Speaker 1 (00:00):
To our activists across the country who are watching at 72 watch parties across the country, thank you all so much for spending a little bit of your Monday with us, and thank you for everything that you do every day to advance the cause of freedom.
Audience (00:16):
Woo! Woo!
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Here in the room we are joined by a great group of allies as well as eight of our top activists from across the country. Thank you all so much for being here.
Audience (00:32):
Yes!
Speaker 1 (00:37):
And in just a moment, we're going to have the opportunity to welcome our special guest for the day, the speaker of the house, Mike Johnson and Guy Benson, who many of you know as a Fox News contributor, but he is also a member of AFP's Advisory Council.
Audience (00:52):
Woo!
Speaker 1 (00:57):
So Guy and the speaker are going to have a conversation, and in this conversation they're going to touch on two topics that are near and dear to AFP's heart: core principles and public policy. At AFP, we strive to bring principled solutions to the biggest policy challenges facing our country today. And we do that by also bringing the voice of the American people to back up those solutions. The work that we do in grassroots communities across the country to engage and mobilize concern citizens to have their voices heard in the public policy debates on the most important issues. Now, over the past two years, our teams collectively have logged over 1 million miles under the soles of their shoes, knocking on doors. We mapped it out, 1 million miles.
Audience (01:57):
Woo-hoo!
Speaker 1 (01:57):
We reached 30 million of our fellow citizens, and that's just in the last two years. We've been doing this for 20 years. And over the course of that 20 years, there's been one thing that's been consistent, and it's pretty important for today's conversation. When public policy is characterized by core principles, you get pretty good policy and you get tremendous results for the American people, more freedom, more opportunity to live the American dream. So we're thrilled, and I know I speak on behalf of everybody who works with AFP, we are thrilled to have the opportunity to hear how Speaker Johnson thinks about these core principles and frankly thank him for his approach to public policy through their lens. But we also know we have to put these principles into action, and so it's fortuitous that we're having this conversation today on such a consequential week for the House of Representatives.
(02:59)
They're coming back into session here to continue their work on the budget resolution. AFP's number one priority this year is the extension of the Trump tax cuts to avoid a massive tax increase on millions of Americans at a time when they can least afford it. To do this, we launched a major $20 million campaign called Protect Prosperity. And it is through this campaign that we're bringing the voice of the American people to the halls of Congress to make sure that as this legislation works its way through Congress, it doesn't just reflect the will of the people, but it also reflects these core principles. This isn't easy work and the stakes are very high. So to help us understand the path forward, please join me in welcoming our guests, Guy Benson and the speaker of the house, Mike Johnson.
Guy Benson (03:55):
Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you.
Mike Johnson (03:56):
Thanks. Thank you. Great. Thanks.
Guy Benson (04:13):
All right. Well, thank you all for being here. Big thanks to AFP here at the Freedom Embassy for hosting this really important event. Looking forward to this conversation with the speaker. I want to start just on a personal note. I saw you post on social media, what was it last week, I want to say? A photo with you welcoming Boyz II Men to the Capitol. And a buddy of mine sent it to me, he said, "Mike Johnson is on a journey, and I love it for him." Do you ever have moments like you're on the plane with Trump or you're at UFC and you're always in the background of these photos? Do you ever think, "How is this my life?" 'Cause the accidental speaker thing is turned into a pretty effective speaker reality. Give us your journey up to this point, if you would.
Mike Johnson (04:53):
Well, as Kid Rock and Jelly Roll and I were talking about this, it has been a wild ride. These are consequential times. People ask me all the time am I having fun in this position? And I just look at them and say, "Really don't have time for fun." I'm really very much like a wartime speaker and have been since they handed me the gavel in October 2023. This is not a job I ever aspired to, but it fell to us to do it and lead in these very challenging times. But I'm absolutely convinced that America is coming back and that's what keeps us going. There are a few moments of respite in there, and those events are some of them. Meeting Boyz II Men was a great treat. I am way older than most of you in the audience, but if you were in high school in the late '80s, early '90s, that's like the soundtrack of your life. And those guys are my age. We're all in our early 50s. They look so much better than me. And I chose the wrong profession, but it was great to meet them.
Guy Benson (05:45):
So right outside here, there are the seven principles that you always talk about. If you just remind us what they are, number one. And then the question I have is, obviously there is some opposition to a number of them on the left. Are you concerned about maybe some undermining of faith in those principles within certain precincts on the right as well these days?
Mike Johnson (06:07):
Yeah. So let me tell you the origin of this. In 2019, I was elected to be chairman of the Republican Study Committee, largest caucus and conservatives in Congress, largest caucus, but certainly the most conservative. And I was just a sophomore and I wasn't the most senior person in the room, but my background was in constitutional law and I had, as I like to say, a toolbox full of totally unmarketable skills. But what came together at that time was this recalibration of who we were as a party. This is two years into the Trump administration and a lot of the furniture's being moved around and some broken, and some of it needed to be. But I was concerned that we would not lose our fixed points and horizons, so to speak.
(06:42)
So I stood in front of all the House Republicans in the conference, the caucus at the time, and I said… There's about 158 of them, and I said, "Guys, if you had just a brief moment to have a discussion with a young millennial or young progressive to tell them why our philosophy and our principles are superior to theirs, what would you say? If you had to convince an entire library full of conservative thought from Edmund Burke to today down to a half page for a short concise summary, what would you say?"
(07:11)
I said, "To me, I think it boils down to individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets and human dignity." Now, under each of those things there'd be lots of subcategories and you could unpack it depending upon the moment you're in. But that to me is the essence of who we are, not just as a party, but who we've been as Americans. There's a reason America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. It's not even close, really. Objectively, we're the most powerful, most successful, most free, most benevolent nation that's ever been. And it's because we are based on those founding principles, and we don't want to lose sight of them as things change in our modern era.
Guy Benson (07:51):
When you look at the election that just happened, there's always this, it's the most important election of our lifetime mantra. Sometimes that feels closer to the truth than other times. This was a very consequential election, and we've heard President Trump talk a lot about a mandate that he feels that he's won. And he swept the swing states, won the popular vote, did some things that folks were not expecting him to do, at least the skeptics. By the same token, I don't have to tell you how slim the majority is in your House, even in the upper chamber as well. I know that feels like more breathing room, but still awfully close. How do you look at what the voters decided in November? Does that constitute a mandate for the party generally, and what does that look like in terms of your priorities here?
Mike Johnson (08:37):
Great question. I think there is a mandate, not only did President Trump win the Electoral College soundly, he also won the popular vote, 77 million votes. We got our highest vote total ever in history of the House Republicans, 74.8 million votes. We did all that together. Some would say, "Oh, you rode President Trump's coattails." But I think it was a combination of things. What we achieved in this election cycle was a demographic shift. I think
Mike Johnson (09:00):
A once in a generation, once in my lifetime kind of event where we had a record number of Hispanic and Latino voters, for example, Black and African-American voters, Jewish voters and union workers, and all these people who had not historically been in our camp and they came over, not reluctantly but enthusiastically. They were looking for an alternative. The Left went too far. The woke progressive nonsense, it's sort of like, as I explained it in my mind, the pendulum, they pushed so aggressively, so quickly that it clicked and now it's coming back. President Trump represents a force that is pushing it back to common sense and the center right kind of balance where we are and always have been in the nation and we are going to be a force of that as well. So we do see it as a mandate. We do see it as our responsibility to take care of business.
(09:44)
Now I want you to know that, I mean, I traveled the country nonstop last year to make sure we kept the majority and grew it and every day, almost literally, that we were not in session I was on the road. I did over 350 campaign events, 250 cities in 40 states. I logged enough miles to circle the globe five and a half times last year, that's a real statistic. I was four inches taller whenever I became Speaker of the House, they beat me down mercilessly.
(10:05)
But we did grow the majority. And I was so proud [inaudible 00:10:08] because I had 220 Republicans and 215 Democrats and then President Trump began to cull the herd. And so he took a few, and I called him like, "Mr. president, you cannot take anymore. We're going to be down to one." "Oh, Mike, did I do that?" "Yes you did, sir. We're down to one." So now really, I mean this is true. We have a one vote margin now, the smallest in history. So for a big chunk of the first a hundred days of the Congress and perhaps beyond, this is not an easy task, but we're going to get it done. We have the most aggressive, important legislative agenda that we've had certainly in my lifetime, I think. And when we get this done, it will be an extraordinary achievement because the vote's margin is so small.
Guy Benson (10:48):
Two related questions. One on the timeline for filling some of the aforementioned, Trump-created vacancies, a couple in Florida, there's one in New York. As you think about a legislative agenda moving forward and you look at the calendar, what are you expecting? What are you anticipating in terms of getting those seats filled? Because Florida, I know that they're doing everything they possibly can. New York with Stefanik's seat, that's a different question, because the governance up there, they're not as interested in helping you get some folks back into your caucus. I know they talk a lot about democracy, but it seems like they're pretty comfortable with a seat remaining vacant for as long as possible in upstate New York.
Mike Johnson (11:28):
That's true. Florida, we have a date certain, it'll be April 1, April Fool's Day. Don't put too much stock into that. It will be two Republicans. We already know who they are. Those are deep red districts and it's reliable spaces. It's Mike Waltz's seat, and Matt Gaetz's seat. Elise Stefanik's seat in New York is different because you're right, the liberal Left Democrats run state assembly and they've not been kind to us there at the state capitol and they're toying with the idea of extending and holding that seat open under some guise of democracy until the fall, perhaps it's one of the suggestions.
Guy Benson (12:01):
A delayed election for democracy.
Mike Johnson (12:03):
For democracy, yeah. Forget about the fact that 750,000 upstate New Yorkers would be without representation in Congress for no apparent reason, under existing New York law, that vacancy is supposed to be filled no later than 90 days from the date that it is vacated. So we'll see what happens. They haven't changed the law yet. If we get the budget resolution passed this week, which is the plan, then it's possible that Elise Stefanik would go ahead and move on to her assignment at the UN as the ambassador there, once she gets through the confirmation process in the Senate, which I think will go quickly, and then that would start the clock. And so let's hope that we can get it filled in time and hope that the law is respected by Democrats in New York.
Guy Benson (12:45):
And I want to come back to this week in a second, but again, looking at priorities, you're starting to see some softness in the polling for the president, for the party, maybe a honeymoon that he never enjoyed last time, he's had it. The polls are conflicting about whether that's starting to maybe taper off or not. But one consistent data point that we're seeing is that there is still this extreme concern among voters about the cost of living and the price of everything. And obviously a mess was inherited, there's no question about that, but at some point you're in the driver's seat as a Republican Party controlling the trifecta, what is it that you would say to voters who are wondering, are they really focusing on what matters the most to us, which would be the cost of living and probably immigration, those top two. Plenty on immigration, what about on that number one issue that really I think was so harmful to the Democrats in the Fall?
Mike Johnson (13:38):
Yeah, it was. Clearly, the President and all of us ran on a set of issues that were the most important to the people. We've got to secure the border. We have to get the economy under control, reduce inflation. We've got to get American energy dominance back and restore peace through strength, reduce the regulatory state, the bureaucracy, the deep state. All those processes are underway. The president's done an heroic job with executive authority right out of the gates and accomplished quite a bit. DOGE is working overtime and all these things are happening, now we have to codify it. So the reconciliation process is the key to getting that done. And for a lot of people back home who don't follow all the machinations here, the reconciliation is the one exception to having to get 60 votes, the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Because we only have to have 53 Republicans in the Senate right now, doing something with a bare majority is the way to go.
(14:30)
So we'll use the reconciliation process to check a lot of the boxes of the promises that we made and that is how we will get to the cost of living. The price of eggs is up high, and that has more to do with bird flu than anything else. There's a lot of mixed messages out there, but obviously inflation continues to be a major problem. The way to do that is to make sure small businesses have certainty, to make sure we don't have the largest tax increase in US history, which is what will happen by default at the end of this year if we're not successful in this mission to get taxes down, reduce regulations, and free up the free market again. And the way you do that, the way you ensure prosperity, which is what we're all about, is to get the government out of the way. This is the team to do it, and reconciliation is the vehicle in which we're going to get it done.
Guy Benson (15:13):
Easier said than done. The way that the logistics work out is something I want to delve into. Before we do that, if you're just joining us, we're at the AFP Freedom Embassy, Speaker Mike Johnson, our guest, and there's a few folks here that AFP has recognized as really high-level activists who've done a lot of work on the ground and got a couple questions for you from them. So let's start, I'm sure this was done completely at random, but one of them happens to be from Louisiana. Eric is with us from your home state. Eric, take it away.
Eric (15:42):
Hi, Mr. Speaker. My name is Eric. I recently graduated from our alma mater, Louisiana State University, and I'm focused on my future, hopefully building a career, starting a family in Louisiana, but the last few years have been difficult with the rising cost of energy, housing and groceries. How would your principles and your vision for the next couple of years on issues help me and other Louisianians achieve our goal?
Mike Johnson (16:05):
Great question. See, LSU students are so bright, they're [inaudible 00:16:10]. Look, I'll concede to you that you got greater challenges than I had when I graduated LSU and started a family in Louisiana back in the mid-90s. There's a lot of headwinds right now. This election really was for all the marbles. I mean, it was a crossroads for the country and we won and so now we have the mandate, the opportunity to fix all this.
(16:27)
The best thing that we can do to ensure liberty opportunity security for you and your young family that you'll start is to get government out of the way. And that's what our team is for. I mean, at the end of the day, the Republican Party, we talked about the core principles, but at the end of the day, you could summarize it, we're pro-family and pro-growth and those are the two ingredients that make it easier for people to start out. My daughter's just graduating law school down there at LSU in May, and she just got married in June, so this is a live-fire exercise for my family too. And she's the oldest of our four. I got one that graduated undergrad and is on the way to law school. I got a son at the Naval Academy and I have a 14-year-old, so they're all looking at me with the same anticipation. "All right, dad, get this fixed." And we will, right?
(17:10)
So I keep going back to reconciliation, but that's the quickest vehicle we have to achieve these desired results. And what we need is to get government out of the way. We need a smaller, leaner, federal government that's out of your life so that the free market can thrive. If you reduce taxes and regulations, you allow job creators, entrepreneurs, risk-takers, the people that create the jobs to do more of what they do, and you unleash that power of the US economy that has been smothered by government regulation for too long. This is not theoretical, we did it of course in the first Trump administration. I was here as a freshman in 2017 when President Trump started and we reduced taxes, reduced regulations. We had the greatest economy in the history of the world pre-COVID. I mean, really every boat was rising and every demographic and then we had all these disruptive events. So we can get back to that, we know the formula and it will help
Mike Johnson (18:00):
… everybody who's starting out. So I would say help is on the way, hang in there, and don't leave Louisiana. Okay? Stay there.
Guy Benson (18:06):
All right, thank you, Eric. And from your neck of the woods and your alma mater to one of the most important battleground states in the country, Wisconsin, I know AFP is very focused on a very important judicial race up there in a matter of weeks. Mike is a small business owner in Wisconsin. Mike, what's your question for the speaker?
Eric (18:23):
Speaker Johnson, my name is Mike Doble. I'm a small business owner from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My wife and I own a hospitality group with six restaurants, so some small breweries and 190 employees. It's super important to us to continue the tax cuts and I know it is important to you as well, but there's some differences in opinion between the House and the Senate and just Republicans even in your House. What's your plan to try to bridge that gap so we can continue as we need it? We need to keep hiring and growing or we're dying, so what's your plan to bridge that gap?
Mike Johnson (18:59):
Well, thanks Mike for the question and thanks for, I know you did some heavy work there in Wisconsin, I'm sure. In this audience, if you're here, you were part of that and that was huge. Wisconsin was a huge state for us this time around. So what we need to do, I'll give you a little more detail about reconciliation because it sounds like a lofty concept, but the details really do matter here. What we need to do for small business owners like you is get government out of the way and give you certainty so that you can plan and invest appropriately so that you know what's going to happen six months from now or more.
(19:27)
The reason that we are putting the extensions of the TCJA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the one of the seminal achievements of the first Trump administration, the reason that's in reconciliation is because as we noted, those tax cuts are going to expire at the end of this year if we don't fix it. The reason we have to do it early in the process and not wait until the end of this year or later is because everybody needs to see the effects of that ASAP, right? I mean, if you're a small business owner, this is a very challenging time because you don't know what to expect. The markets don't know what to expect. The bond market doesn't know what to expect. So putting that clarity in as early as possible is critical for everybody who is in a position like you are.
(20:06)
The way to do that is with one big beautiful bill, okay? That's the President's phrase, and I've adopted it. In fact, I have it tattooed on my chest here, I could show you, it's that important, all right. Why? Because some of my dearest friends, Ted Cruz and I are very close friends. Lindsey Graham in the Senate, they've been pushing the two-bill strategy in the Senate. But I want y'all to know the inside baseball is, my math is much more complicated in the House than the Senate.
(20:31)
For the first time in our lifetime, the Senate Republicans have a wider margin than we have in the House and also have 160 plus additional personalities to deal with and they have with just their 53 over there. And I have a much more diverse caucus. So remember, I've got people who are elected in R plus 26 districts in deep red rural states. And then I've got people who are elected in districts that Kamala Harris won on the ballot by 10 or 11 points, D plus 12 districts. And those Republicans look at an issue set with very different lenses. Their philosophy and the principles are the same, but their constituencies are very different, and so they've got to be mindful of that. So my job is to find the equilibrium point between the two sides and to advance the ball as far as we can down the field for our conservative principles and get 218 votes.
(21:18)
And now I've got a SALT caucus over here that they don't have to contend with in the Senate because the state and local tax issue is huge to people that are elected in New York, New Jersey, California, and other states. But think of it, there's no red state senators because they're all red state guys that have that issue to contend with. We have multiple caucuses in interest that I've got to contend with. Finding the right point for all those dials is going to be the trick over the next several weeks. We'll get there, and the sooner that we do, the better it's going to be for you and every small business owner, and large company for that matter around the country because that's going to lock in and codify the certainty that you need to be able to do what you do best, and that is grow your business and add jobs.
Guy Benson (21:59):
I saw a headline I think today, Politico, Mike Johnson's Moment of Truth. You've had a few of those already-
Mike Johnson (22:04):
Yeah, come on, bring it. Yeah, I know.
Guy Benson (22:04):
… in your Speakership. Here's another moment of truth, moments of truths maybe, but it is a big one this week because step one is this floor vote maybe tomorrow, maybe later in the week. Committee was a sigh of relief there but you've got a lot of cats to herd. Not everyone's on board from what the reporting suggests. Are you confident and how would you measure that level of confidence that you're going to get this through? This is step one, getting to the vehicle with literally no margin for error because I think there's at least one member who's a no.
Mike Johnson (22:38):
There may be more than one, but they'll get there. We're going to get everybody there. This is a prayer request, just pray this through for us, because it is very high stakes and everybody knows that. As we were talking in the hall, Guy, a little while ago, somebody noted a couple weeks ago the thing about having a small majority is it brings great clarity. It's clarifying. I don't think anybody wants to be in front of this train, I think they want to be on it and people come with genuine conviction about the debt and the deficit and about these issues and that issue. But I'm often reminded, and I remind my colleagues all the time of what Ronald Reagan reminded us, I'd rather get 80% of what I want than go over the cliff with the flag waving.
(23:16)
For those of us who believe in limited government and liberty and opportunity and security prosperity, we have to recognize that an aircraft carrier is not turned on a dime. It takes three miles to turn an aircraft carrier. It took us decades to get into the situation we're in. It is not likely that we're going to fix everything in one bill, in one fell swoop, but if we can make great strides in these areas and we begin to change the trajectory of the carrier, we can turn it around. If we do that well and we demonstrate to all these new demographics who came into the party now that it truly is our principles, our core conservative principles that lead to human flourishing, it is our principles that are better for them as individuals, families, a community, their state, the nation as a whole, then we will be able to hold this as a governing majority for years to come. This can be an historic moment for our party and our principles, and this is the first step in what will be many steps. It's day by day.
Guy Benson (24:08):
So if your analysis that it's going to happen/prayer request comes through this week, I guess part one of the question is what would the timeline then look like to get to then the reconciliation piece, which would be maybe harder. This is just getting onto something, the vote this week. Then it's like, okay, what is a final bill that would become law actually look like? What timeline are you looking at for there? And then maybe one that you're not excited to contemplate but has to be asked, if there's a wrinkle this week and there's a stumble, is there a plan B or is it this or nothing?
Mike Johnson (24:42):
I've got a whole playbook, but I'm not going to tell you that we're going to score on this one, okay? But when the resolution passes, as you know, this is just the opening, the starting gun basically for the real reconciliation process. That is scheduled out and I put out a very aggressive timetable and schedule for the reasons we discussed, we need to do this quickly.
Guy Benson (25:05):
You think in 2017 you took too long, the Republicans took too long.
Mike Johnson (25:07):
That's exactly right. We didn't get to the tax piece until late, late in the year, and so what happened was the benefit of what we had done was not fully realized by everybody before that midterm election. Only twice in 85 years has a newly elected president had his party grow or add seats in the House in that first two year cycle so we're going to have to defy history and we will, I think we've got a very favorable landscape and the right ingredients to do it, but we've got to perform.
(25:33)
If we do it early, to meet that aggressive timetable, what we're going to do is pass the resolution and then through the rest of February and all of the month of March, you'll see the committees. What happens is we give instructions to 11 different House committees in areas of jurisdiction, all these issues, and they've got to work through and find their equilibrium points in those subgroups, bring it up to the full group, get it on the floor. My calendar has us passing this by probably the first week of April and getting it to the Senate so they can do their work on it.
Guy Benson (26:03):
So after April 1st, perhaps?
Mike Johnson (26:05):
After April 1st, you see how that works? Yeah, a couple more votes, and then we get it done, and if this works, then we get it to the President's desk by early May. That would be enough time for this to become part of the law, to give the certainty that everyone needs, and for the American people to begin seeing the benefit of this so that it's reflected in the election outcome and all of our lives.
Guy Benson (26:27):
Just a couple more here. I've had, you mentioned a friend of yours Senator Cruz, on the show. I had Senator Thune on the show recently still making, to my ears, a robust, interesting case for the two-bill idea. When you push back on them in private and you say, "Look, here's my math and here's why one big beautiful bill makes sense on the House side," are they receptive to it? Or do you feel like, are they still saying, "Actually, no, you're wrong?"
Mike Johnson (26:55):
No, this is a very friendly debate. These are all very close friends and there's no daylight between
Mike Johnson (27:00):
The House and Senate Republicans, and that's very important. There's no animosity here at all, we're all trying to accomplish the same exact mission, they just see it from different lenses in the Senate than we do in the house. And when I lay out all the complexities, Ted, Lindsay, and John, none of them can refute that. They just go, "Oh yeah, that's tough." Yeah, I know, thanks a lot, welcome to my life. So look, I think what happens, they passed their resolution last week, and whatever they're calling that, that's a plan B, and that's fine. But I said, "You have to allow the house to lead on this by necessity, we need to, we have to. I have the more complicated equation to solve."
(27:36)
Here's another thing too that everybody needs to remember, and this will mean something to the folks in this room. We have new revenue inputs that really ought to be factored into this. The tariffs policy that the President's pursuing is going to be scored by the Congressional Budget Office as a number, some significant number. The 10% tariffs on China could be a large number, just that alone. And then what DOGE is doing, cutting down the size and scope of government pretty dramatically results in a massive cost saving, cutting out the fraud, waste and abuse. They found almost $60 billion, they estimated, already and they've only been doing it for a few weeks. So Elon is in the middle, he's gotten into the belly of the beast, and I met with him a couple of weeks ago at his office Monday before last, and he was explaining to me what he's doing, and he and I got increasingly excited as we're going through this. And I said, "Man, look, I know you're excited because you think of this as a scientist and a data analyst. I think of it as a constitutional law attorney and a historian. Elon, what we're going to do here is restore the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, because they envisioned a small, efficient federal government."
(28:41)
Remember, most of the power is pushed down to the states because that's important for maintaining the checks and balances and all the rest of the things we need, but they wanted a federal government that was small, and efficient, and effective, and accountable, and the accountability piece will be insured by the duly elected representatives of the people in the Congress, who could have oversight. The problem is, for decades, as we know, we haven't been able to do that job well, because even though we requested the data and requested the insight, it was hidden. How many of you know that bureaucracy was not forthcoming, they're not transparent?
(29:12)
That's the whole point, that's the problem, that's the deep state we talk about. So they were hiding from Congress. We didn't know that USAID was funding drag shows in Peru or whatever, transgender operas in Colombia or whatever, it's madness. But Elon has cracked the code. He is now inside the agencies. He's created these algorithms that are constantly crawling through the data, and as he told me in his office, "The data doesn't lie." We're going to be able to get the information, we're going to be able to transform the way the federal government works at the end of this, and that is a very exciting prospect. It is truly a revolutionary moment for the nation.
Guy Benson (29:46):
Being here at Americans for Prosperity at the Freedom Embassy, I think something that's on a lot of minds in this room and in this building and on this team is how can the grassroots of AFP help? Because there are a lot of different pressure points in this fight upcoming. AFP was involved in 30 million voter contacts in the last cycle alone, there's muscle there. What's the role for groups like this one, and maybe this one specifically, in this road ahead or on this journey forward?
Mike Johnson (30:14):
I have AFP tattooed on my back. This is a very important, very important, lots of tattoos. No, look, this organization does it better than anybody, and I mean that sincerely. I remember finally the work of AFP when I was a legislator in Louisiana. I did a short stint in the state legislature before I ran for Congress, about 14 months I was down there. And during that time, we had some really heavy things that were happening, tax initiatives and other stuff. And AFP got directly involved at the grassroots level and did some of the most effective mailers I've ever seen to the state senators and state reps homes, and I saw them flip on the floor of the legislature because they were holding the AFP card shivering in fear. This is a real story. So it matters, and the grassroots component of this is critical, and what you can do is what AFP does so well leading on this, is to let your elected representatives in Washington know how you feel about this, let House and Senate members know that this is important.
(31:08)
One of the most effective ways to do it just in the one-on-one kind of contact is to talk, to share your story. Share your story about your small business and how the tax cuts in the last Trump administration helped you grow and thrive, talk about the challenges that you're facing now and why we can reduce the challenge by further deregulating your industry. Talk about the challenges that your family has with inflation and the cost of groceries and all that, and make it real, make it personal, because when you're a constituent of one of these folks, they've got to listen to that, and it does make a difference. Talk about how your state's a border state and how the open border has been disastrous for your community. You add those things in and you make it real, and make it personal, make it specific, it's very difficult for elected officials to just turn a blind eye to that. And when you add the reinforcements, and the resources, and the power of AFP behind, it's a very effective thing. And look, we're counting on you, right?
Guy Benson (32:03):
We've got a wrap here, I think you've got some arms to twist here for the rest of the day, but very quickly, I have to ask you this, not to brag, but I think I have a pretty good Trump impression. Yours is better, I will say that. Have you ever done it for him?
Mike Johnson (32:17):
Not directly, but he certainly knows.
Guy Benson (32:19):
Not yet.
Mike Johnson (32:20):
He certainly knows about it. Okay, look imitation is the greatest form of flattery. Okay, that's…
Guy Benson (32:24):
That's so true, so that's true.
Mike Johnson (32:27):
Yes.
Guy Benson (32:27):
Speaker Mike Johnson, everyone, thank you so much for coming by.
Mike Johnson (32:53):
Thank you.
Guy Benson (32:53):
Really appreciate it.
Mike Johnson (32:53):
Thanks buddy, appreciate it. Thank you.
Guy Benson (32:53):
Awesome. Hold.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Let me take your mic.