Trump gets Johnson across the finish line but dramatic speaker vote signals challenges ahead

With two Republican lawmakers standing between Mike Johnson and the speaker’s gavel, President-elect Donald Trump picked up the phone.

With two Republican lawmakers standing between Mike Johnson and the speaker’s gavel, President-elect Donald Trump picked up the phone. From the golf course Friday afternoon, he spoke to Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Keith Self of Texas and convinced them to ultimately fall in line behind Johnson. Without a vote to spare, the Louisiana Republican won his bid to retain the gavel and lead a narrowly divided chamber into the new year. While the official record will state he secured the necessary 218 votes on the first try, the drama unfolded with far less certainty and demanded Trump’s intervention until the very end. The first vote of the 119th Congress underscored the president-elect’s hold over the Republican Party – and the challenge he faces keeping it together over the next two years ahead of the 2026 midterms, which could threaten the GOP’s Washington trifecta. Trump, according to two sources familiar with the pitch, argued that Republicans needed to work as a team and warned that voters would have very little tolerance for the dysfunction that would ensue if Republicans could not unite behind a speaker. “The message was that he wants what everyone else wants: his agenda to pass,” Self said of his conversation with Trump before he switched his vote in favor of Johnson. “And that was my message to him, Mr. President, we need a strong negotiating team. The message was clear.” Rep. Andy Biggs, one of a half dozen conservative hardliners who initially withheld support from Johnson, told CNN after the vote that he still had reservations with House leadership, but Trump’s confidence in Johnson had swayed the GOP conference.