Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has said he will not vote to keep House Speaker Mike Johnson as president next year.
“He doesn’t have my vote,” Massie told CNN’s Manu Raju. When asked if he would change his mind, Massie said that would require “a Christmas miracle.”
Earlier this year, Massie supported Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in pushing to remove Johnson from the presidency, but the vast majority of members of both parties ultimately voted to push forward with the recall effort.
JOHNSON BATTLES SPEAKER’S POSSIBLE RIVALS AS CONSERVATIVES REBELL OVER GOVERNMENT’S FUNDING PLAN
“It’s a new paradigm in Congress. Nancy Pelosi and most Republicans voted to keep one-party President Mike Johnson,” Massie tweeted at the time.
This week Johnson had advocated a more than 1,500-page government spending measure that would have avoided the looming prospect of a partial government shutdown.
During an interview Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” Johnson said the spending measure would push the issue of government funding into March, when Republicans will have control of Congress and the White House, allowing the GOP to ” decide spending for 2025″.
The measure also included funding for disaster relief as well as related aid to farmers.
“Disaster relief and farm aid are not ‘pork’. It’s called governing. That’s what we were all ELECTED to do,” stated Rep. Greg Murphy, R.N.C., in a post on X.
Left: Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024; Right: House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks to reporters at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, following the Republican Conference meeting on December 17, 2024. (Left: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Right: ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP via Getty Images)
But conservatives criticized the proposal and Elon Musk spoke out against it.
President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance also weighed in. In a statement, they called for passage of “a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and Democrats everything they want.”
“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary NO DEMOCRATIC GIVEAWAY funding bill combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country…” they said in the statement.
HOUSE GOP LEADERS FIGHT FOR PLAN B AFTER TRUMP, MUSK LEAD CONSERVATIVE FURY AGAINST SPENDING BILL
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks at a campaign event for Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at McDivot’s Indoor Sports Pub on Jan. 7, 2024, in Grimes, Iowa. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Massie mocked Johnson this week by sharing an AI-generated image showing the speaker holding a hose while a house burned in the background.
He shared the image after declaring in a tweet that “US foreign aid spending is like watering your neighbor’s garden while your house is on fire.”
