How Mike Johnson Is Taming Trump and His Party — Against All Odds

If those developments, namely Ukraine running out of weapons, finally brought urgency to the speaker, his decision to call the foreign aid vote Saturday delivered a bracing dose of political clarity in Washington. Following the vote Saturday, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Johnson’s fellow Louisianan, told me the U.S. was “standing up to the evil actors around the world, there’s an axis of evil right now between Russia, Iran and China.” Few in the House have been more aggressive than the Foreign Relations Chair, Mike McCaul of Texas, in trying to rekindle those embers. It was also no coincidence that Cameron and foreign ministers of Germany and Italy cut a video from the G-7 foreign ministers conference last week in which they emphasized the need for Europe to do more for Ukraine because, as the Briton put it in the clip, “this is about our security and our continent.” As significant, Polish president Andrzej Duda made his own well-timed trek to see Trump, this time at Trump Tower in Manhattan, and used a lengthy Wednesday dinner last week to discuss Europe doing more for Ukraine and Putin’s expansionist appetites. After the vote Saturday, she said of McCarthy: “We could have never gotten here because people didn’t trust whatever he said.” Gotten here is, of course, an allusion to the implied bargain Johnson struck with House Democrats: If he brought Ukraine funding to a vote, they’d help block any far-right effort to remove him from the speakership. The burden is not nearly as heavy, but Johnson’s sudden ascent and the immediate demands recall what Harry Truman said upon hearing of Franklin Roosevelt’s death 79 years ago this month: “I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.” I had that thought when I reached out to James Carville, Johnson’s fellow Louisianan and an animated critic of the new speaker.