to their senses on the matter. Despite Sen. John Fetterman’s recent occasional lapses into reality, this is unlikely to happen, and the Republicans will walk away, again, with nothing.
If this is what we’re getting, why throw Kevin McCarthy to the wolves in the first place? Sure, the guy was phonier than Johnson is and, during his time holding the speaker’s gavel, was an object lesson in the fact that the Peter Principle still holds true after all these years.
Even if the “pronged” approach means that the Democrats’ worst foreign-aid pet project — aid to Gaza, which almost certainly will fall into the hands of Hamas one way or the other, before it reaches the people — that still doesn’t count as a W for Republicans.
Johnson may be more capable and conservative than the man he replaced, but he was put in place to do a number of jobs his predecessor failed at. This is a sign he’s failing again, and in strikingly similar ways.
Does this lead to Trump abandoning Johnson, or the Trump base abandoning Trump if he backs Johnson? That remains to be seen; a divorce of either sort would be catastrophic in a number of ways.
But this suite of foreign aid funding is, as well, and sensible conservatives are right to be distrustful and piqued that the GOP leader in the House didn’t secure a better deal.
