Speaker Mike Johnson: ‘President Trump is willing to take the arrows for doing the right thing’
When Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives was without a Speaker. Just two weeks later, Mike Johnson was elected to the role and opened his tenure by passing a resolution in support of Israel at one of its darkest hours.
“We are overdue in getting that done,” Johnson declared as he accepted the speakership. “We are going to show not only Israel, but the entire world that the barbarism of Hamas that we have all seen play out on our television screens is wretched and wrong, and we are going to stand for the good in the conflict.”
More than 600 days later, ALL ISRAEL NEWS Editor-in-Chief Joel Rosenberg sat down with Speaker Johnson to thank him personally for his leadership, particularly for pushing through an aid package to support Israel during the war.
“I just want to say thank you for that,” Rosenberg told Johnson during an exclusive interview on the latest episode of THE ROSENBERG REPORT on TBN.
Johnson on Trump’s Iran strike: “The president made the right choice”
Johnson had been scheduled to visit Israel in mid-June and deliver a speech to the Knesset on June 22. That same day turned out to be historic: The U.S. launched precision strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, dropping “bunker buster” bombs on three key sites.
“The bombing that took place set back their nuclear program substantially, and that is good for peace around the globe and for all freedom-loving people everywhere, and certainly Americans,” Johnson told Rosenberg, defending President Trump’s decision.
“If they had a nuclear capability, they would probably fire on Israel instantaneously. Their stated goal is to wipe Israel off the map, but they would certainly turn their attention to us as well,” he warned.
Johnson praised Trump’s consistency in confronting the Iranian threat and reiterated that the administration had offered the leaders in Tehran a chance to make a deal.
“They flatly refused it,” he said.
Rosenberg noted that “there was tremendous opposition,” Rosenberg noted, referencing two close friends of the president, former TV host Tucker Carlson and his former advisor Steve Banon. “Maybe they’re outliers, but they’re pretty influential outliers,” he argued.
“How concerned are you about the growing anti-Israel sentiment on the right?” he asked the House Speaker.
Johnson acknowledged the concerns of those wary of “forever wars” but argued that Iran posed a unique threat.
“There are isolationists in the party, and they’re anti-interventionists. This is neither of those things. It shouldn’t be a concern to those folks because we’re not going into nation-building. America is not investing anymore. We’re protecting our own interests,” he emphasized.
He added: “The president understands that to maintain our status as the strongest country in the world – the last great superpower which we are – you cannot allow an avowed enemy of the U.S. to have a nuclear weapon that they could potentially fire on a major U.S. city.”
“The president made the right choice, did the right thing. And by God’s grace, not a single American was harmed.”
On foreign policy: “America’s back because we’re strong again”
Rosenberg described the U.S. decision to partner with Israel in targeting Iran’s nuclear program as a foreign policy “correction,” possibly undoing the damage of the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“This may end up proving to be the antidote to President Biden pulling the plug on U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, and then seeing the entire 20-year investment collapse within hours,” he said.
Johnson agreed, adding that President Trump is willing to “take the arrows” for doing the right thing.
“I think history will record that this was clearly the right and necessary thing to have been done,” he said.
He added, “America’s back because we’re strong again. Our adversaries – Russia, China, Iran, North Korea – all of them have taken notice. That’s a very important thing for us to reestablish, especially after the last four years of total weakness and appeasement that the Democrats and the Biden-Harris administration brought about.”
When Rosenberg handed Johnson a copy of his latest thriller, ‘The Beijing Betrayal’ – a fictional story about Communist China preparing to invade Taiwan – he asked how the Speaker views the Chinese threat.
Johnson replied that he and many defense leaders consider China the U.S.’s chief adversary.
“We have to hold China to their barriers. This is a very important principle since World War Two, that you can’t just go take the neighboring country if you want. That’s not how this works anymore,” he said.
“I am heartened by our NATO alliance now committing to give 5% of their GDP instead of just 2%. Zero chance that would have happened if Donald J. Trump was not in the Oval Office,” he added.
On faith: “I follow the biblical mandates as best I can”
For Johnson, supporting Israel isn’t just geopolitics.
“It’s a matter of faith for me,” he told Rosenberg. “I think it is a model alliance that we have with Israel… It’s unlike any other in the nation because we have a shared Judeo-Christian heritage. It was part of the founding of our very nation 249 years ago.”
“This goes back to the opening book in Genesis, you know, ‘Bless the nation and blesses Israel and curse the nation and curses Israel.’”
When asked about his personal faith journey, Johnson shared that he had a transformative moment at age 12, when his father – a firefighter – was involved in a workplace explosion that left him with burns on roughly 80% of his body.
“I was a little guy, but I thought, this is real. God is active and involved, and we can turn to him. And that’s informed how I orchestrate my life. I have a biblical worldview. It’s not something you can separate,” he said.
Johnson also revealed he was “a product of a teen pregnancy,” born to high school sweethearts in their junior year in January 1972, a year before Roe v. Wade.
“Lots of people tried to convince them to just ‘take care’ of that problem,” he said. “But thankfully for me, my parents were raised in Catholic families, and they knew something about the sanctity of human life. They dropped out of school and went to work and had me.”
He was raised in a Christian household with three younger siblings and was baptized at age seven “in a horse trough behind our country church.”
“Faith has gotten me every day of my life, and it’s very real to me,” he said. “I follow the biblical mandates as best I can. The commands, the principles in Scripture is what guides me here every single day. I try to follow them here and I try to encourage others to do it as well.”
“By the way, that’s seen as some sort of radical thing here. It’s exactly what the framers of our great republic did. They believed those same principles. It’s what created our country.”
