Speaker Mike Johnson: Trump's point man on Capitol Hill

Welcome back to the PodForce One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine, and today I'm in the United States Capitol building, and I'm joined by the third in line to the presidency, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Speaker Johnson, thank you so much for joining us on PodForce One, and congratulations on getting the one big beautiful bill over the line. How did you do it? A lot of prayer and patience. Really, we're getting a lot of credit for pulling off a miracle. It wasn't. I think it was Vince Lombardi that said, victory loves preparation. So we prepared for this. Back in the spring of 2024, we had the vision for what we believed would happen. I was convinced President Trump was coming back to the White House, and I thought we'd have the majority in the House and Senate, but we knew the majority would be small because we're in an era of gerrymandering and redistricting, and we have a three-vote margin in both chambers now. So we looked ahead of that, anticipating we would have this historic moment, and that we would have to fix every metric of public policy because Biden-Harris just destroyed everything in four years. So to do that, we knew we would need to do a partisan exercise. We would have to use the budget reconciliation process, which is, as you know, the only way around the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, which is always otherwise necessary. So to do that... Which you're never going to make. Never going to make. I mean, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, not going to help. No. Right? And we knew that. So I told all my colleagues, we had a retreat where we planned all this. And I said, guys, this is what's going to happen. We're going to have unified government. We've got to make the most of it. Let's do reconciliation bigger than it's ever been done in history. Instead of just using two committees of jurisdiction like in the past, why don't we use 11 committees? But to do that, it's going to be very complicated, very complex. It's going to be a very large piece of legislation. But if we plan accordingly, we can achieve that goal together. And that's what we did. So we started planning over a year ago, about 15 or 16 months of work went into delivering that final vote in time for July 4th. And when you say work, I mean, it's patience. It is actually like wrangling human beings. How do you do that? What does the Speaker actually do? Well, the Speaker in the modern era is different, I think, than it was probably in previous generations. There's always been a whip operation. But the way Congress has evolved now in the age of social media, when everyone could go online every two minutes and say what they're disgruntled about. I'm really as much a mental health counselor as I am a legislator, a policy director, because you've got to do all these things simultaneously. And you have to deal with everyone with their individual preferences and peccadilloes. And it's not always easy. But we had a one-vote margin for most of the first 100 days, the smallest in history. It would seemingly be an impossible set of circumstances. But look, I genuinely love everybody I serve with. I know what makes them tick. I know the dynamics of their districts. I know where their pressure points are. And I try to work every day to make everybody successful, you know, to have them be of their highest and best use to the country and to their constituents. And that's the trick. And that's what we try to do every single day. So who's your most troublesome member or the one you've had to spend the most amount of time with? I'm not going to name names. I mean, you know, they self-identify because they go out on social media and cause problems sometimes. But look, I love and respect them all. Some of them require more attention than others. But, you know, everybody's principled here. They're all trying to achieve the best objective for their constituents and for the country. And I respect that. And, you know, I never... I famously remind them all, I'm never going to ask anybody to compromise a core principle. I do expect them to give up on some of their preferences because that's the way a legislative body works, you know, it's a deliberative public body. And you have 219 colleagues here on our side of the aisle. So I expect them to do that at the end. But I do a lot less arm twisting than I do just convincing, you know. You also had Elon Musk who kind of came in out of the shadows at the end and tried to kill the bill. And I know you'd spend a lot of time educating him, bringing him along in the process. What went wrong? Look, Elon is a genius, OK? He does things that I can't even fathom. But one of his fields of expertise was not necessarily crafting legislation, right? So got to know him really well over the last, you know, year as he came on board with the Trump agenda and helping the campaign and all that. In fact, he requested a meeting with me months before the election, came in and sat down in my office and said, I'm going to get involved in a big way. And we just kind of brainstormed together because he had never done that before. What did he want from you? Well, he was launching the PAC and he was going to invest a lot of money and he wanted, I guess, my inside counsel on best practices and tips and maybe some recommendations on persons who he could get involved because that just wasn't his field area. So I got to know and respect Elon. You know, we became friends in the whole process. And when the Doge effort was launched and started, we met early on in the process. I talked to him about the codification process, that we didn't want this to be a flash in the pan. We wanted to codify it, make it a permanent part of the way we do business here. And there's a certain series of steps that we had to go through, a sequential series of steps to do that. He understands the science part of that, right? But at the end, I mean, he just became disgruntled with the package and the way it was done. Elon, I've tried to convince him, we're taking several steps. I call it the five steps to fiscal sanity, fiscal responsibility. Because you're a Hulk yourself. Yes. And we spend too much money and the debt is our number one national security threat. 100% of GDP? Yes, more than that now. The trajectory is not sustainable, but we can't solve the problem overnight because it took decades for us to get here, right? The big beautiful bill was a giant leap forward. We're going to save over $1.5 trillion in spending. It's the largest that any legislative body in the history of mankind has ever done. Is it enough? No, it's a drop in the bucket. But it is a turn. I use the metaphor of an aircraft carrier. The US economy is that. You don't turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes a mile of open ocean when it's top speed. This was the first big crank on the wheel, the turn on the wheel that we've had in generations. And now we have the next sequential steps to do to continue that. And the next step is something called a rescission bill, isn't it? Which, explain just briefly what that is and what you'll be cutting. I think it's like $94 billion. Yes. A rescission is, in layman's terms, it's when Congress claws back spending that has been wasted, fraud, waste and abuse. Under the Biden administration. That's right. That's right. And the president and his administration came in and they identified these areas like USAID, for example, which was just fraud with abuse and wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars. We were funding transgender operas in Peru, you know, and Congress didn't know that, right? Which is one of the credits to the DOJ effort is they were able to crack the code, get inside the belly of the beast of the agencies, crawl through the data with magic algorithms and find these things that we didn't know. So, we found that out. We were alarmed as everyone was and we immediately sought to bring it back. But in order to do that, you have to get a request from the administration, the White House, the executive branch to the legislative branch saying, please take this back. We did that and we passed it in the House. It's pending action in the Senate right now. And that, we hope, is the first of a series of rescissions packages that come forward where we, you know, again, in our steps, our sequential steps to getting back fiscal sanity, that's going to be a piece of it. And so USAID, all that wasteful money, plus NPR, PBS. Yes. Why is that? Well, we've long known conservatives have been frustrated about NPR and PBS, for example, for many, many years because it's a lopsided, you know, biased journalism. They're not objective in any form or fashion. It's propaganda, let's call it what it is, and taxpayers should not be funding that. So, we feel strongly about that. The rescissions package reflects that and I hope the Senate sees it the same way. And Elon Musk couldn't be convinced that this was the right way to go about it? Or was it something personal? I felt like it wasn't really about the bill. He was disgruntled with, I don't know, not being in favour with Donald Trump or something. I don't know what. It's probably a multitude of factors. I'll let everybody else judge the motivations behind it. But clearly, he got unhappy in a very short period of time. I mean, he generally knew what we were doing and we talked about it. I mean, he knew for months, I mean, many months we worked on this and I was keeping him apprised of it. I was sending him long text messages explaining each piece. We talked about it in person. I don't think he was... The final product maybe didn't meet all of his expectations in terms of what we're doing, for example, with electric vehicles and the Biden mandates and all of that. But there are other things as well. But look, I let other people judge that. I've got to keep my eyes on the prize and keep moving forward. And I'm trying to be a peacemaker in all of it. I've reached out to Elon multiple times. Have you? Since the blowout? Yes. And I wanted he and the president to mend it up. And frankly, I think the president was of that mind as well. But there's some tension there. Yeah. And he's responded, Elon, to you? Well, through a third party, actually. I mean, it's not really all his fault. I sent him a long text message and then his phone, his number changed because after the blowup, something happened with this. So, I got the number later and realized I was sending it out into the ether somewhere. He never read it. So, I look forward to meeting with him in person. We've got to make that right. I've got nothing against Elon, obviously. I have great respect for what he's done. And I just want him to fully understand what we're doing and remind him of the strategy. This is a long-term play. We can't fix this stuff overnight, but we have a plan to do it. And I think that's going to be pleasing to everybody who's worried about our deficit and our debt. And Donald Trump, what's your relationship like with him now? You've become, I mean, he's called the sort of the second speaker. You've been working hand in glove, I know, with this. We have. I mean, we've been working together now almost a decade. I mean, I came to Congress in January 2017 as a freshman in Congress at the same time he was introduced to Washington. So, we sort of walked through a lot of those valleys together and have built a very close relationship, one of trust and close friendship. And he calls me all the time. We talk through strategy. And I think it's very important for the country to have a president, a commander chief and a speaker of the house who have a great working relationship. Certainly when we're of the same party and have the same policy and agenda in mind. Because it didn't happen with Paul Ryan, did it? I mean, you saw that. Yeah. And it wasn't Paul's fault. The two men had just never known one another and no one expected Trump to win in 2016. And when he did, it was a shock and awe thing. And the leadership in the Congress at the time was being introduced to the president as everyone else in Washington was. So, they had a big disadvantage there. They had to forge that kind of relationship in the middle of the, you know, fire. We have the benefit of having had long history together and been through a lot together. And... The impeachment you... Yes. I was one of his defense attorneys twice. And, you know, I served on the Judiciary Committee, which was ground zero for a lot of the lawfare that they engaged in against the president, against President Trump. He's the most maligned and attacked public figure in all of the history of American politics. He's also the most resilient. And so, I so deeply respect that about him and the fact that he can't hold them down. And I made the comment on the anniversary of the Butler shooting, you know, a couple of days ago that he's a different person now than he was in the first term. He's more thoughtful, contemplative. He thinks very carefully about decisions and is open to counsel on it. I mean, I think his head and his heart are in exactly the right place where we would all want them to be. And why has he changed? Well, I think surviving two failed assassination attempts will get any man's attention. It makes him think deeply, I think, about his legacy, his place in history. And God? And God, yeah. And he and I talk about that openly. Really? Everybody knows where I stand on this. I told him right after the first attempt, I said, there are no accidents. I don't believe in luck. I believe that was providential. God spared your life on the world stage. 64 days later, after the second failed assassination attempt, when the Secret Service found the gun in the bushes on the golf course in Florida. Providentially, my wife and I were landing at Mar-a-Lago to meet with him right after that round of golf. And it just so happened the way it all worked. We wound up at Mar-a-Lago together. And he and I, my wife, Susie Wiles, and Hogan Gidley, who works on my staff, used to work on his. The five of us sat in a corner at Mar-a-Lago when the place was locked down before the all clear for almost three hours. And had right after, I mean, he came in in his golf attire and we sat and processed that. And it was a very- Yeah. I mean, I did. I don't know if I prayed over him, but I tell you what, I told him, I said, God's not spared your life twice on the world stage. It's no small thing. And clearly you're going to win the election and you're going to be raised up to run the greatest country in the history of the world for the second time. What a profound thing that is. And man, that settled on him and you could see it on his countenance of his face. And he's spoken openly about that ever since. He says it routinely now, God saved his life. I believe that. I believe millions of Americans believe and understand that. And he's upheld by the prayer of a lot of people every day. And that's a profound thing. And you had an incident yourself, didn't you, in 23, when you were at Mar-a-Lago and your two eldest sons, I think 18 and 13, almost drowned. Tell us about that. Well, it's a long story. The short version is, I was down there raising money. I'd been speaker for about a month. It was in November of 23. Yeah, that's right. And my boys were on Thanksgiving break for school, so they went with me. And my oldest son has now just completed his freshman year at the Naval Academy and great athlete. He wants to be special forces and all that. And his younger brother, also a great athlete, but they were out in the Atlantic and they got caught in a rip current and pulled far out to sea. Scary. I was inside the building having meetings with donors and my security detail ran and burst into the room and said, sir, you're needed on the beach. And I could tell on their faces. Long story short, they got pulled far out and they almost drowned. My oldest son was holding his younger brother, 13-year-old brother up and he almost drowned and then the younger one almost did as well, Jack and Will. They went to the ER and their lungs pumped. I mean, it was quite an ordeal. They're great swimmers, but the rip current was so strong that day and they got pulled far, far out. And the only reason they were saved is because a parasailor happened to be going by and saw just my youngest son's head right before he went under waving for help. And the guy diverted to the beach and they sent the jet skis out and the rest is history. So, the president, after I got them kind of nursed back to health, we flew back home to Louisiana early on the trip. And the president found out about it 24 hours later. I didn't even tell him. We'd had dinner with him the night before, my sons and I and the president. And he called me and he was so alarmed by what he heard. And he said, Mike, it's like a miracle. I said, it is. Had it not been for the parasailor, he would have lost both my sons. And he was so struck by that because he's very close to his sons. It just really resonated in his heart. So, fast forward to the Butler, Pennsylvania event. Many months later when that happened, when I spoke to him after that, I said, you know, God saved your life just as he did my boys in Mar-a-Lago. And he had already acknowledged that was true. And you know, God works in mysterious ways sometimes. Teaching us all these lessons, but that was a tough one. And I know that you do some amazing impersonations of Donald Trump. Can you do one for us? No, I just hear his voice in my head when I'm relaying a conversation we've had. It comes out in his voice, you know. What did he say to you about the one big, beautiful bill? Was there something? Well, quick story. So when we named it, we were in the Oval Office. We were sitting in front of Resolute Desk. He's at the desk and Thun was here and Jason Smith, the Ways and Means Chair, and I think J.D. was there and other staffers. And the president said, what are we going to name? What are you going to call it? And Jason Smith says, well, sir, we've got a few great options. You know, these are, you know, clever acronyms. He goes, no, I just think we call it the one big, beautiful bill. Don't you think that's great? That's so simple. That's great. And he passed it around to us on a piece of paper in bold font. One big, beautiful bill. And he goes, now, can we put an exclamation point? I said, sir, no, we can't. We can't do an exclamation point. That's not a thing in legislation, you know. He has dialed in like no commander in chief has been in recent memory. I don't know that there is a precedent for a president who's so engaged. Yeah. He's unique. He's very unique that way. And the country needs it right now. And the American First Agenda is no longer a slogan. It's now the law of the land because of the big, beautiful bill. We've got more to do. Do you think MAGA will survive when President Trump is gone, when he's no longer in office? Is there anyone else that could keep that coalition together? He and I talked about this about 48 hours ago. He called me early in the morning, whatever today is, I don't know, a couple of days ago. And that was the subject part of the subject of the conversation. I think the movement goes forward. It won't be the same without him, but he's done a recalibration of our party in many ways. We brought in new demographics, big groups of people that had not been with us probably since the early 80s under Reagan. Former Democrat voters. That's right. We're a working class party as we should be. And we represent the core principles. And I'm one of the people who's trying to keep us tied to the moorings. The core principles of our party are the core principles of America. They're the principles that made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. And we abandon them at our peril. And so there's a lot of competing ideas and different forces out there right now. But I think we've got to hold on to the soul of the party because that's what's gotten us to this point. So your childhood back in Shreveport, Louisiana, you had teenage parents. And tell us about that because your mother was, they were still at high school. Your mother was advised to abort you. Yeah, this was exactly a year before Roe v. Wade. January of 72, Roe was 73 in January, but abortion was still available. And there were teenagers and people said, you should go take care of that problem. But my parents were both raised in Catholic families and they heard somewhere that life was sacred and created by God and maybe they shouldn't do that. And so they didn't, thankfully. My mom's been eternally grateful that they gave me the chance of life. And they dropped out of high school. They were juniors in high school. So my dad had to go to work. They started a family. He became a firefighter and I'm the oldest of four children. And it's just always been, people say, why are you so pro-life? Well, it's my life story. Were you always aware of that? Yeah, I was. And I knew that my parents were very young. My mom looks like my older sister. She's 17 years older than me. But we were so blessed by that and the recognition that life is sacred. And when I was 12 years old, I'm the oldest of four kids, my father was a firefighter, got blown up in an explosion on the job, burned 80% of his body, third-degree burns, and had a 5% chance to live. And again, reinforcing to me the sacred nature of life, the fact that our faith is very real. It's not an ethereal concept. We prayed for my dad to be miraculously saved and he was. And so- Wow. Because his partner died, didn't he? Yeah, he did. Tragically. Explosion, yeah. Sure did. And my dad was severely disabled after that. Yeah, how did it impact you? It was a huge change in the trajectory of all of our lives. But he was disabled after that and had, I don't know, dozen scores of surgeries, skin graft surgeries. In a lot of pain. A lot of pain. Lived in pain the rest of his life. I lost him three days before I got elected to Congress in 2016. And he had cancer at the end and he wanted so badly to be there on election night. It was just, he was so tough, but he was just eating alive with it. I'm sure he saw you anyway. I think so. Yeah. I mean, it's been tough. You know, because on election night it was so bittersweet. You want to see it in Congress, but I wanted my dad to see it so badly. I'm the first person in my family to go to college and all that. And he would have so enjoyed this that none of us could have ever imagined this. But I do feel like he's experiencing it on the other side. And what impact did his injuries have on you? You were 12 years old. Yeah. Did you have to step up and be sort of man of the house? Yeah. And we lived on a little tiny little kind of like family farm out in the country, outside of my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. I grew up with the Fire and Police Training Academy because my dad was also a training officer. And I aspired to be the chief of the Shreveport Fire Department. I mean, that was, to me, that was the end all be all of everything. And when he was injured, they just kind of discouraged that a little bit. Why don't you guys go to school? And so I did. But yeah, when I was 12, I had, there was a lot of responsibilities at home and on this little farm operation we had. And, you know, my dad was incapacitated, so I had to pick it up. We had a great community of support in our hometown. And, you know, the firefighter, the fire service is a fraternity, unlike any other, and the police and the local community and all that. But I mean, I had to, I had to step up and have a, I had to grow up pretty fast. You would have had a felt of responsibility to your mom, to your younger siblings. Yeah. Because my mom, my dad was, I mean, he was in the hospital for months and we couldn't see him for a long time because he was burned and, you know, for the infection concerns and all that. And so we were kind of shuffled around between family members and friends in our community. And I just had to kind of shepherd my little group of younger siblings and then take over the roles of the family later. In hindsight, there's all sorts of deep psychology about all this, you know, but, but it, it built in me a kind of certain sense of responsibility and maturity that would not have been. Oh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, God uses our tragedy and our past to prepare us for what he has to do later. And there's a passage of scripture I think about often suffering produces perseverance, perseverance produces character and character produces hope. And so we go through these things, the valleys, but it makes you appreciate the mountains a lot more than it makes you keenly aware of other people's struggles and tragedy. And, and it allows you to have more empathy for more people. And all those are critical skills right now. Yes. Your wife and your children have moved to Washington with you. Tell me about your wife and how you met her. Yeah. I met her at a wedding two weeks before I graduated law school. So she missed that whole misery of that, that season of life. But we've been married 26 years. We have four amazing kids and my oldest daughter just graduated law school in May. She takes the bar in about a week. In Louisiana. Louisiana. She's going to move to Capitol Hill and work here. My second daughter already works on Capitol Hill. She deferred law school. She's working on judiciary committee, doing some really neat stuff. My oldest son, Jack just finished his first year at the Naval Academy. And then our youngest son, Will is the last one at home starting ninth grade. And as speaker, I don't get to be home enough with him and a 14 year old boy needs his dad. So he's, he and Kelly, my wife, for the first time since I've been in Congress, they moved here and we'll could be going back and forth to the district, but we'll kind of, this will kind of be the main operation here. So. Cause it's a 24 seven job. 24 seven. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's hard to describe what this job requires. And your oldest son, you adopted him. He was a black teenager. Yeah. Tell us about that. Just talked to him yesterday. His birthday was last week and he's now 42. But when he was 14, we took him out and we were newlyweds at the time. And, and I think all that math is right. All my dates run together, but he was, I met him doing the young life ministry, which I was doing kind of as a hobby in law school. And he had a really, really tough home life situation. It was basically on the streets. So we took him in as our own. And so there's many years now he has four kids of his own. He lives in California. He's successful. Fantastic. He's doing great. Yeah. Yeah. And was that something difficult to make that decision for the two of you? At the time we really didn't have a choice. It's a long story, but he was at the age where he kind of fell through the cracks in the social system in Louisiana and he wasn't yet an adult. So there wasn't a place for that. And then he had kind of aged out a little bit of the juveniles kind of situation. And there really was no option, but we took him in. But grateful, so grateful we did. And that changed our family's lives and, you know, and in very positive ways. And he often says if we had not been there to intervene in his life, he would have, he would certainly be in prison or might be dead somewhere. He would have joined the gangs and all that stuff. He's now six foot seven. He looks like my bodyguard, you know, but at the time he was just a little pipsqueak. He's about my size. Wonderful story. And now lastly, the secret of success. You meet a lot of successful people, a lot of successful politicians. You yourself have done pretty well. What is it? Well, for me, I mean, this is probably defies conventional wisdom, but it's a matter of faith. You just be faithful and humble and you be faithful in the little thing that God puts before you today. And then you trust him with the rest. I've quote often John Quincy Adams. He famously said, duty is ours. Results are God's. It's a very liberating way to live, you know, and you just try to be, you just try to do your best every day, do your responsibility, do your duty. And then the, you know, the, I let the chips fall where they may. I'm not the sovereign and I'm so delighted that I'm not. And does that help you, you know, when, when you've got these recalcitrant people that you have to manage, does that give you patience, your faith? Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not sure anyone could navigate the modern speakership the way it's evolved to today. You managed pretty well. Well, I mean, but without- One vote majority. Yeah. But without that, that faith component, I'm not sure I would. Right. I mean, because you have to be able to just, I mean, scripture says, you know, you love your enemy, of course, is yourself. I mean, you love your neighbor as yourself, love your enemy as well. We don't have enemies in the building. They're all colleagues. But it also says that you bless those who persecute you. You know, you don't keep a record of wrongs. The soft word turns away wrath. There's so much wisdom in the scripture. And if you apply all that, it allows you to navigate very tricky waters and not take things personally, not return fire when it's shot at you. If I ever did that, I would have had enemies and we would not have delivered the big, beautiful bill or gotten any of this done. Right. So it doesn't matter how many, you know, you can, you learn to take a lot of arrows and keep your eye on the prize and keep moving forward and keep the team moving forward. And, you know, there's just, I don't know how I could do that if I had not been through what I've been through in my life and learned to really internalize those principles and practice them. And even Nancy Pelosi has nice things to say about you. She's very kind. I don't, I try not to make enemies around here. We have bitter policy disputes and disagreements, but it's not personal. It shouldn't be. I always admired Ronald Reagan as a happy warrior, you know, and his kind of ethos was Reagan's 11th commandment, you don't speak evil of another Republican, certainly. But he even was friendly with his political foes, right? And when he was, his assassination attempt, when he got shot, famously, the first person to meet him, you know, go visit him in the hospital was Tip O'Neill, who was the Democrat speaker at the time. And they didn't agree on hardly anything in policy and they would have bitter disputes and debates about policy, but it wasn't personal and they were still friends and they would have a beer together after that, you know. Man, I wish we could get back to that around here because it's really important in a republic like ours to have a government up by and for the people. You kind of need the people to get along, you know, even when they disagree. So that's what I'm trying to forge here. Can you see yourself as president one day? I don't think about that. I know. I mean, look, I think this job, there's probably a reason. I think there may be only one speaker, James K. Polk, who became president after that, because the job is so all-consuming and encompassing that it wears everybody out. I mean, look, I'll serve in any capacity I want, but I don't think about that, never aspired to it. For that matter, I didn't aspire to this job. No, exactly. I'm just trying to be faithful in it. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. I know you have to go out to the house now, to the floor, but thank you. Great to have you here. Thanks for being here. Thanks very much. Thank you so much for joining us today. We've got new releases every week with some of the most powerful people in Washington. Hit the subscribe button below.