Donald Trump said he “supports” Mike Johnson and that he has done a “very good job” as the pair appeared at a joint news conference amid threats of another motion to impeach the president.
Johnson’s future is in a precarious position after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a staunch Trump ally, launched a motion to impeach him last month.
She hasn’t called him into the room, leaving the threat hanging over Johnson’s head.
“He’s doing a really good job under difficult circumstances,” the former president said at Mar-a-Lago when asked if he supports efforts by his main ally, MTG, to oust Johnson.
He’s doing it as well as you. And I’m sure Marjorie understands that and she’s a very good friend of mine. And I know she has a lot of respect for the speaker,” Trump said.
Donald Trump said he “supports” Mike Johnson and that he has done a “very good job” as the pair appeared at a joint news conference amid threats of another motion to impeach the president.
Trump also said he was “watching” Johnson’s long-awaited Ukraine proposal, putting him at odds with Greene and other hardline House members who staunchly oppose any further aid in the fight against Russia.
“We’re looking at it right now and we’re talking about it,” he told reporters.
“We’re thinking about doing it as a loan rather than just a gift; we’re still giving gifts of billions and billions of dollars.”
Johnson’s appearance alongside Trump comes after he helped slow the president’s efforts to approve the renewal of a spy tool earlier this week.
The bill was finally passed Friday morning. Johnson reached an agreement with Trump and his allies to renew it for only two years instead of five, so that more reforms could be discussed under a possible Trump administration.
‘KILLING FISA, WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPY ON MY CAMPAIGN!!! DJT,” Trump wrote on Truth Social before a failed vote to reauthorize FISA Section 702 earlier this week.
Another part of the law not subject to reauthorization, Title 1, was used to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016 when he was suspected of having communications with the Russians. Trump reauthorized FISA in 2018.
At Friday’s press conference, Trump had more moderate opposition to the surveillance tool.
‘I’m not a big fan of FISA. But I told everyone to do whatever they wanted. They did a lot of checks and balances and I guess it’s now two years away from expiring in the first part of my administration.’
Section 702 specifically allows the U.S. government to monitor foreign nationals with suspected terrorist ties who are not located on U.S. soil, even if the party on the other end of such communications is a U.S. citizen in the United States.
President Mike Johnson and Representative Chip Roy are introducing the new bill in Congress, the SAVE Act.
Johnson angered hardliners on Friday by being the final vote to overturn an amendment that would have required intelligence agents to obtain a court order to examine communications involving anyone on American soil.
That way, if Trump wins the election, Congress will be able to further reform FISA under his presidency.
The journalist focuses on electoral legislation to prevent illegal immigrants from voting. It is already illegal for them to vote.
President Mike Johnson and Representative Chip Roy are introducing the new bill in Congress, the SAVE Act.
Roy, R-Texas, notably was not at Mar-a-Lago for the news conference. He and Trump are not friendly; Roy endorsed Ron DeSantis for president over him.
The bill would aim to close any loophole that allows people to register to vote without proof of U.S. citizenship or photo identification, require all 50 states to remove illegal immigrants from their voter rolls, and add penalties of up to five years in prison for electoral officials. that register non-citizens to vote and require proof of citizenship for those who vote abroad.
“It seems like we’re all agreeing with common sense,” Johnson said at the news conference.
‘There are some Democrats who don’t want to do that. We believe that one of his designs. One of the reasons for this open border, which everyone around the country is asking about, why would they allow the chaos, why the violence? Because they want to turn these people into voters.”
Penalties for noncitizen immigrants caught voting include deportation or prison terms, and they often avoid giving out personal information anyway for fear of being caught by immigration authorities.
However, it is possible to vote illegally as an undocumented immigrant.
Most ballots require some type of proof of identity to register to vote, such as a driver’s license. Not all such identification tests require citizenship.
In 2016, during Trump’s first campaign, when he began making claims about undocumented immigrant voting, the liberal Brennan Center for Justice examined 23.5 million votes in 42 jurisdictions for evidence of illegal immigrant voting and found 30 of those immigrant votes.