House Speaker Mike Johnson is under siege in his conference facing ornery far-right Republicans and a razor-thin GOP majority. Johnson spoke with former Congressman turned Fox News star Trey Gowdy about his situation, in a conversation that saw both men reach for classical metaphors.
Gowdy, expressing frustration with the inability of Republicans to find unity, characterized the motion to vacate Johnson filed by Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene as a Sword of Damocles hanging over the Speaker.
Johnson, revealing that Greene is a “friend” — but a frustrated one — and also that he and Greene had exchanged text messages even that day, said he agreed with Greene’s frustration if not her solution to it. Joining in with a classical allusion of his own, Johnson claimed his GOP “fought like warrior-poets to keep some of those Senate appropriations or some of those Senate earmarks out of the bill.”
[Johnson implies that the warrior-poets of the GOP are battling mostly Democrats, but the Senate vote on the FY24 funding bill package was 74-24 and the House vote 286-134, with 101 unpoetic Republicans voting with the Democrats.]
In phrasing his question, Gowdy — having expressed frustration that even in Georgia the GOP had lost two “eminently winnable” Senate seats — made it clear how he thinks the Republicans can be more successful, if only they’d stop fighting among themselves.
Speaker Johnson calls Greene’s motion to vacate a distraction from his mission to “save the republic.” pic.twitter.com/KG34DzMBMH
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 1, 2024
Gowdy takes off whatever cloak of impartiality he sometimes wears, using the first person plural when he tells Johnson “we lost two Senate seats in Georgia” before quickly clarifying “Republicans did.” He asks Johnson:
“How does it help grow the GOP majority to be talking about a motion to vacate,” Gowdy queries, “instead of talking about the border or inflation or other issues that are better for the GOP?”
Characterizing challenges like the border and inflation, which are bad for Americans, as “better for the GOP,” sharply delineates the political underpinnings of Gowdy’s viewpoint and how it influences the content he produces.
Johnson say he was “successful at getting a lot of the terrible stuff” out of the bill “but a few of them got through and that’s what Marjorie’s upset about and I am too.”
It’s notable too that Republicans are fractured not just on at-home appropriations but on foreign aid. Johnson and Greene differ profoundly on issues like aid for Ukraine, which Johnson has supported — in words, if not action — and which Greene resists in a more MAGA, Trump-tied stance.
We cannot let Pro-Putin MAGA extremists dictate America’s foreign policy.
It’s time to pass the bipartisan national security bill and stand with Ukraine until victory is won.
— Hakeem Jeffries (@RepJeffries) March 28, 2024