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Six months into his tenure, it’s likely that House Speaker Mike Johnson thought the job would be easier. When the Louisiana Republican received the gavel in October — he was, alas, his party’s fifth choice — he almost certainly couldn’t have imagined where he’d find himself in mid-April.
Nevertheless, there Johnson sits, watching his members quit, fail to show up for his retreat focused on conference unity, humiliate him on procedural votes, reject his clumsy attempts at governing, force him to rely on Democratic votes to advance must-pass legislation, and take increasingly credible steps to fire him.
It was against this backdrop that the beleaguered House speaker spoke to reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference yesterday. A Washington Post report highlighted some of the GOP leader’s more pointed comments.
“I am not resigning,” Johnson said defiantly at a news conference Tuesday, calling the threat “absurd” as Republicans are “trying to do their job.” “We need steady leadership. We need steady hands on the wheel,” he said. “Look, I regard myself as a wartime speaker.”
When I first started seeing reports about the congressman referring to himself as “a wartime speaker,” I more or less assumed he was referring to ongoing crises in Ukraine and the Middle East. It seemed a bit hyperbolic — usually, U.S. House speakers refer to themselves as “wartime” leaders when it’s the United States at war — but it didn’t seem worth making a fuss about.
The problem, however, was that there was some ambiguity in Johnson’s unscripted rhetoric.
In context, a reporter asked the House speaker for his response to efforts, launched by members of his own conference, to oust him. After declaring that he wouldn’t resign, and expressing his disgust with the entire motion-to-vacate plot, Johnson shared a broader perspective about his political vision.
“Republicans want to save the country,” he said. “We believe that we’re in an existential moment. ... We’re in a political struggle, a battle between a completely different vision for the country.”
Referring to at least some congressional Democrats, Johnson added, “They instead envision that America should be remade in the form of some sort of, you know, European style socialist utopia. That is a dangerous fool’s errand. That is a road to Marxism, communism, you know, socialism.”
It was moments later when the Louisiana described himself as “a wartime speaker,” adding: “Former Speaker Newt Gingrich posted a couple of days ago on his social media that this is the hardest challenge that’s faced a speaker probably in the history of the country at the moment that we’re in right now. He said, arguably, may be comparable to the Civil War — but maybe worse.”
Johnson wrapped up the press conference moments later, denying congressional reporters an opportunity to ask the obvious follow-up question: Exactly which “war” was the House speaker referring to?