WASHINGTON, D.C. – For Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, recent cheers from fellow Republicans have been both heartfelt and well-earned. It’s not been easy to say the least. He has managed to squeeze out challenging legislative wins with virtually no room for error: just a three-seat majority and a party full of divergent views. It culminated with delivering President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” right on schedule, July 4th.
So, what has been the ‘secret sauce’? “Well, for me, I’m pretty open about this as a matter of faith,” Speaker Johnson tells CBN News. “I quote often John Quincy Adams. He said, ‘Duty is ours, results are God’s,’ so that’s a very liberating way to live. It is my biblical worldview. We be faithful in the little things that God puts before us today, and then He takes care of the rest. And so that’s what I do here. There’s a lot of patience in prayer that delivers all these legislative victories. It’s not pulling rabbits out of a magic hat, as some people have tried to analogize the last few days. It’s a lot of work that goes into this, and frankly, a lot of faith.”
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The Commander-in-Chief clearly shows faith in Johnson, telling him at a recent White House event, “If you keep up this pace for another week, you go down as the greatest speaker in the House in history…he’s been going at a fervent pace. Your wife probably says, ‘You are crazy.’ You’ve been aging beautiful…”
The Speaker says he’s just doing his job. “This first six months of the Trump Administration has been the most productive and most effective, arguably, of any in history, in all of U.S. history since the Founder’s Era, because you have a close alignment between the White House and the Senate and the House.”
Johnson also says they had one more element: a plan. “We thought very deliberately and carefully about how we would go about the first 100 days, the first 300 days…this was all planned, and now we’re implementing those plans, and the Democrats made a major mistake, a tactical error, by giving President Trump four years, and all of us, to plan for what this would look like.”
Democrats though argue Speaker Johnson and the GOP made a big tactical error with their signature Big Beautiful Bill legislation that will cost them their majority in next year’s Midterm Elections. They call it wholly immoral, citing what they say are cuts in food assistance, Medicare and healthcare overall.
“Food assistance and Medicare aren’t touched in this program,” Speaker Johnson tells CBN News. “No one is going to lose their healthcare… they’re going to try to pretend that they have the upper hand on morality. I love the debate, and I’m anxious to engage in it any place, any time.”
Johnson made clear what the Big Beautiful Bill really does. “What we did in the Big, Beautiful Bill is exactly along the moral standards and something we’re proud to do, because what we did, for example, instead of taking healthcare away from people, what we did is we strengthened the safety net programs…so what we’ve done is we’ve reintroduced a work requirement, 20 hours a week, by the way, not draconian requirements, but all you have to do is have a job, be looking for a job, be in a job training program, or volunteer in your community for 20 hours a week if you’re going to be on Medicaid…it comports with common sense and morality. We find our dignity in work. It’s good for a young man to have to help pull the wagon and not ride on it…that’s the right and moral thing to do.”
Speaker Johnson’s confidence goes beyond that morality to something bigger and providential. After seeing both the failed assassination attempts on Donald Trump in Pennsylvania and Florida, Johnson became convinced that Trump would win the presidency. He shares with CBN News what he told the president during those days. “Scripture is clear, God is the one that raises up those in authority, and he has selected you,” he remembers telling Trump. “To me, it seems obvious you’re going to win another term. And what a profound thing it is to be raised up by God to lead the greatest nation in the history of the world for the second time.”
Johnson believes Trump is on the same wavelength. “He thinks of it that way as well. And you hear him use that language himself in recent months and since the inauguration.” Johnson believes that change has led to an extremely effective second term, especially when it comes to working with Congress. “President Trump’s head and heart are in exactly the right place right now, where the American people need them to be, and that’s where we want him to be,” says Johnson. “He thinks very contemplatively and very deliberately in his decision processes.”
It has become a match some might say made in heaven. Johnson and Trump seem like an unlikely pair for sure: a brash New Yorker and a jovial evangelical from Louisiana. But it works. Eventually, Johnson won’t have Trump at his side as he eventually rides off into the sunset, but the battle for America will soldier on.
“We’re going to be in a contest between actual world views, between two competing visions on who we are as Americans and who we’re going to be,” Johnson tells CBN News. “I think our party has a very important role. MAGA is part of that, and it’ll be an interesting time for the next 250 years of the country.”
In the interim, Mike Johnson is just taking it one day at a time, rejoicing always and praying without ceasing.
