Speaker Says Meeting With Rep. Greene ‘Not a Negotiation’

Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 21, 2024; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) outside the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on March 13, 2024. Alex Wong, Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that his two-and-a-half hour meeting with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on May 6 was “not a negotiation.”

The two met in the speaker’s office ahead of an expected move by Ms. Greene to bring a motion to vacate against Mr. Johnson to the floor—a move that’s all but predestined to fail due to Democrats announcing their backing for the speaker.

“I take Marjorie’s ideas and Thomas’s and everybody else’s equally and we assess them on their own value, and where we can make improvements and changes,” Mr. Johnson said on May 7 about the May 6 meeting during the weekly Republican leadership press conference. He was referring to Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).

Ms. Greene herself later seemed to refute that framing after she released a list of demands she discussed with the speaker on May 6.

Last week Ms. Greene vowed that she was “absolutely bringing” the motion to the floor this week in order to force lawmakers to take a vote on the matter on the record.

But the Georgia Republican seemed to soften that tone after her meeting with the speaker on May 6, when she indicated in brief comments to the press that she would be meeting with the speaker again before making a final decision on her motion to vacate.

“We’re going to be meeting again tomorrow based on the discussion that we’ve had. And so we really don’t have any news to report,” Ms. Greene, joined by Mr. Massie, told reporters.

The situation was much the same after the two lawmakers met on May 7.

Leaving the speaker’s office, Ms. Greene made no remarks and avoided taking questions from the press, leaving the next steps of her motion to vacate uncertain.

Greene’s Demands

The public details of the closed-door meeting—during which Mr. Johnson was joined by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Ms. Greene was joined by Mr. Massie—are sparse, but Ms. Greene has indicated that she made some demands of the speaker.

In a May 7 post on X after details of the discussion leaked to the press, Ms. Greene listed several of these.

One of these demands was that Mr. Johnson adhere to the Hastert rule in the House moving forward. The House Republican rule dictates that all legislation brought to the floor must be supported by a majority of the Republican conference before the speaker can allow a floor vote on it.

This comes after several controversial funding and policy bills have passed the lower chamber with the support of less than half of the House Republican conference, relying on broad Democratic support to pass the lower chamber.

Another of Ms. Greene’s demands include a promise that Mr. Johnson agree not to pass further funding for Ukraine—an issue which has galvanized the right-flank of the House Republican conference as the war has dragged on with no end in sight.

Ms. Greene also demanded that Mr. Johnson pass legislation defunding special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of former President Donald Trump.

Mr. Johnson seems open to doing so, as he said on May 7, “All these cases need to be dropped, because they are a threat to our entire system.”

He described Mr. Smith’s probe of President Trump as “fraudulent.”

When asked about pursuing measures to defund the probe, Mr. Johnson said, “We’re looking very intently at it because I think the problem has reached a crescendo.”

Many Republicans have dismissed the charges in President Trump’s criminal case as a trumped up witch hunt designed to swing the election in President Joe Biden’s favor.

Meanwhile, The Epoch Times has obtained a document making rounds among conservatives detailing what they feel are Mr. Johnson’s successes and failures during his tenure as speaker.

The document applauds much that Mr. Johnson has done, including his original financial support package for Israel, which was paid for by slashing $14 billion from the budget of the Internal Revenue Service, and some of the individual appropriations bills that have passed under his direction.

But they criticized his persistent use of stopgap funding bills under suspension of the rules, which relied on Democratic support to pass.

The document is also critical of Mr. Johnson’s approach to reauthorizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without a warrant requirement. Mr. Johnson provided the deciding vote to kill the warrant requirement.

Conservatives are also unhappy with Mr. Johnson’s use of omnibus funding bills, which were also reliant on Democrats’ support to pass, as well as his passage of a $95 billion foreign aid package without border provisions.

While the document has no official implications, it’s an indication of conservatives’ mindset moving into a potential vote on a motion to vacate later this week.