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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Tuesday that he’s “all in” on supporting Donald Trump’s 2024 run for president, telling CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that he has endorsed the former president “wholeheartedly.”
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“I’m all in for President Trump,” Johnson said. “I expect he’ll be our nominee, and we have to make Biden a one-term president.”
Johnson, the second person in line to the presidency and the country’s highest-ranking Republican, is making an unusually early decision to boost Trump while there are still several candidates in the GOP presidential primary field. His posture stands in contrast to that of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has stayed on the sidelines.
Johnson’s comments to CNBC were part of a broader round of media interviews ahead of a planned vote by the House to consider a bill that would avert a government shutdown — which is a major test for the new speaker.
House speaker moves past hard-right concerns in effort to avoid government shutdown
Johnson was a relatively unknown Louisiana congressman who had been in office since 2017 when he surfaced as a House speaker nominee last month amid his party’s chaotic effort to replace the ousted speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). McCarthy, as speaker, stopped short of formally endorsing Trump’s 2024 bid.
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Last month, Trump signaled his support for Johnson’s speakership candidacy, saying Johnson is “a tremendous congressman respected by everybody.”
Johnson’s comments to CNBC on Tuesday came shortly after the New York Times reported that he wrote in an August 2015 Facebook post that Trump “lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House.” In a subsequent comment, he reportedly called Trump, by then just a few months into his first presidential campaign, “a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”
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Johnson endorsed Trump in 2020 and contested the results of that year’s election — urging Trump at the time to “stay strong and keep fighting” as he tried to overturn his loss to Joe Biden. Johnson also objected to certifying Biden’s electoral win, supporting a legal attack on the election that argued that states’ voting accommodations during the pandemic were unconstitutional.
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Trump faces 91 charges across four criminal cases — including a state case pertaining to election interference in Georgia and a federal case related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
On CNBC, Johnson called himself “one of the closest allies that President Trump had while he was in office.”
When asked about Trump’s divisiveness, the allegation that Trump did not plan to leave the White House irrespective of the outcome of the 2020 election, and the potential for an extreme crackdown on immigration in another Trump presidential term, Johnson responded: “I think when we’re voting for president it can’t be about personalities. It’s got to be about policies and principles.”
Comparing Biden with Trump, Johnson said, “It’s not even close.”
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Johnson also told CNBC that he takes Trump at his word when the former president expresses his belief in false claims that the 2020 election was stolen through widespread fraud, at one point saying Trump’s belief that he was cheated is “deep in his heart” and “a core conviction of his.”
“I do believe that he believes that,” Johnson said. “Remember, I was one of his lawyers. I worked on the impeachment defense team. … I know how he thinks, and he’s convinced that because of all the irregularities and everything else, that he was entitled to that.”
Johnson went on to assert that Trump “does believe in the rule of law.”
“I mean, look at what he did on the Supreme Court, for example,” Johnson said.
When pressed on the fact that Trump is facing charges across four criminal cases, Johnson dismissed them as “political prosecutions.”
2024 presidential candidates Catch up on the winners and losers and takeaways from the third Republican primary debate. Compare where the 2024 presidential candidates stand on key issues like abortion, climate and the economy.
Republicans: Top contenders for the GOP 2024 nomination include former president Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Trump U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Republican presidential candidates for 2024.
Democrats: President Biden is running for reelection in 2024. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024.
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