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

(CNN) — 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.

“I have concerns, but President Trump said he wanted to work with Johnson, and basically, basically, we took that into account,” the Arizona Republican said leaving the House floor.

Asked if he believes Johnson would’ve survived without Trump’s endorsement, Biggs said, “No. I think it was important.”

Johnson himself stressed that Trump’s endorsement – delivered on Monday – was “a big factor” in the contest, saying that “his voice and his influence are of singular influence.” Trump had initially planned to endorse him on New Year’s Day, however, the congressman suggested he should do it sooner, he told a local Baton Rouge radio station earlier this week. By Friday morning, Trump and his team were fully hands-on in helping Johnson land the votes. Besides the president-elect speaking directly to defectors, one of Trump’s closest Hill allies, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, was seen on the phone with Trump’s incoming White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in the middle of the vote.

Trump had made clear all week that a drawn-out fight could undermine confidence in the Republican takeover of Washington and perhaps end with an inexperienced leader in charge of steering his agenda through the House. Trump signaled his willingness to personally lobby Johnson’s skeptics, a step he was unwilling to take during previous House GOP leadership skirmishes.

A key early test for Trump

Still, the episode served as another reminder that Trump faces an uphill battle governing over the next two years, even with Republicans controlling the White House and Congress.

With narrow majorities in the House and Senate, Trump needs nearly unanimous support from his party – or bipartisan help – or he risks failing to fulfill the wholesale change he promised voters he was uniquely positioned to deliver. The margin in the House will only tighten if the Senate confirms Reps. Mike Waltz of Florida and Elise Stefanik of New York to serve in the administration as national security adviser and United Nations ambassador, respectively.

The difficulty ahead is informed in part by how House Republicans have struggled since winning back the majority in the 2022.

“Governing is messy sometimes,” Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma told CNN. “And I think we’ve proven that not only today, but over the last two years. But we’ll get there.”

Already, Trump has confronted the limitations of his reach within his own party. Before the holiday break, he unsuccessfully pressured House Republicans to raise the country’s borrowing limit during a funding vote that took the government perilously close to a shutdown.

His allies also failed to influence the vote to name the next Senate majority leader, a job won by South Dakota Sen. John Thune, an erstwhile critic of the incoming president. Nor could Trump sway Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to name his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to the Senate seat that currently belongs to Marco Rubio, the president-elect’s pick for secretary of state. And Trump abandoned a bid to make former Rep. Matt Gaetz his attorney general in the face of strong opposition from Senate Republicans.

But getting Johnson over the finish line marked a key early test for Trump’s ability to navigate a closely divided chamber where individual lawmakers know they will wield incredible power.

“It’s going to be a dicey run for this House Republican majority, just to be fair about it,” said former Rep. Patrick McHenry, who for 22 days oversaw the last GOP speakership fight as speaker pro tempore. “But it’s enabled and (Johnson’s) speakership is enabled by having President Donald Trump in office. And without Donald Trump, this vote might have been a different outcome.”

Leading up to the vote, Trump expressed confidence Johnson would win, telling CNN’s Kristen Holmes that he didn’t have any other names in mind for the job should the Louisiana Republican falter.

Johnson and his allies knew there was no real path to another Republican being elected. The only question was how many ballots it would take to get there — and how much Trump himself would need to lean on the skeptics.

Even as the vote began, senior members of GOP leadership didn’t know exactly how the vote would go. Out of three lawmakers who opposed Johnson on the floor, only Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky had informed leadership he would oppose the speaker. Self, one of the initial defectors, came entirely out of left field, as one person described it.

And while Trump and Johnson had clashed over the spending bill in December, the president-elect and his team quickly realized they needed to help squeeze the rest of the GOP conference to avoid drama going into inauguration.

“He had a lot of influence,” said House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma. “We had 20 odd people last time that weren’t there on the first ballot. We had three and they got there.”

Johnson resisted giveaways

Besides Trump’s influence, perhaps most notable in the whole ordeal was Johnson’s insistence that he would land the votes without the usual commitments made by speakers of both parties — the promise of plum committee slots or certain bills coming to the floor.

Johnson said one of the ways he won over GOP holdouts was by reupping his commitment to empower individual lawmakers in the 119th Congress, but offered no giveaways to curry votes.

“I was already committed to that, so I just reaffirmed,” he said when asked about some of the hardliners’ push for more member empowerment.

This offers Johnson far more room to operate, politically, over the next two years in one of the narrowest House majorities in history. And the approach stands in stark contrast to his predecessor Kevin McCarthy, whose tradeoffs with his detractors ultimately helped derail his speakership.

Johnson’s allies cheered his willingness to stand up to the GOP hardliners, without alienating them.

“When you surrender to your hostage takers, you lose control of your, in this case, political soul,” long-time Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma told CNN.

Key members of the House Freedom Caucus spent days laying out demands to Johnson, such as spending cuts or reforms to the appropriations process. And even after Johnson clinched the gavel, a group of House Republicans released a letter outlining a list of demands they want him to take up.

“Today we voted for Mike Johnson for Speaker of the House because of our steadfast support of President Trump and to ensure the timely certification of his electors,” 11 GOP lawmakers wrote. “We did this despite our sincere reservations regarding the Speaker’s track record over the last 15 months.”

But the speaker ultimately made no policy guarantee or committee adjustments that would upset the rest of the conference.

Johnson, for example, refused to consider Rep. Chip Roy of Texas as chair of the powerful House Rules panel, which would have allowed him to amend language and determine how it comes to the floor.

Instead, Johnson released a statement saying he would create a working group on implementing spending reforms — working with Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency — that will issue a public report related to government agency audits. He also said that he would “request” committees look deeply into government agencies or individuals who have “weaponized government against the American people.”

And many conservatives were clear that they would not rubber stamp Trump’s agenda through the House and expected the chance to weigh in.

“We still got work to do. This is the beginning. This isn’t the end,” said Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida, who had initially received a vote in the speaker’s race before it changed to Johnson.

CNN’s Kit Maher and Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.

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