- Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson said Tuesday: ‘I’m all in for President Trump’
- He voiced his support as embarrassing Facebook posts resurfaced
- In 2015 he said: ‘He lacks the character and moral center we so desperately need’
Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson on Tuesday gave his full support to Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race, while simultaneously defending the former president’s claims that his 2020 election loss was fraudulent.
“I’m all in for President Trump,” Johnson said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
“I expect him to be our nominee, and we need to make Biden a one-term president.”
Exactly how much it helps Trump remains to be seen. Johnson was little known before he was elevated to chairman last month and still has little name recognition outside Washington political circles.
And he expressed his support on the day it emerged that he had once condemned Trump on Facebook.
Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson (pictured here) on Tuesday gave his full support to Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race, while simultaneously defending the former president’s claims that his 2020 election loss was fraudulent.
Exactly how much it will help Donald Trump’s campaign remains to be seen. Johnson has little name recognition and embarrassing Facebook posts from 2015 resurfaced on Tuesday
“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and moral center that we so desperately need back in the White House,” Johnson wrote in 2015 in messages found by the New York Times.
His words were challenged in the comments and he replied: ‘I’m afraid he might break more things than he fixes. He is naturally hot-headed, and that is a dangerous trait in a commander-in-chief.”
Johnson was a lawmaker in Louisiana at the time.
He then wondered whether Trump could bomb a head of state just because he showed disrespect to him.
“I’m just kidding about this,” he wrote. “I just don’t think he has the attitude to be president.”
Johnson isn’t the only one who changes course when it suits him.
Trump’s administration was filled with officials who supported other candidates or were openly hostile to him in 2016.
And Johnson served on Trump’s defense team during the president’s first impeachment trial.
Trump is the clear frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. He is seen here at the UFC 295 event at Madison Square Garden
“During his 2016 campaign, President Trump quickly won over me and millions of my fellow Republicans,” Johnson told the New York Times.
“When I got to know him personally, shortly after we both arrived in Washington in 2017, I came to appreciate the person he is and the qualities of him that made him the extraordinary president that he was.”
In his CNBC interview, he also defended Trump’s position on the 2020 election.
Trump “just felt like he was cheated in the last election,” he said.
Democrats were quick to highlight “MAGA Mike’s” hardline views.
Democratic National Committee spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said: “MAGA Mike Johnson sees Trump as yet another anti-abortion and election-denying extremist who will do everything in his power to pursue a radical, anti-freedom agenda if re-elected president.
Even though MAGA Mike once confessed that he thought Trump was ‘dangerous’ and ‘unfit’ to serve, he is so determined to chip away at Americans’ freedoms and undermine Social Security and Medicare that he is still willing to is to support Trump.’