WASHINGTON – There was House Speaker Mike Johnson walking behind President-elect Donald Trump's entourage into Saturday night's UFC fight at Madison Square Garden, his stature overcome by the enormity of the scene around him.
And Johnson mugging with musicians Kid Rock and Jelly Roll.
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And there was Johnson on Trump's airplane, peering over the seat in front of him, a four-top table loaded with McDonald's meals for the president-elect, his son Donald Trump, Jr., Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — the speaker grinning over the seatback.
“Epic,” Johnson said about it all as he arrived back at the U.S. Capitol.
The images from Johnson's wild weekend with Trump provide a snapshot of his proximity to power, the former religious rights attorney just a year on the job as House speaker, now dining at Mar-a-Lago, flying on Trump Force One, appearing near-ringside in Manhattan — and riding shotgun to Trump's second term in the White House.
Taken together the photographs, which boomeranged around social media with stunning disbelief and mocking commentaries, put on vivid display Trump's command of the Republican Party. It spotlighted not only a political force that has swept control of the government in Washington but a cultural moment for the hypermasculine, partygoing, men, and some women, propelling the movement.
And for the office of House speaker, among the highest ranking in the U.S. government, second in the line of secession to the president, it was like nothing seen in modern times.
“It is indicative of how precarious Johnson’s position is,” said Jeffery A. Jenkins, the provost professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and Law at the University of Southern California, who has written extensively about Congress and its leadership.
Jenkins said it shows that Johnson, with his tenuous hold on power in the House, "is beholden to the president-elect in ways that prior speakers have not been.”
House speakers tend to keep a level of independence, if not measurable distance, from the White House, even when the president is a member of their own party. It's a way to exert the authority of the Congress as a co-equal branch of government.
There have been exceptions to be sure. Johnson's predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, was an early confidant of the former president and someone Trump referred to as, “My Kevin.”
But in the modern era speakers have tended to show the power of the gavel as they held their ground vis-a-vis the president.
Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi led the House to impeach Trump, twice, and famously stood up to him during a meting at the White House — finger pointed — warning him of the power she carried into the room.
That photo, too, became an enduring image, the first woman to become House speaker standing up, literally, to the president, as did one of her exiting the White House — slipping on her dark sunglasses, her rust overcoat swinging out the door.
Former Republican Speaker John Boehner flexed his power more silently: Boehner simply left then-President Barack Obama waiting by the phone for a call that never came to secure a hard-fought budget deal. The deal had collapsed.
For Johnson, who has worked this past year to mend his past criticisms of Trump and draw closer to the former president as they both sought to rise to power in the November election, the weekend was viewed as time well spent to secure those bonds and craft the agenda ahead.
During a day of meetings and two nights of gala dinners at Trump's private Mar-a-Lago club and residence, Johnson emerged as a person in the president-elect's orbit, and presumably aligned with his power.
“It was just a great celebration of America,” Johnson said about the weekend's events, particularly the UFC fight.
“What happened at Madison Square Garden Saturday night was a kind of microcosm of what we are experiencing all around the country,” he said.
“I kept telling everybody there's an energy out there .... it's an almost euphoric felling that people have, that America is back,” he said. “And it was fun to be a part of that.”
Newt Gingrich, himself a former House speaker, said Johnson understands he's on one of “the wildest” rides of his career, alongside Trump heading back to the White House.
“If you ever needed an image of the new Republican Party — try to imagine Boehner or Ryan in that setting," he said, referring to other recent Republican speakers, including Paul Ryan,
Gingrich said he and his wife, Calista, joined one of the Mar-a-Lago events with the speaker and marveled at the scene: actor Sylvester Stallone at one minute. Kennedy the next. And he penned an essay about how many millions of Americans Trump was reaching with the images at the UFC fight.
“Trump basically runs a three-ring circus, along with a vaudeville act,” Gingrich said, all while preparing to run the government and engage on the global stage.
“It's just fun,” Gingrich said.
As for Johnson's religious background, Gingrich said, the speaker is “somebody who understands you're true to your own faith, but you walk through the world the way the world is.”
He said he texted with Johnson in the morning.
“I think Mike’s having the time of his life,” he said. __
Associated Press writers Michelle Price and Farnoush Amiri and Will Weissert in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this story.