CNN
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As two Republican lawmakers stood between Mike Johnson and the speaker’s gavel, President-elect Donald Trump picked up the phone.
From the golf course Friday afternoon, he spoke with Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas and convinced them to finally line up behind Johnson.
With not a vote to lose, the Louisiana Republican won his bid to retain the gavel and lead a closely divided chamber into the new year. While the official report says he secured the necessary 218 votes on the first try, the drama unfolded with far less certainty and required Trump’s intervention until the very end. The first vote of the 119th Congress underscored the president-elect’s hold on the Republican Party — and the challenge he will face in holding it together over the next two years before the 2026 midterm elections, which could threaten the trifecta of the Republican Party in Washington.
Trump, according to two sources familiar with the matter, argued that Republicans needed to work as a team and warned that voters would have very little tolerance for the dysfunction that would result if Republicans could not unite behind one speaker.
“The message was that he wants what everyone wants: for his agenda to pass,” Self said of his conversation with Trump before changing his vote to Johnson. “And that was my message to him, Mr. President: we need a strong negotiating team. The message was clear.
Rep. Andy Biggs, one of half a dozen radical conservatives who initially refused to support Johnson, told CNN after the vote that he still had reservations about the House leadership, but that the Trump’s confidence in Johnson had influenced the GOP conference.
“I have concerns, but President Trump said he wanted to work with Johnson, and basically we took that into account,” the Arizona Republican said as he left the House.
Asked if he thought Johnson would have survived without Trump’s support, Biggs said: “No. I think it was important.
Johnson himself stressed that Trump’s support – delivered on Monday – was “a significant factor” in the contest, saying that “his voice and his influence are singularly influential.” Trump originally planned to support him on New Year’s Day, but the congressman suggested he should do it sooner, he told a local Baton Rouge radio station earlier this week. By Friday morning, Trump and his team were fully engaged in helping Johnson win the vote. In addition to the president-elect speaking directly to defectors, one of Trump’s closest Hill allies, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, was seen on the phone with Trump’s new White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in the middle of the vote.
Trump has made clear all week that a drawn-out fight could undermine confidence in the Republican takeover of Washington and perhaps result in an inexperienced leader tasked with steering his agenda in the House. Trump has signaled a willingness to personally pressure Johnson skeptics, a step he was unwilling to take in previous skirmishes over leadership of the Republican Party in the House of Representatives.
Still, the episode was a reminder once again that Trump will face an uphill battle to govern over the next two years, even if Republicans control the White House and Congress.
With narrow majorities in the House and Senate, Trump needs his party’s near-unanimous support — or help from both parties — or he risks failing to achieve the comprehensive change he promised voters he would. he was particularly well placed to provide. The margin in the House will only narrow if the Senate confirms that Reps. Mike Waltz of Florida and Elise Stefanik of New York will serve in the administration as national security adviser and United Nations ambassador, respectively.
The upcoming difficulties are partly explained by the difficulties encountered by the Republicans in the House of Representatives since they regained the majority in 2022.
“Governing is complicated sometimes,” Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma told CNN. “And I think we proved that not only today, but over the last two years. But we will get there.
Trump has already faced the limits of his influence within his own party. Before the holiday, he unsuccessfully pressured House Republicans to raise the nation’s borrowing limit in a funding vote that brought the government dangerously close to shutting down.
His allies also failed to influence the vote to name the next Senate majority leader, a position won by South Dakota Sen. John Thune, a former critic of the new president. Trump also couldn’t convince Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to nominate his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to the Senate seat that currently belongs to Marco Rubio, the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state. And Trump abandoned his attempt to make former Rep. Matt Gaetz his attorney general in the face of strong opposition from Senate Republicans.
But getting Johnson across the finish line was a key early test of Trump’s ability to navigate a closely divided chamber where individual lawmakers know they will wield incredible power.
“It’s going to be a risky race for this House Republican majority, just to be fair about it,” said former Rep. Patrick McHenry, who for 22 days oversaw the last GOP presidential fight as interim president. “But it is possible and (Johnson’s) presidency is made possible by the presence of President Donald Trump in office. And without Donald Trump, the outcome of this vote could have been different.”
Before the vote, Trump expressed confidence in Johnson’s victory, telling CNN’s Kristen Holmes that he had no other names in mind for the job if the Louisiana Republican falters.
Johnson and his allies knew there was no real path to electing another Republican. The only question was how many votes it would take to get there — and how much Trump himself would need to rely on the skeptics.
Even as voting began, senior Republican Party leaders were unclear how the vote would play out. Of the three lawmakers who opposed Johnson, only Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky had informed leaders that he would oppose the speaker. Self, an early defector, came completely out of left field, as one person described it.
And while Trump and Johnson clashed over the spending bill in December, the president-elect and his team quickly realized they needed to help crush the rest of the GOP conference to avoid drama before the inauguration.
“He had a lot of influence,” said House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma. “Last time, we had around twenty people who were not present in the first round. We had three and they made it.
Aside from Trump’s influence, perhaps most notable about the whole ordeal was Johnson’s insistence that he would get the votes without the usual commitments made by presidents of both parties – the promise of voting slots. privileged committees or presentation of certain bills.
Johnson said one of the ways he won over GOP holdouts was to reaffirm his commitment to empowering individual lawmakers in the 119th Congress, but offered no gifts to attract votes.
“I was already committed to this, so I just reaffirmed it,” he said when asked about pressure from some hard-liners for greater accountability. their members.
That gives Johnson much more room to operate, politically, over the next two years with one of the narrowest House majorities in history. And that approach stands in stark contrast to that of his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, whose compromises with his critics ultimately helped derail his presidency.
Johnson’s allies have praised his willingness to stand up to Republican Party hardliners without alienating them.
“When you surrender to your hostage takers, you lose control of your political soul, in this case,” longtime Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas told CNN.
Key members of the House Freedom Caucus spent days presenting their demands to Johnson, such as spending cuts or reforms to the appropriations process. And even after Johnson took down the gavel, a group of House Republicans released a letter outlining a list of demands they want him to accept.
“Today we voted for Mike Johnson for Speaker of the House because of our unwavering support for President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors,” 11 Republican lawmakers wrote. “We did this despite our sincere reservations about the President’s record over the past 15 months.”
But the speaker ultimately made no policy guarantees or adjustments to the committee that could disrupt the rest of the conference.
Johnson, for example, refused to consider Rep. Chip Roy of Texas as chairman of the powerful House Rules panel, which would have allowed him to change the wording and determine how it would be presented.
Instead, Johnson issued a statement saying he would create a task force on implementing spending reforms — working with Trump’s new Department of Government Effectiveness — that would issue a public report on the audits of government agencies. He also said he would “direct” committees to take a comprehensive look at government agencies or individuals who have “weaponized the government against the American people.”
And many conservatives have made it clear they will not endorse Trump’s agenda in the House and hope to have the opportunity to weigh in.
“We still have work to do. This is the beginning. This is not the end,” said Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, who initially received one vote in the presidential race before switching to Johnson.
CNN’s Kit Maher and Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.