In the wake of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s decision to go along with a “bipartisan” spending deal via Continuing Resolution that has infuriated conservative members of his party and online commentators like Elon Musk who see the deal as indicative of Swamp corruption, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy pressed Speaker Mike Johnson on the deal.
That incident came on the morning of Wednesday, December 18. The segment began with criticism of the bill from Republicans, such as Rep. Chip Roy, who said of the bill, “We are just fundamentally unserious about spending. If you have a blank check, you can’t shrink the government. If you can’t shrink the government, you can’t live free.”
Speaker Johnson tried to hand-wave away criticism of the bill and defend it as being helpful to farmers, saying, “Short-term funding extension until March 14th. That would have been an ease thing to pass. Here is what happened. We also had to add due to circumstances outside of any of our control emergency funding. We have two major emergencies, a record historic hurricane season that we all know Helene and Milton and the threats destroyed a big swathe of the country. We have to have funding, [to stop] farmers and ranchers food producers in this country in jeopardy of going under. Three loss years primarily because of bidenomics and inflation and lots of other factors outside their control.”
Doocy pressed him on the matter. He said, noting that the Republicans are furious with him, “Mr. Speaker, it’s not just so you’ve got a bunch of Republicans who are angry at you. They don’t like this. And just in a couple of weeks, you’re going to stand once again to run for Speaker of the House. And you don’t need a bunch of Democrats mad at you.”
Continuing, Doocy noted that Elon Musk, a close ally of President-elect Trump, has come out strongly against the bill, saying, “But, you know, and this is breaking news,” Doocy said. “You do not know. You know, who also does not like this? Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, just tweeted: ‘This bill should not pass.’ The only way you’re going to be able to pass it now, Mr. Speaker, is with Democrats. If you if you could, what’s your message to Elon Musk?”
Johnson again tried to hand wave away the issue, saying, “Well, I was communicating with Elon last night. Elon, Vivek and I are on a text chain together and I was explaining to them the background of this. And Vivek and I talked last night about almost midnight. And he said, ‘Look, I get it.’ And he said, ‘We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.’”
He then added, on a similarly hand waving note, “Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans. So any bill has to have Democrat votes. They understand the situation. They said, ‘It’s not directed at you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending’ And I said, ‘Guess what, fellows? I don’t either.’”
Johnson added, “We got to get this done because here’s the key — By doing this, we are clearing the decks and we are setting up for Trump to come in, roaring back with the America First agenda. That’s what we’re going to run with gusto beginning January 3rd, when we start the new Congress, when Republicans again rent control and all of our fiscal conservative friends, I’m one of them, will be able to finally do the things that we have been wanting to do for the last couple of years.”
He then said, “Right now, Democrats still control the fence, and that’s the problem. So we’ve got to get this thing done so we don’t have the shutdown. So we get the short term funding measure and we get to march where we can put our fingerprints on the spending. That’s when the big changes start and we can’t wait to get there.”
Watch him here:
"*" indicates required fields