House Speaker Mike Johnson made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Largo on Friday in part to save his gavel.
“He’s doing about as good as you’re going to do,” Trump said, appearing shoulder-to-shoulder with Johnson in a press avail.
No, it wasn’t an enthusiastic endorsement but it was probably enough to save his job. Even Greene’s friends in the House will hesitate to vote Johnson out now that Trump has indicated his support.
Trump pointed out in the next breath that he understood Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s effort to depose Johnson.
“I’m sure that Marjorie understands that. She’s a very good friend of mine, and I know she has a lot of respect for the speaker.”
Greene has been sharpening the long knife to get rid of Johnson for weeks. She was going to act on her motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair once Johnson introduced some kind of aid for Ukraine.
But Johnson appears to be safe for the moment. And Trump’s imprimatur means that if Johnson is going to introduce the $95 billion Senate-passed foreign aid bill that includes money for both Israel and Ukraine, he may have a little more leeway than before.
Both Trump and Johnson believe that the Ukraine aid bill would draw more support if it were introduced as a loan package rather than a “gift,” as Trump put it.
Some Republicans have increasingly expressed interest in structuring the aid as a loan, an idea that Mr. Johnson has publicly floated and that former President Donald J. Trump previously endorsed. Mr. Trump raised again the idea again after a private meeting with Mr. Johnson at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Friday.
“We’re thinking about making it in the form of a loan instead of just a gift,” Mr. Trump said. “We keep handing out gifts of billions and billions of dollars and we’ll take a look at it.”
A bare majority of Republicans support Ukraine aid. Johnson may decide to sweeten the pot by adding some amendments near and dear to conservative’s hearts. But those amendments would be rejected by the Senate. So Johnson is looking at bringing two bills to the floor — the $95 billion foreign aid bill and a bill that would use Russian assets frozen by the U.S. and Western Europe to be given to Kyiv. The so-called REPO bill is a great idea but no one in the government knows exactly how the machinery of seizing assets would work without running afoul of several treaties and international law.
There’s also the prospect of Russia seizing assets of American businesses. It’s not really a viable notion.
But the immediate future for Johnson is cloudy. Even with Trump’s tepid approval. Johnson is walking a minefield on Ukraine and Israel aid.
While Trump in recent days has put his talent for disrupting House GOP leaders’ best-laid plans on display, Greene’s frustration with Johnson poses the most immediate threat to his future. Her spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment on Trump’s public show of support for Johnson, though she confirmed this week she discussed her attempt to remove Johnson with Trump.
Meanwhile, as Johnson remains mum on when he’ll take up a long-stalled Ukraine aid plan, he’s getting pulled in two different directions: With Greene signaling that his handling of it will affect her campaign to boot him, some GOP centrists are urging him to bend Trump’s ear on it. They, and some Senate Republicans, remain hopeful that the speaker could corral the former president behind an alternative approach to an aid bill that Greene and other conservatives abhor.
It appears that Trump will get behind some kind of Ukraine aid bill, be it a loan or some other funding mechanism. Afterward, Johnson’s job may be on even shakier ground. With several important votes coming up in the next few weeks, the minefield Johnson is walking across could easily become his graveyard.