Speaker Mike Johnson joked that he spends half his time as a “mental health consultant” addressing the concerns of his notoriously freewheeling and hard-to-please Republican conference.
“I spend half my day as Speaker of the House of Representatives, the other half as a mental health counselor,” Johnson told Louisiana radio station Mike and McCarty on Tuesday.
The speaker had been asked whether he and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., had “kissed and made up” after she launched a motion to remove him from the speakership.
“Oh what a shame,” Johnson joked.
‘I don’t hold grudges. You know, I don’t keep records. I went up to her right after her ridiculous rant and said, “You know what? We’re still going to work together.’
Speaker Mike Johnson joked that he spends half his time as a “psychologist” addressing the concerns of his notoriously freewheeling and hard-to-please Republican conference.
Johnson had offered Greene a private audience for hours to air her grievances after she threatened to call a vote to impeach him, but in the end it was all for naught: the Republican made her motion to leave.
Johnson avoided meeting the fate of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy – Democrats voted to table or kill the motion and his job was saved.
In an interview with DailyMail.com in November, McCarthy had some advice for his successor: “Get a psychiatrist in for many of these members.”
And seven months into his speakership, Johnson also noted the difficulties of his job.
“I mean, the speaker of the House of Representatives has an almost impossible task in modern times. It lasts 24 hours every day. I haven’t had a break since October 25th. I haven’t been alone since October 25th, you know, it’s a full-time job. “I’m not complaining,” he said.
The speaker also accused Chuck Schumer of “playing both sides” on Israel and ripped into Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg on electric vehicles.
“I’m a big supporter of Israel, as everyone knows, because I think we have a lot of reasons and obligations to do that, but Chuck Schumer has tried to play both sides,” the speaker said, adding that Schumer had conceded and had agreed to it. to invite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress.
“I called his bluff last week,” Johnson said of Schumer. “I said I would invite Netanyahu myself and just skip him.”
Johnson turned to Biden’s green energy policies, which he said are “feeding Vladimir Putin’s war machine,” and said he didn’t even believe Biden knew what he was doing.
“Every time you interrupt the export of liquefied natural gas off the coast of Louisiana and Texas, which Joe Biden has done by executive order, you are sending Europe and all our allies in the other parts of the world to Vladimir Putin should concern their natural gas. I mean, it’s just absolute madness.”
“I looked at President Biden and said, ‘Why would you do that?’ He looked at me as if he didn’t realize he had done that. I think they’re giving him executive orders to sign and he doesn’t even understand the implications of it.”
Johnson said Buttigieg was “embarrassed” on CBS’ Face the Nation last weekend when he was asked why $7.5 billion in the bipartisan 2021 infrastructure bill earmarked for EV charging programs has only received “seven or eight” so far charging stations.
‘[Buttigieg] laughs and says, ‘Oh, it’s very complicated,’ I mean, give me a break,” Johnson said.
The speaker had been asked whether he and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., had “kissed and made up” after she launched a motion to remove him from the speakership. “Oh what a shame,” Johnson joked
“This stuff about this, you know, radical green energy agenda is madness,” the speaker continued.
Confronted with the unimpressive number of charging stations, Buttigieg reiterated to CBS’s Margaret Brennan that Biden wanted to build 500,000 charging stations by 2030.
“Making a charger takes more than just sticking a small device in the ground,” the secretary said. “There is utility work, and this is really a new category of federal investments as well. But we have worked with each of the 50 states.”
“But seven or eight?” said host Margaret Brennan, laughing.
“Again, 500,000 chargers by 2030,” Buttigieg said. ‘And the very first handful of chargers are already being physically built.’