Congress | Mike Johnson re-elected speaker of the House of Representatives

(Washington) Republican tenor Mike Johnson was re-elected to the US House of Representatives on Friday, after benefiting from the key support of Donald Trump and despite opposition from certain elected officials in his own camp.

The president of the lower house of Congress initially seemed to have lost the first vote, when three Republican elected officials cast their votes for another candidate.

But the hemicycle witnessed a dramatic turn of events when two of them finally changed their voices to support the outgoing “speaker”.

Just re-elected, Mike Johnson promised to adopt “drastic cuts” in the United States budget.

“We are going to make drastic cuts in the size and scope of the state,” he declared from the chamber of the lower house of Congress, adding that the Republicans would “return power to the people”.

The election was a test of Donald Trump’s influence in Congress, because the future president had given his outspoken support to Mike Johnson.

Wishing him “good luck” Friday in a message on his Truth Social network before the vote, the future president had described the elected representative from Louisiana as “a good and very capable man, who is not far from having support in 100%.”

“A victory for Mike today will be a great victory for the Republican Party,” insisted Donald Trump.

Given the small majority of Republicans in the lower house in this new legislature, the current “speaker” was well aware that he could not afford many defections in his camp.

However, before the vote, several of them had expressed their reluctance, or even their frank “no”, towards the candidacy of the elected official, “speaker” for a little over a year.

“You can pull out all my nails, you can stick bamboo in them, you can start cutting off my fingers: I will not vote for Mike Johnson,” declared the most angry of them, the Republican Thomas Massie, in an interview with the conservative channel OAN.

He was ultimately the only one to oppose the “speaker”.

“Full support”

After the president-elect, billionaire Elon Musk – who has become one of the most important voices in Washington since his thunderous alliance with Donald Trump – also entered the debate to weigh in favor of the “speaker”.

“I think the same thing. You have my full support,” he responded this week on his social network X to Mike Johnson, who welcomed a message from Donald Trump in his favor.

The support of the two influential billionaires was enough to change the minds of a number of refractory elected officials.

But the reluctance towards the candidacy of Mike Johnson will have given an overview of the difficulties that Donald Trump will have in getting his program through Congress in the first months of his presidency, with a majority of only five votes in the lower house.

Internal struggles

Traditionally a formality, the election of the “speaker” has experienced unusual upheavals over the past two years, notably with the unprecedented dismissal a year ago of the previous president of the lower house, Kevin McCarthy.

A fall orchestrated by the most right-wing fringe in Congress, which already accused Kevin McCarthy of having increased the deficit by giving in too much to the Democrats.

The impeachment gave rise to a 22-day psychodrama and exposed the internal struggles of the Republican camp to broad daylight.

Less than three weeks before his return to the White House, Donald Trump therefore wanted to avoid this type of scenario, especially since without a “speaker”, the House of Representatives would have been unable to certify his victory in the presidential election during a session scheduled for Monday.