Speaker Johnson Discusses 2024 Election and the House GOP Agenda on Mornings with Maria
October 31, 2024
Contact: Greg Steele
SPRING VALLEY, NY – Speaker Mike Johnson joined Mornings with Maria on the Fox Business Network this morning during his latest campaign swing throughout New York to discuss the 2024 election and agenda for the upcoming Congress. This week, Speaker Johnson will campaign across Long Island, Central and Upstate New York as he leads efforts to grow the House majority.
Read more about the Speaker's New York swing in a new op-ed published with former Congressman Lee Zeldin: Why the House Speaker is barnstorming blue New York in Campaign 2024
Click here to watch Speaker Johnson’s full interview
Below are excerpts from the interview:
On efforts to grow the House majority:
"I'm very bullish, and this is based on my own experience and observation. I have been traveling the country nonstop. By the end of this week, Maria, I will have led campaign events in over 250 cities across 40 states. And what I'm seeing, and have been seeing for many months now, is the development of a demographic shift for this election. I think we're going to make history. I think we'll have a record number of Hispanic and Latino voters and Black and African American voters and Jewish voters and union workers and all sorts of groups that have not traditionally been with the Republican Party, because everybody knows that we've got to make a change, and they know that their lives are better under the Trump administration the first time, I think they're going to give us a chance to fix all this."
On the contrast between Trump and Harris:
"People understand that there is a clear choice this time, that they've had a Trump administration, they remember what that was like, and now they've lived under a Harris and Biden administration, and the comparison is very stark. And so I think this election is going to be about record over rhetoric. I think people are looking at the reality of things. Kamala Harris is running a campaign totally on fantasy over fact, but the American people are smart, and they're not buying it, and her angry rhetoric and the way that they have closed this campaign says everything that she's an empty suit."
"It's less than that actually. She's actually a costume, not an empty suit. She's trying to pretend to be something she's not, but people are on to it. So look, I think that filters all the way down the ballot. I think that the House candidates that we recruited are so credible, and they're out there Maria in these candidate forums and Town Hall settings, and they're presenting answers to all the challenges facing the American people, and they're doing it with such credibility that I think that's going to carry the day. I'm convinced we're going to win the Senate and the White House and the House will grow the majority and we'll be able to turn this around."
On election-year political tactics and rhetoric:
"[Democrats' anti-Trump] rhetoric is dangerous, it really is. This is not about the exchange of free speech. They've had two assassination attempts now on President Trump's life. We've all seen that because they've been calling him an enemy of the state, comparing him to, you know, Hitler and Mussolini. It's so over the top, and it's got to stop. This should be a contest between ideas, between policies, not personalities."
"But I do love what President Trump has done. I mean, the garbage truck in Wisconsin was so epic, and everybody's talking about that, they will be all the way through. He flipped fries at McDonald's and set the, you know, the all-time YouTube record for video views in 24 hours. I mean, what he is saying, and what he is doing is resonating with the people because it's authentic. And I think at the end of the day, they're going to reward him for that."
On the first 100 days agenda:
"We don't put the cart before the horse so to speak, but we are going to be prepared to lead. We have been preparing for that eventuality for more than a year. This is bicameral by design. The Senate Republicans and House Republicans will be working together on this, and it's a well-designed playbook. We'll begin to execute those plays on day one, a very aggressive first 100 days agenda."
"We'll address the top issues the American people care about. We will secure the border on day one with a President Trump executive order and then legislation to follow, and we will turn immediately to the economy. We can turn the engines of the free market back on, we know how to do it: reduce regulations, extend the Trump-era tax cuts, and make sure that job creators, entrepreneurs and risk takers are allowed to do what they do without having the government on their back. We cut red tape that will get us going again. Energy policy will be the center of that as well."
On mainstream media bias:
"They're spinning it as if they're paid operatives of the Democratic Party and it's not a fair shake. People see right through that. That's why less than 30% of the American people now trust the mainstream media anymore, which is a problem in and of itself, and they're twisting our words."
"I was at one of these events in Pennsylvania a few days ago and a question came up about Obamacare and I answered it very specifically. I said, the ACA unfortunately is deeply ingrained in our health care system now. Do we need further improvements? Absolutely. We need to expand quality of care, access to care, and obviously lower the cost of health care and I started talking about that. Well they took a clip out of context and said that I said we were promising to repeal Obamacare. That's just not what I said, it's actually the opposite of that. And so that's just another example that they have nothing to run on. They have no policies of their own in the Harris campaign and the Democrats running for House and Senate, and so they're spinning our words and they're attacking Donald Trump. That's their entire campaign, and that's why they haven't provided any answers, and that's why I think they're losing support in all these demographics."
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