Washington: US House Speaker Mike Johnson met with ex-president Donald Trump at his Florida residence soon after becoming the highest ranking Republican to endorse ex-President Trump’s candidacy for GOP in the 2024 Presidential race.
Johnson met with Trump on Monday night at his winter getaway Mar-a-Lago, but it was not clear what they discussed, according to a GOP source.
Johnson was at Mar-a-Lago for a fundraiser for Floridan GOP Rep Gus Bilirakis. Johnson and Trump met briefly, two Republican advisors said, and Johnson was not there solely for a meeting with Trump.
Johnson’s meeting with Trump came nearly a week after the newly-elected Speaker publicly endorsed Trump’s 2024 bid for the White House, becoming the highest-ranking Republican so far to do so. It was not immediately clear what the pair discussed during the meeting, media reports said.
Louisiana Republican Johnson is a long-time Trump ally serving on the former president’s impeachment team. He voted to sustain the objection to electoral votes on January 6, 2021.
Johnson, who said he has endorsed Trump “wholeheartedly”, told CNBC that he was “one of the closest allies that President Trump had in Congress” and that the former president had “a phenomenal first term.”
Trump is the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, with a significant lead over his GOP rivals – Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie. .
Johnson, a backbencher, benefitted from Trump’s support in his successful bid for speaker last month, after the former president opposed Republican conference’s brief speaker-nominee Tom Emmer, calling the Minnesota Republican a “Globalist RINO” and saying that voting for him “would be a tragic mistake”, CNN reported.
–IANS