Mike Johnson (00:00):
Long, productive day, but we're excited, we leave tonight united as a Conference. We have had an extraordinary leadership team elected. I'm delighted and honored by my colleagues to have been re-selected as the speaker, as our nominee, and we'll head into January 3rd to make all that happen. In the meantime, there was lots of discussion about the rules package, which is our Conference rules, which governs our internal affairs effectively. And we had two of the chairs of our most important, most active caucuses in the Republican Conference, the Main Street Caucus with Chairman Dusty Johnson, and of course the House Freedom Caucus, which is chaired by Dr. Andy Harris. They worked together collaboratively to work with members across the Conference with very different ideas and perspectives, and come to an agreement about what all that would entail. And so I wanted to give you all an opportunity to hear from them, and I'm really grateful for their time and their expertise and their investment in making all this work very well today for everybody. So I want to give it to Dr. Harris, go ahead.
Dr. Andy Harris (01:01):
Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Look, the president came down and started the day by coming down and asking for unity, asking for making sure that we deliver for the American public what they asked for last week. And obviously we know that now we know what the leadership's going to be like in the Senate. We know who our speaker designated is right now, and we've been able to work across the Conference to eliminate the controversial issues that could have divided us and move forward together to deliver on the president's agenda. That's it, that's what the American people expect us to do, and the first steps were taken today, very concrete steps. And look, we're behind the president, and I want to thank Dusty Johnson for working to make us unified to go together to deliver for the American people with Mr. Trump as the president. And with that, Dusty.
Dusty Johnson (01:55):
First I want to say thank you to Speaker Johnson who has cultivated an environment where members know that they can try to work together to move the ball downfield, and I want to thank Andy Harris. This started because Dr. Harris reached out this morning, he said, "Listen, we got to cut a deal. We need to come together, unity's important." We sat down, we began to negotiate. We spent more than an hour together, we made good progress. We understood that we had an opportunity to set the motion to vacate at a higher than number one, that motion to vacate will be set at nine, in return for getting rid of some amendments that probably would have divided this Conference. Andy did a good job of explaining to Main Street leadership why those amendments would've divided the Republican Conference.
(02:36)
So where are we at today? We are just, as Dr. Harris said, because of this agreement, we are in a better position to move forward the Republican agenda, to make sure that Speaker Johnson, South Dakota Senate Leader, John Thune, and our President, Donald Trump, have an opportunity to go forward and do good things for America. This is exactly how we're supposed to come together.
Mike Johnson (02:59):
I want to thank these gentlemen again. We're going to have a press conference here in just a few moments with all the new elected leadership, and we will answer questions there. But wanted you to hear that straight from these chairman. Thank you both so much for all your hard work, and we'll be right back with you.
Lisa McClain (09:16):
Well, good evening everyone. We are fresh off our Conference elections and we have a solid, unified team ready to deliver on the mandate given to us by the American people. I'm honored to be selected by my colleagues to serve as chairwoman of the Conference. Elise is leaving and is a loss for our Conference. She has done incredible work, and I will build upon her success and wish her well. As a leadership team, we are ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump to legislate our America First agenda. Our winning message resonated with the American people, which delivered Republicans a trifecta in government. House Republicans have been laying the groundwork for months and we are ready to govern. I look forward to all that we will achieve together, and with that, I will bring up our new Conference Secretary, Erin Houchin.
Erin Houchin (10:21):
Thank you, Madam Chair. I am honored to have been selected by my colleagues to serve as conference secretary for the 119th Congress. I am ready to get to work to start implementing President Trump's agenda to work alongside him every day to get this country back on track. I am now proud to introduce our Conference Vice Chair, Blake Moore.
Blake Moore (10:45):
Hello everyone. Exciting times, good to be back in session off of a really strong message from the American people, that we need conservative leadership to govern our country, move things in the right direction. I can tell you that the Conference is excited about the opportunities that lie ahead, primarily legislatively. We have been battling building good strong legislation to address energy, to address border, all the issues that we know Americans are focused on and it just goes to die in the Senate. We're looking forward for an opportunity to move this legislation that we built last term and move it on to the next. So I'm excited. Congratulations to everybody on the leadership team. I'm looking forward to a full term as vice chair as I came in mid-cycle, and excited to introduce our new policy director, Policy Chair, Mr. Kevin Hern.
Kevin Hern (11:32):
Thanks Blake. It's really an honor to serve as the policy committee chair going forward. As we look at the policy that's been put forth on the campaign trail of President Trump, the mandate has been set, 312 electoral votes, over 5 million popular vote. It is pretty clear what the American people want. We're going to work hard together, we have a great team. We're going to work hard with the leadership team to put that policy forward, move it with the Senate, take the relationships we built on the RSC and work together to make sure that we get America back on track, put the America first, the Make America Great agenda back in play. And look forward to doing it, I'm so excited for the great opportunity. And with that, I want to introduce our current NRCC Chair and returning NRCC Chair, the great Richard Hudson.
Richard Hudson (12:20):
Well, thank you, and I want to welcome the new members of this leadership team. I'm proud to serve alongside each one of you. They bring unique talents and backgrounds and will strengthen our team going forward. Listen, we ran our last campaigns based on the issues that mattered to the American people. The Democrats, under the extreme leadership of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Hakeem Jeffries in the House, made every American less prosperous and less safe. And so our candidates went out and talked about those issues. We talked about energy, we talked about inflation, we talked about the border, we talked about the crime and fentanyl that come from that, and we told American people our idea is to fix it. And they gave us a mandate. And so together with President Trump and a Republican Senate, we're going to start delivering on that on day one. Thank you. I'll now bring up our great Whip, Mr. Tom Emmer.
Tom Emmer (13:11):
Thanks Richard. I first want to say thank you to my house Republican colleagues for electing me to serve as their majority whip once again, it's a privilege and a responsibility I do not take lightly. We treat the whip office like a customer service office, we are here to serve our members and the people they represent. We don't take anyone or any vote for granted, and we will continue building a culture of teamwork, communication, and respect to deliver more wins on behalf of the American people. Now that we have our leadership team in place, it's time to suit up and get to work. President Trump delivered the greatest political comeback in American history based on his proven record and promise to make this country great again. Voters also gave him a Republican Senate and a Republican House to help him do it, so now it's our turn.
(14:02)
It's our turn to make good on the priorities we've been campaigning on for the last two years by passing legislation to make life more affordable for all Americans, secure our borders, unleash American energy, restore our dominance on the world stage, and lower taxes for hard-working families. We've got the team, the work ethic, and the plan to do it. Now, with the trifecta in hand, we stand ready and united behind President Trump to deliver on his American First agenda once and for all. As the 118th Congress proved, it may not always be smooth sailing and we may have some disagreements along the way, but I've always been a firm believer that there's more that unites us than divides us. And so long as we work together as a team, I have no doubt we will seize the opportunity in front of us and put our country on a better path for generations to come. With that, I'll turn it over to our Great Majority Leader, Steve Scalise.
Steve Scalise (15:00):
Thank you, Whip. And I too want to thank our new members of this really strong unified leadership team, and Kevin Hern and Erin Houchin and our new Conference Chair, Lisa McClain. We're really excited about the selections that our Conference made today. We are going to miss Elise Stefanik, and she served our Conference so well for so many years as our Conference chair, but there are bigger things ahead for Elise. And we know that President Trump is going to benefit tremendously from Elise being the UN ambassador. The world is going to see what we've all known, is she's a strong leader and is going to, I think, really do a great job of representing America's values and views in Trump's foreign policy at the United Nations where it is so desperately needed. If you think about how we started this morning, we had President Trump come talk to us about what is ahead in this unified government.
(16:02)
We went all around the country and I was in every swing district. I got to campaign with President Trump himself, and you could see the energy around the country when President Trump talked about the things he would do to make America great again. It's not just a tagline on a hat, it's what we're going to do to secure America's border. It's how we're going to lower food costs and energy costs for those families who are struggling across this country, who have been clamoring for somebody to hear their plight. And President Trump did. And he did it in every corner of the nation. He won every swing state because he had a message that was focused on those hardworking families who are struggling, and they responded by giving us this overwhelming mandate.
(16:44)
And we are already working to deliver on that promise. We're excited about this opportunity for the American people to go and fight to get those policies put in place now that will lower their food costs and lower their energy costs, and secure the border, working with President Trump to deliver a better America. And I am proud to say that the leader of that effort here in this new Republican majority who was elected today unanimously by our members to be the Speaker of the House again, marshaling through this effort, is our speaker today and our speaker tomorrow, Mike Johnson.
Mike Johnson (17:22):
Thank you, thank you. Well, thank you all for being here again. It is a new day in America. Yesterday morning, we began on the steps of the House as everyone was flying in to begin work again as we complete the 118th Congress. And we celebrated what is a new beginning, really, a new morning in America, a new day in America. And so today we began this morning, as Steve Scalise just told you, our majority leader, that we began with President Trump. And he came to visit us, it was a bit of a pep rally. Everybody feels very confident, very encouraged about the days ahead, and he gave us a very inspirational message. And he talked about the importance of maintaining unity and standing with this leadership team to go forward. It was very well received and that set the tone for our day, and we had a very productive day together as a Republican Conference.
(18:08)
And the theme that you'll hear over and over from all of our members across the Conference is that we are unified and energized and ready to go. We have to deliver for the American people beginning on day one in the new Congress, and we will be ready for that. I want to congratulate these new leaders that have been duly elected to help serve the conference as an extraordinary leadership team, and those who've been reelected who have earned those positions, well, this was a group and a body today that worked together and did some really extraordinary things. Putting together a leadership team and deciding upon our conference rules, I want to again tip my hat to the chairs of two of our most important and active caucuses within the Republican Conference, the House Freedom Caucus, Dr. Andy Harris, Congressman Harris, and Congressman Dusty Johnson of the Main Street Caucus, who work together with a subgroup of members to work through a very deliberate process to come up with the rules.
(19:02)
So we come out of this excited to deliver the America First agenda for the American people. Like the majority leader said, we traveled all around the country, all of us did. We all campaigned for our colleagues throughout the year, and we felt the energy on the ground, as Steve said. And we took the temperature of the American people. We heard their concerns. We heard that no matter where you are in the country, north, south, east, west, the number one concerns were the cost of living, the wide open border, the instability on the world stage, the weakness that has gotten us into the most dangerous situation since World War II. They were worried about instability and insecurity, the radical, progressive woke agenda. People have had enough of all that. And so we are going to deliver solutions to all those great challenges facing the country, and we're excited to do it.
(19:50)
I know you're all tired of hearing my football metaphors, but we have a very well designed playbook. We will begin to execute those plays with precision on day one. And so our new and incoming members were here for new member orientation, they were a part of all of this today, and we're preparing the players now to take that field beginning early in January when all this all begins again on January 3rd. So we'll wrap up the work at the 118th, we'll get that work done and we'll move into the new Congress with excitement and delivering on the promises that we have made to the American people. We're grateful to be working hand in hand with President Trump and to take this energy into the new year. So we'll take a few questions, I know you have several. Yes, sir.
Speaker 12 (20:29):
Mr Speaker, thank you very much. While you were inside in your meeting, President Trump announced that he would nominate your colleague, Matt Gaetz, to be the next attorney general of the United States. What do you make of that nomination and how do you feel about his impending departure from the House?
Mike Johnson (20:42):
Well, I talked with Matt immediately after that nomination was made. In fact, President Trump told me this morning when he walked in, we were behind the curtains, he tipped me off that that would be happening. Matt and I were classmates, we came to Congress at the same time in the 115th Congress in January, 2017. And alphabetically we're seated right next to one another in Judiciary Committee, we served there together for seven years. Some of you all who covered Judiciary know those are long meetings. So I got to know Matt very well. Look, I'll say this, everyone who served with him will tell you he is one of the most intelligent members of Congress. He's an accomplished attorney. He's very concerned about the lawfare that has been occurring in the Department of Justice under the Biden administration, and the fact that the American people have lost their faith in our institutions of justice because of everything that they've seen.
(21:28)
He's a reformer in his mind and heart, and I think that he'll bring a lot to the table on that. I think out of deference to us, he issued his resignation letter effective immediately of Congress. That caught us by surprise a little bit, but I asked him what the reasoning was and he said, "Well, you can't have too many absences." So under Florida State law, there's about an eight-week period to select and fill a vacant seat. And so by doing so today, that allows me, I've already placed a call to Governor DeSantis in Florida and said, "Let's start the clock." He's in Italy at the moment, and so we're going to talk first thing in the morning about this. And if we start the clock now, if you do the math, we may be able to fill that seat as early as January 3rd when we take the new oath of office for the new Congress.
(22:16)
So Matt would've done us a great service by making that decision as he did on the fly, and so we're grateful for that. So we move forward. Look, I'll say this, people have asked me all day long. "President Trump is poaching all of your talent." Yes, though we have an embarrassment of riches here. The Republican Conference is full of talented people who are extraordinary leaders and have great expertise. And everyone in this Conference could serve in a leadership position in the administration, but I have begged and pleaded with the new president, enough already. But because our numbers are small, we are going to have the majority, we're celebrating that. I think it could be as high as a five-seat margin, but we'll have some of these vacancies open as we begin the year. We'll fill them as quickly as possible. But we're excited for our colleagues to have these new career opportunities and new opportunities to serve the country. So we move forward. Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 13 (23:07):
Thank you. You now have this big mandate, a trifecta, how you are going to assure American people that you're going to use this power responsibly and not misuse it?
Mike Johnson (23:17):
Yeah, I'm glad you said… The question was about the mandate that the American people have delivered us. It was an historic election. President Trump won the popular vote and the Electoral College by a very wide decisive margin, and House Republicans received as many votes. I think it's been many decades since House Republicans received as many collective votes over Democrats nationwide. So we do have the mandate, we take the responsibility seriously. You can make an argument that we're facing, collectively as a nation, the greatest collection of challenges that we've had probably since World War II, maybe the Civil War some people say. So serious times call for serious leadership. It's going to be a policy agenda-driven administration and a Congress. And you've heard us say many times it could be, I believe it will be, the most consequential Congress in the modern era, most consequential administration of the modern era, because frankly, we have to fix almost every area of public policy.
(24:12)
So what it will be required of us is to plan deliberately and execute with precision, and that's what we're working on right now. We're going to deliver it for the American people. We're going to bring down the cost of living. We are going to turn American energy dominance back on. We are going to secure the border. We're going to take care of our stature on the world stage to restore peace through strength again, and all of the things that are concerning people from woke ideologies in the schools, in a business place, to all the other chaos that we've ensued with the rising crime rates and everything around the country. We have solutions for all that. And we had a demographic shift in this election. We had large groups of voters and different demographics that came into the Republican party who had never been there traditionally in large numbers before.
(24:53)
Our opportunity now is to embrace all those new folks who have come in and demonstrate for them that it is our policies that lead to human flourishing. These are the best policies for their individual benefit, their liberty opportunity and security, for their families, their communities, states, and our nation as a whole. So we are excited about that. We're excited to begin delivering, and you'll see a lot of action early in the Congress. Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 14 (25:16):
Since you just broke the news that he resigned immediately, that means that the House Ethics Committee investigation into him does not have jurisdiction since he's no longer a member of Congress. Are you concerned about, they were finishing up their work, there was going to be a report issued. Is that a concern to you that that will now never see the light of day?
Mike Johnson (25:37):
Well, it is true that a former member of Congress, the House Ethics Committee, would have no further jurisdiction over that person, no further authority over them. So that would not be unprecedented. But as far as the timing of a release or report or something, I don't know. The Speaker of the House is not involved in that, can't be involved in that. So I'm not really the person probably to answer that question. Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 13 (25:58):
Is President-elect Trump considering the [inaudible 00:26:01] majority when making these decisions about his cabinet? Is he listening to your concerns about that? And do you feel comfortable allowing the majority to go [inaudible 00:26:08]?
Mike Johnson (26:07):
No, I'm not comfortable with that. No, look, President Trump and I talk many times a day, every day. And with his transition team, I've spent a lot of time with Howard Lutnick, who is the Co-Chair of the Transition Team, with Linda McMahon, and everyone involved. He is at Mar-a-Lago, making lots of very consequential decisions, and I'm trying to be involved in as many as I can while I'm also trying to manage this Congress and plan for the next. I'm going to make a trip down there tomorrow evening for a gala for the America First Policy Institute, spend some time with them there. And then I've changed my plans to go down to Mar-a-Lago for the weekend so that I can be there while more of these decisions are being made.
(26:44)
He's very aware of the margin, the size of the margin, but he has an administration to fill, a cabinet to fill, and he's keeping all this in mind at the same time. So we're both very aware of the margins and the size, everyone in this room is keenly aware of it as well, and that's why we're emphasizing unity right now. And I'm very hopeful about that. I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and I think we'll get these seats filled by… These are reliable Republican seats. We'll have very strong candidates presented who will win those elections in short order, and by early spring we'll have these seats filled and we'll keep moving forward. Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 15 (27:19):
This needs to be the last question, guys.
Mike Johnson (27:20):
Okay.
Speaker 16 (27:20):
Mr. Speaker, you just mentioned that Congressman Gaetz is resigning early, that will allow Florida to have a special election sooner. Congressman Waltz is also from Florida. Have you talked to him about doing something similar, because that would apply to his seat as well?
Mike Johnson (27:37):
Yeah, he's got to make his own determination on that, but of course, for the position that Congressman Waltz has been chosen for he doesn't need Senate confirmation. So I assume that he'll be making that decision. I'll talk with him, of course, tonight and tomorrow about that to figure out the best timing. He's a team player as well, and he wants to do what's right for the Conference and for the country. And I'm confident he will. He's going to do an extraordinary job in his position as is Elise Stefanik, and I'm sure Matt Gaetz, I believe they'll all do very well. Now, there are others here who President Trump has interest in serving in other positions. And I said, "Please, sir. No." We have a great talent here. We're excited to work for that. Excited for this leadership team, this is a great group of people who are here to serve the country, and they're going to perform well for their constituents and for America. We're going to turn this country around and we can't wait. Thank you so much for being here today. Bless you.