►強生議長首度揭露這項法案背後的 16 個月祕密部署內幕, 並且模仿了川普問討論法案名稱的趣事... 一個不可錯過的好片...

Welcome back to the Pod Force One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine, and today I'm in the United States Capitol building, and I'm joined by the third in line to the presidency, Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Speaker Johnson, thank you so much for joining us on Pod Force One, and congratulations on getting the one big, beautiful bill over the line. Yep. How did you do it? A lot of prayer and patience. Really, we're getting a lot of credit for pulling off a miracle. It wasn't. I think it was Vince Lombardi that said, victory loves preparation. Right. So we prepared for this. Back in the spring of 2024, we had the vision for what we believed would happen. I was convinced President Trump was coming back to the White House, and I thought we'd have the majority in the House and the Senate, but we knew the majorities would be small because we're in an era of gerrymandering and redistricting, and we have a three-vote margin in both chambers now. So we looked ahead of that, anticipating we would have this historic moment, and that we would have to fix every metric of public policy because Biden and Harris just destroyed everything in four years. So to do that, we knew we would need to do a partisan exercise. We would have to use the budget reconciliation process, which is, as you know, the only way around the 60-vote threshold in the Senate, which is always otherwise necessary. So to do that... Which you're never going to make. Never going to make. I mean, Chuck Schumer, the Democrat, is not going to help. No. And we knew that. So I told all my colleagues, we had a retreat where we planned all this, and I said, guys, this is what's going to happen. We're going to have unified government. We've got to make the most of it. Let's do reconciliation bigger than it's ever been done in history. Instead of just using two committees of jurisdiction like in the past, why don't we use 11 committees? But to do that, it's going to be very complicated, very complex. It's going to be a very large piece of legislation. But if we plan accordingly, we can achieve that goal together. And that's what we did. So we started planning over a year ago, about 15 or 16 months of work went into delivering that final vote in time for July 4th. And when you say work, I mean, it's patience. It is actually like wrangling human beings. How do you do that? What does the Speaker actually do? Well, the Speaker in the modern era is different, I think, than it was probably in previous generations. There's always been a whip operation. But the way Congress has evolved now in the age of social media, when everyone could go online every two minutes and say what they're disgruntled about. I'm really as much a mental health counselor as I am a legislator, you know, a policy director, because you've got to do all these things simultaneously and you have to deal with everyone with their individual preferences and peccadilloes. And it's not always easy, you know. But we had a one vote margin for most of the first hundred days, the smallest in history. It would seemingly be an impossible set of circumstances. But look, I genuinely love everybody I serve with. I know what makes them tick. I know the dynamics of their districts. I know where their pressure points are. And I try to work every day to make everybody successful, you know, to have them be of their highest and best use to the country and to their constituents. And that's the trick. And that's what we try to do every single day. So who's your most troublesome member or the one you've had to spend the most amount of time with? I'm not going to name names. I mean, you know, they self-identify because they go out on social media and cause problems sometimes. But look, I love and respect them all. Some of them require more attention than others. But, you know, they're everybody's principal here. They're all trying to achieve the best objective for their constituents and for the country. And I respect that. And, you know, I never famously remind them all, I'm never going to ask anybody to compromise a core principle. I do expect them to give up on some of their preferences because that's the way a legislative body works, you know, it's a deliberative public body. And you have 219 colleagues here on our side of the aisle. So I expect them to do that at the end. But I do a lot less arm twisting than I do just convincing, you know. You also had Elon Musk who kind of came in out of the shadows at the end and tried to kill the bill. And I know you'd spend a lot of time educating him, bringing him along in the process. What went wrong? Look, Elon is a genius, OK? He does things that I can't even fathom. But one of his fields of expertise was not necessarily crafting legislation, right? So got to know him really well over the last year as he came on board with the Trump agenda and helping the campaign and all that. In fact, he requested a meeting with me months before the election, came in and sat down in my office and said, I'm going to get involved in a big way. And we just kind of brainstormed together. What did he want from you? Well, he was launching the PAC and he was going to invest a lot of money. And he wanted, I guess, inside counsel on best practices and tips and maybe some recommendations on persons who he could get involved because that just wasn't his field area. So I got to know and respect Elon. We became friends in the whole process. And when the Doge effort was launched and started, we met early on in the process. I talked to him about the codification process, that we didn't want this to be a flash in the pan. We wanted to codify it, make it a permanent part of the way we do business here. And there's a certain series of steps that we had to go through, a sequential series of steps to do that. He understands the science part of that. But at the end, he just became disgruntled with the package and the way it was done. Elon, I've tried to convince him, we're taking several steps. I call it the five steps to fiscal sanity, fiscal responsibility. Because you're a Hulk yourself. Yes. And we spend too much money and the debt is our number one national security threat. 100% of GDP. Yes. More than that now. The trajectory is not sustainable, but we can't solve the problem overnight because it took decades for us to get here. The big, beautiful bill was a giant leap forward. We're going to save over $1.5 trillion in spending. It's the largest that any legislative body in the history of mankind has ever done. Is it enough? No. It's a drop in the bucket. But it is a turn. I use the metaphor of an aircraft carrier. The US economy is that. You don't turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes a mile of open ocean when it's top speed. This was the first big crank on the wheel, the turn on the wheel that we've had in generations. And now we have the next sequential steps to do to continue that. And the next step is something called a rescission bill, isn't it? Which, explain just briefly what that is and what you'll be cutting. I think it's like $94 billion. Yes. A rescission is, in layman's terms, it's when Congress claws back spending that has been wasted, fraud, waste and abuse. Under the Biden administration. That's right. That's right. And the president and his administration came in, identified these areas like USAID, for example, which was just fraud with abuse and wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars. We were funding transgender operas in Peru. Congress didn't know that, right? Which is one of the credits to the Doge effort is they were able to crack the code, get inside the belly of the beast of the agencies, crawl through the data with magic algorithms and find these things that we didn't know. So we found that out. We were alarmed as everyone was, and we immediately sought to bring it back. But in order to do that, you have to get requests from the administration, the White House, the executive branch to the legislative branch saying, please take this back. We did that and we passed it in the House. It's pending action in the Senate right now. And that we hope is the first of a series of rescissions packages that come forward where we, you know, again, in our steps, our sequential steps to getting back fiscal sanity. That's going to be a piece of it. And so USAID, all that wasteful money plus NPR, PBS. Yes. Why is that? Well, we've long known conservatives have been frustrated about NPR and PBS, for example, for many, many years because it's a lopsided, you know, biased journalism. They're not objective in any formal fashion. It's propaganda. Let's call it what it is. And taxpayers should not be funding that. So we feel strongly about that. The rescissions package reflects that and I hope the Senate sees it the same way. And Elon Musk couldn't be convinced that this was the right way to go about it. Or was it something personal? I felt like it wasn't really about the bill. He was disgruntled with, I don't know, not being in favor with Donald Trump or something. I don't know what. Probably a multitude of factors. I'll let everybody else judge the motivations behind it. But clearly he got unhappy in a very short period of time. I mean, he generally knew what we were doing and we talked about it. I mean, he knew for months, I mean, many months we worked on this and I was keeping him apprised of it. I was sending him long text messages explaining each piece. We talked about it in person. I don't think he was, but the final product maybe didn't meet all of his expectations in terms of what we're doing, for example, with electric vehicles and the Biden mandates and all of that. But there are other things as well. But look, I let other people judge that. I've got to keep my eyes on the prize and keep moving forward. And I'm trying to be a peacemaker in all of it. I've reached out to Elon multiple times. For the seats to blow up. Yes. And I wanted he and the president to mend it up. And frankly, I think the president was of that mind as well. But, you know, there's some tension there. Yeah. So, and he's responded, Elon, to you? Well, through a third party, actually. I mean, it's not really all his fault. I sent him a long text message and then his phone, his number changed because after the blow up, something happened with this. So, I got the number later and realized I was sending it out into the ether somewhere. He never read it. So, I look forward to meeting with him in person. We've got to make that right. I've got nothing against Elon, obviously. I have great respect for what he's done. And I just want him to fully understand what we're doing and remind him of the strategy. This is a long term play. We can't fix this stuff overnight, but we have a plan to do it. And I think that's going to be pleasing to everybody who's worried about our deficit and our debt. And Donald Trump, what's your relationship like with him now? You've become, I mean, he's called the sort of the second speaker. You've been working hand in glove, I know, with this. We have. I mean, we've been working together now almost a decade. I mean, I came to Congress in January 2017 as a freshman in Congress at the same time he was introduced to Washington. So, we sort of walked through a lot of those valleys together and had built a very close relationship, one of trust and close friendship. And he calls me all the time. We talk through strategy. And I think it's very important for the country to have a president, the commander in chief and a speaker of the House who have a great working relationship, certainly when we're of the same party and have the same policy and agenda in mind. Because it didn't happen with Paul Ryan, did it? I mean, you saw that. Yeah. And it wasn't Paul's fault. The two men had just never known one another and no one expected Trump to win in 2016. And when he did, it was a shock and awe thing. And the leadership in the Congress at the time was being introduced to the president as everyone else in Washington was. So, they had a big disadvantage there. They had to forge that kind of relationship in the middle of the, you know, fire. We have the benefit of having had long history together and been through a lot together. And... The impeachment you... Yes. I was one of his defense attorneys twice. And, you know, I served on the Judiciary Committee, which was ground zero for a lot of the lawfare that they engaged in against the president, against President Trump. He's the most maligned and attacked public figure in all of the history of American politics. He's also the most resilient. And so, I so deeply respect that about him and the fact that he can't hold them down. And I made the comment on the anniversary of the Butler shooting, you know, a couple of days ago that he's a different person now than he was in the first term. He's more thoughtful, contemplative. He thinks very carefully about decisions and is open to counsel on it. I mean, I think his head and his heart are in exactly the right place where we would all want them to be. And why has he changed? Well, I think surviving two failed assassination attempts will get any man's attention. It makes him think deeply, I think, about his legacy, his place in history. And God? And God, yeah. And he and I talk about that openly. Really? Everybody knows where I stand on this. I told him right after the first attempt, I said, there are no accidents. I don't believe in luck. I believe that was providential. God spared your life on the world stage. Sixty four days later, after the second failed assassination attempt, when the Secret Service found the gun in the bushes on the golf course in Florida. Providentially, my wife and I were landing in Mar-a-Lago to meet with him right after that round of golf. And it just so happened the way it all worked. We wound up in Mar-a-Lago together. And he and I, my wife, Susie Wiles, and Hogan Gidley, who works on my staff, used to work on his. The five of us sat in a corner in Mar-a-Lago when the place was locked down before the all for almost three hours. And had right after, I mean, he came in his golf attire and we sat and processed that. And it was a very. Did you pray? Yeah. I mean, I did. I don't know if I prayed over him, but I tell you what he, I told him, I said, God's not spared your life twice on the world stage. It's no small thing. And clearly you're going to win the election and you're going to be raised up to run the greatest country in the history of the world for the second time. What a profound thing that is. And man, that settled on him and you could see it on his countenance of his face. And he's, he's spoken openly about that ever since. He says it routinely now, God saved his life. I believe that. I believe millions of Americans believe and understand that. And he's upheld by the prayer of a lot of people every day. And that's a profound thing. And you had an incident yourself, didn't you, in 23, when you were at Mar-a-Lago and your two older sons, I think 18 and 13, almost drowned. Tell us about that. Well, it's a long story. The short version is we, I was down there raising money. I'd been speaker for about a month. It was in November of 23. Yeah, that's right. And my boys were on Thanksgiving break for school. So they went with me. And my oldest son is now just completed his freshman year at the Naval Academy and a great athlete. He wants to be special forces and all that. And his younger brother, also a great athlete, but they were out in the Atlantic and they got caught in a rip current and pulled far out to sea. I was inside the building having meetings with donors and my security detail ran and burst into the room and said, sir, you're needed on the beach. And I could tell on their faces. Long story short, they got pulled far out and they almost drowned. My oldest son was holding his younger brother, 13-year-old brother up and he almost drowned. And then the younger one almost did as well, Jack and Will. They went to the ER and their lungs pumped. I mean, it was quite an ordeal. They're great swimmers, but the rip current was so strong that day and they got pulled far, far out. And the only reason they were saved is because a parasailor happened to be going by and saw just my youngest son's head right before he went under waving for help. And the guy diverted to the beach and they sent the jet skis out and the rest is history. So the president, after I got them kind of nursed back to health, we flew back home to Louisiana early on the trip. And the president found out about it 24 hours later. I didn't even tell him. We'd had dinner with him the night before, my sons and I. And he called me and he was so alarmed by what he heard. And he said, like, it's like a miracle. I said, it is. Had it not been for the parasailor, he would have lost both my sons. And he was so struck by that because he's very close to his sons. It just really resonated in his heart. So fast forward to the Butler, Pennsylvania event, many months later when that happened, when I spoke to him after that, I said, you know, God saved your life just as he did my boys in Mar-a-Lago. And he had already acknowledged that was true. And, you know, God works in mysterious ways sometimes, teaching us all these lessons, but that was a tough one. Yeah. And I know that you do some amazing impersonations of Donald Trump. Can you do one for us? No, I just hear his voice in my head when I'm relating a conversation we've had. It comes out in his voice, you know. What did he say to you about the one big, beautiful bill? Was there something? Well, quick story. So when we named it, we were in the Oval Office. We were sitting in front of the Resolute Desk. He's at the desk and Thune was here and Jason Smith, the Ways and Means Chair, and I think J.D. was there and other staffers. And Chris said, what are we going to name? What are you going to call it? And Jason Smith says, well, sir, we got a few great options. You know, these are, you know, clever acronyms. He goes, no, I just think we call it the one big, beautiful bill. Don't you think that's great? That's so simple. It's great. And he passed it around to us on a piece of paper and pulled it apart. One put an exclamation point. I said, sir, no, we can't do an exclamation point. That's not a thing in legislation, you know. He has dialed in like no commander chief has been in recent memory. I don't know that there is a precedent for a president who's so engaged. He's unique. He's very unique that way. And the country needs it right now. And the American First Agenda is no longer a slogan. It's now the law of the land because of the big, beautiful bill. We've got more to do. Do you think MAGA will survive when President Trump is gone, when he's no longer in office? Is there anyone else that could keep that coalition together? He and I talked about this about 48 hours ago. He called me early in the morning, whatever today is, I don't know, a couple of days ago. And that was the subject part of the subject of the conversation. I think the movement goes forward. It won't be the same without him. But he's done a recalibration of our party in many ways. We brought in new demographics, big groups of people that had not been with us probably since the early 80s under Reagan. Full of Democrat voters. That's right. We're a working class party, as we should be. And we represent the core principles. And I'm one of the people who's trying to keep us tied to the moorings. The core principles of our party are the core principles of America. They're the principles that made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. And we abandon them at our peril. And so there's a lot of competing ideas and different forces out there right now. But I think we've got to hold on to the soul of the party because that's what's gotten us to this point.