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Mike Johnson Privately Tells Republicans Trump Doesn’t Want a Shutdown

The speaker briefed members on his private conversation with Trump and left them with some key impressions.

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson listens to former President Donald Trump talk with reporters as he arrives at Manhattan criminal court.
Speaker Mike Johnson listens as former President Donald Trump talks with reporters at Manhattan criminal court in New York. Justin Lane/AP

House GOP leaders are all too aware that the upcoming vote on a stopgap government funding bill won’t be kind to them. They’re hoping Donald Trump will be.

According to two sources in the room, Speaker Mike Johnson privately told a group of members Monday that Trump agrees it was a select few Republican lawmakers, not Johnson, who ruined the GOP’s chances of getting the SAVE Act attached to a continuing resolution. And Johnson said Trump agrees that Republicans would take the blame for a shutdown, these sources told NOTUS.

Johnson reiterated this sentiment at a GOP members-only conference meeting on Tuesday morning, telling members that Trump knows there are Republicans who will lose if they don’t keep the government open, according to two people in the room.