Republican leader Mike Johnson met Donald Trump on Friday in Florida to discuss a series of burning issues in the US Congress and, in the process, try to save his position.
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Threatened by impeachment proceedings, the President of the House of Representatives was able to benefit from the support of the former tenant of the White House.
During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, the luxurious residence of the billionaire, Donald Trump, candidate for the presidential election in November, said of the elected official from Louisiana that he was doing “a very good job”.
“This is not a simple situation for any speaker,” the ex-president said, referring to the official title of Mike Johnson, who stood beside him.
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After their meeting, the two Republicans expressed concern about the possibilities of electoral fraud in the November presidential election, as an echo of Donald Trump’s unfounded claims surrounding his defeat in the 2020 election.
Donald Trump and Mike Johnson also discussed aid to Ukraine, with the former president once again saying he was in favor of loans to kyiv rather than direct aid.
The file has been blocked in Congress for months, despite repeated pressure from Democratic President Joe Biden and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
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By far the first military support for Ukraine, the United States has not sent a large envelope to kyiv since December 2022.
A package of 60 billion dollars in military and economic assistance for Ukraine was certainly adopted in the Senate, with a Democratic majority, in February.
Electoral standoff
But Republicans in the House of Representatives refuse to examine the text — due, among other things, to another dispute, on the question of immigration.
On Wednesday, Mike Johnson remained very cautious about the future of this envelope.
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“There are a lot of different ideas being studied,” he said simply, without giving any timetable or providing details on these avenues.
In the middle of an election year, the issue has turned into a standoff between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
However, Mike Johnson wants everything but to offend the former Republican president, who retains enormous influence over his party.
Especially at a time when he is fighting to keep his position.
Speaker Mike Johnson is in fact under threat of impeachment proceedings — an initiative led by one of Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
This elected official, from the most extreme fringe of the Republican Party, accuses the fifty-year-old of not sufficiently defending the interests of conservatives and for this reason wants to oust him from his seat.
The majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives is currently so slim that its calculation is not unrealistic, as long as the Democrats also vote against the “speaker”.
It remains to be seen whether, despite his stated support, Donald Trump will save Mike Johnson. Aid to Ukraine could prove to be a bargaining chip.
