Politics
House Speaker Johnson dismisses Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bid to remove him
By Jake Beardslee · January 18, 2024
In brief…
- Johnson said he has a job to do and won't be deterred by Greene's opposition to Ukraine funding.
- Greene has threatened to bring a motion to vacate the chair if Johnson backs a bipartisan spending deal with Ukraine aid.
- Johnson says he understands Greene's position but has to balance various demands as speaker.
House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed threats by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Wednesday after she claimed she’d move to oust him from the speaker’s chair if he supports additional aid for Ukraine.
“I have a job to do. We all have to do our jobs,” Johnson told CNN. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is very upset about the lack of oversight over the funding and the lack of articulation of a plan, as am I, all of us.”
Greene told Fox News on Sunday that she’d bring a motion to vacate the chair if Johnson supported a bipartisan deal, including funding for Ukraine and U.S. border security. She argued last week that it’d be a “failing, losing” strategy if a deal involved trading billions for Ukraine “for our own country’s border security.”
Her threat comes after she previously criticized House Freedom Caucus Chair Chip Roy (R-Texas) for not ruling out supporting a motion to boot Johnson, calling it “the dumbest thing that could happen.”
CNN host Kaitlan Collins noted on Wednesday that Greene doesn’t want “any Ukraine funding, period, no matter what the White House says the plan is.”
Johnson said he understands Greene’s position and claimed she has “made her position very clear” to him directly.
“We have to do our job. We have to continue to ensure that we’re covering all these bases, and we’ll see how all this shakes out,” Johnson said. “I’m not worried about that. I got a job to do here, and we have to make sure that we get the answers that we’ve demanded.”
Johnson replaced former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in October after McCarthy failed to secure enough Republican votes. He now faces a similar challenge of balancing demands from conservatives like Greene while trying to keep the government funded.