{"id":611,"date":"2024-11-11T11:12:39","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T11:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/speaker-mike-johnson-sheds-light-on-his-secret-with-trump\/"},"modified":"2024-11-11T11:12:39","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T11:12:39","slug":"speaker-mike-johnson-sheds-light-on-his-secret-with-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/speaker-mike-johnson-sheds-light-on-his-secret-with-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker Mike Johnson sheds light on his \u2018secret\u2019 with Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There was no shortage of ugly rhetoric<\/a> at Donald Trump\u2019s event at Madison Square Garden, but one of the comments that generated conversation had nothing to do with racism or bigotry. It instead related to an unscripted moment<\/a> about the former president and House Speaker Mike Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe gotta get the congressmen elected and we gotta get the senators elected, because we can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we\u2019re going to do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact,\u201d Trump said<\/a> while looking in the Louisiana congressman\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

The former president added, while appearing to point at the House speaker<\/a>, \u201cHe and I have a secret. We\u2019ll tell you what it is when the race is over.\u201d<\/p>\n

To put it mildly, this caused some unease, especially among Democratic officials. The anxiety did not dissipate when the GOP congressman confirmed that he and his party\u2019s presidential nominee do, in fact, have some kind of secret. \u201cBy definition, a secret is not to be shared \u2014 and I don\u2019t intend to share this one,\u201d Johnson said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hours later, as The Hill reported<\/a>, the House speaker elaborated a bit.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s nothing scandalous, but we\u2019re having a ball with this. The media, their heads are exploding. \u2018What is the secret?\u2019\u201d Johnson told a crowd of about 90 people on Monday at a rally to support GOP congressional candidate Ryan Mackenzie, after a person in the crowd asked about the comment. \u201cIt\u2019s this thing we have about \u2014 it\u2019s a get-out-the-vote. It\u2019s one of our tactics on get-out-the-vote,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n

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To be sure, it\u2019s possible that Trump and Johnson have some kind of \u201csecret\u201d related to get-out-the-vote \u201ctactics,\u201d though there\u2019s reason for some skepticism. After all, the House speaker doesn\u2019t really have much of a role in guiding his party\u2019s GOTV efforts, so there\u2019s no obvious reason why he and the former president would feel the need for a confidential arrangement.<\/p>\n

As for Johnson\u2019s suggestion that there\u2019s no real need for scrutiny, perhaps he\u2019s unaware of the broader context. The New York Times reported<\/a> on the worst-case scenario on Democrats\u2019 minds: \u201cIt is a scenario in which Mr. Johnson, who worked with Mr. Trump to undermine the 2020 election results<\/a>, would again be in cahoots with the former president to steal the election and stop the certification of the results on Jan. 6, 2025, should Vice President Kamala Harris win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Look, this isn\u2019t junior high. It\u2019s not as if Trump told Johnson during homeroom which girl he has a crush on, and the congressman feels the need to keep his pal\u2019s information under wraps.<\/p>\n

The stakes are vastly higher. A convicted criminal is facing a multi-count federal indictment accusing him of, among other things, illegally trying to overturn an election. Johnson, meanwhile, helped spearhead<\/a> an ill-fated effort to convince the Supreme Court to keep Trump in power despite the voters\u2019 verdict, and voted with his party to reject certifying the results of a free and fair election.<\/p>\n

Johnson also echoed some of the wilder conspiracy theories<\/a> about the race, and nearly four years later, the Louisiana Republican is still reluctant to acknowledge the legitimacy<\/a> of the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s against this backdrop that Trump and Johnson, by their own admission, have a \u201csecret\u201d related to the election. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, actually.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Steve Benen<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of\u00a0MaddowBlog\u00a0and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was no shortage of ugly rhetoric at Donald Trump\u2019s event at Madison Square Garden, but one of the comments that generated conversation had nothing to do with racism or bigotry. It instead related to an unscripted moment about the former president and House Speaker Mike Johnson. \u201cWe gotta get the congressmen elected and we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}