Various sources are reporting about a planned meetup at Mar-a-Lago next week between House Speaker Mike Johnson, Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee and North Carolina Congressman Richard Hudson, and presumptive GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump, to discuss strategies on maintaining and bolstering the fledgling House majority.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) are set to meet with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida next week, two sources familiar with the meeting confirmed to the Washington Examiner.
The three Republican leaders will meet on Monday as the GOP faces an uphill battle to maintain its slim majority next year while Trump also eyes a return to the White House. The meeting, two months after another trip to Florida by Johnson, also underscores his budding relationship with Trump, who helped stave off a threat to his speakership.
The planned visit comes as Trump prepares to make the rounds with GOP lawmakers in Washington, D.C., this week, timed to a meeting with the Business Roundtable lobbying group. Trump will meet with Republican senators on Thursday afternoon to discuss plans for the summer as well as a 2025 agenda, sources confirmed to the Washington Examiner. The former president is also expected to meet with House Republicans during a conference-wide meeting earlier that morning, another source confirmed.
Not sure how much this will do, as a GOP House Majority, for which many had high hopes in 2022, is facing the 2024 elections with not just a tenuous hold on the majority but an even more tenuous hold on unity and sanity. After the speaker battles that ousted former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the resignations among longtime House members, and the threatened ouster of House Speaker Johnson over the billions in Ukraine aid, there is no love lost amongst House colleagues, and even less with the American people.
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Former Georgia Congressman Doug Collins told Just The News in 2023:
“We’ve got to have a majority that acts like a majority, and right now they’re not,” Collins said on the Tuesday edition of the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “They’re acting more like a minority.”
The House GOP has been split over the past few months over budget negotiations, Ukraine funding, and internal fighting, which led to the ousting of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
While the GOP came together and voted for current House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., he still faces criticism from Republicans such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
“What I don’t see is a concerted effort to say, ‘here’s what we’re going to fight for,'” Collins said. “They’ll simply sometimes throw a number up there. They’ll say, ‘get rid of this.’ When you’re at a two thirds to one third disadvantage in these negotiations… that’s just exceedingly difficult to follow up on.”
He said while there are some Republican House members with good ideas, they won’t go anywhere until action is taken.
“I’m gonna just be very blunt: unless the Republicans in the House realize they are the majority, not the minority, and they put together 217 or 218 votes, then frankly, they’re just talking to themselves.”
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The uselessness of a GOP Majority is even being mocked by Republican Senators.
But NRCC Chair Hudson told the Washington Reporter he was optimistic for the GOP’s chances of maintaining their hold on the majority, touting the quality candidates being put forth who are not cookie-cutter Republicans.
Candidate quality is one of the most important factors, and so we really focused on this last year, and I can say we have one of the best recruitment classes we’ve ever had. We have men and women who don’t look or sound like a generic Republican. These are people that have really compelling life stories. They’re folks that unaffiliated and Democrat voters are going to take a second look at and we can win in places all over the country, from California, Oregon, all the way to Connecticut and Maine.
While this may be the case, and support for Trump is even stronger post-verdict, the jury is still out for Republican candidates down the ballot. While local Republican Party committees are cohesive in North Carolina and Florida, in states like California, Nevada, Tennessee, and Michigan, the infighting and fiefdom mentality has presented problems. However, if these candidates speak to their constituencies, and the GOP holds to their commitment of working on issues Americans actually care about (read: parental rights and the economy), they just might turn it around and regain the House for another term.
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We will see what solutions and strategies are borne from this tête-à-tête. Only five months to go until November… tick tock.