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OAN Staff Blake Wolf
5:18 PM – Friday, January 3, 2025
President-elect Donald Trump spoke with two of the GOP holdouts preventing Speaker Mike Johnson from retaining his role as House speaker, flipping the votes and resulting in Johnson retaining his position.
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Reps. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and Keith Self (R-Texas) were the two House members who initially voted against Johnson (R-La.), in favor of other House Republicans, in a move which would have left Johnson without enough votes to secure the speaker’s gavel.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) another Republican who denounced Johnson’s leadership, declared that he was a “Hell no” on re-electing Johnson, under any circumstances.
Former House Rep. Matt Gaetz also asked if a possible compromise could flip Massie’s vote in favor of Johnson during an episode of “The Matt Gaetz Show” on One America News prior to the vote.
Massie soon responded to Gaetz’s query, stating: “Oh no, you can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow. And you can take that to the bank.”
“President Trump’s agenda needs to become law. Speaker Johnson has already demonstrated he is not the man who can get that done,” Massie added in an X post.
Meanwhile, Norman and Self both confirmed that they spoke with Trump on Friday, along with Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), who was lockstep with Trump in attempting to persuade Norman and Self to fall in line.
“We have got to make sure this Congress is as strong as possible when we go up against the Senate on the reconciliation package, because there are debates on what the reconciliation package even looks like. So that’s all I wanted to do today, is to make this Congress successful for the Trump agenda,” Self stated.
The reconciliation package is a legislative tool utilized to fast-track budget-related bills, allowing legislation to pass in the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes, rather than the usual 60 votes needed to bypass any potential filibusters.
Nearly an hour after the votes were cast, while the first ballot remained open, both Norman and Self returned to the House chamber, asking the clerk to reverse their votes to “Aye” for Johnson, securing the current speaker’s victory. “Aye” is used to signify “yes” or approval of the motion. “Nay” is used to signify “no” or disapproval.
Following the vote, Self revealed that he reversed his position in favor of Johnson because “Mike gave us the assurance that he was going to fight for everything as it moves forward.”
“We just impress on Mike the seriousness of what he’s about to do. Is he gonna fight for financial stops? Is he gonna fight? And that was our whole question. Trump was helpful, but I knew where Trump stood,” he added.
“My sole focus was advancing the Trump agenda. To ensure this, I expressed concerns to Speaker Johnson about fiscal responsibility and holding the line on deficit spending—key priorities for my constituents. After receiving firm assurances from the Speaker, that Republicans in the House will have strong representation during the budget reconciliation process—a cornerstone of President Trump’s agenda—I changed my initial vote,” Self wrote in an X post. “I appreciate Speaker Johnson addressing these critical issues. Let’s get to work.”
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