Trump praises Mike Johnson for 'trying very hard' with a SLIM Republican majority and defends Speaker against Marjorie Taylor Greene's bid to oust him

Donald Trump praised Mike Johnson and pushed back on efforts from his own followers to oust the speaker in a seemingly toned-down message after the House passed a $95 billion foreign aid package over the weekend. 

Trump is seemingly calling off the attempt by his top ally Marjorie Taylor Greene to oust the GOP leader for putting the package - including $60 billion for Ukraine - on the floor without any border security measures. 

'Look, we have a majority of one, OK? It's not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do,' the former president said on Real America's Voice Monday night. 

The House GOP's majority has slimmed down to a one-vote majority after the departure of Wisconsin Rep. Mike Gallagher. 

'I think he's a very good person. You know, he stood very strongly with me on NATO,' Trump went on. 'I think he's trying very hard.'

Though Trump has backed Johnson up before, appearing with him at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago weeks ago, it is the former president's first defense of the speaker since he passed a bill to send more aid to Ukraine. 

On Saturday the House passed a $95 billion package with $60 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and Gaza and around $4 billion for the Indo-Pacific. 

The Senate is poised to pass the package as soon as today and President Biden plans to sign it promptly.

Johnson has rankled conservative hardliners by cutting deals with Democrats on full-year government spending, putting a bill to reauthorize FISA, a surveillance tool, without warrants on the floor and passing Ukraine.

 

Three Republicans - led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a staunch Trump acolyte - have signed on to a motion to vacate Johnson from the speakership over his handling of spending and foreign aid. 

Trump has not taken as hard an opposition to Ukraine as some GOP hardliners, noting the country is 'in desperate need' but insisting Europe should do more to help.  

'Why isn't Europe giving more money to help Ukraine?' Trump mused on Truth Social. 'Why is it that the U.S. is over $100 billion into the Ukraine war more than Europe, and we have an Ocean between us as separation!' 

'As everyone agrees, Ukrainian survival should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us! GET MOVING EUROPE!' 

The former president went on: 'In addition, I am the only one who speaks for "ME" and while it is a total mess caused by crooked Joe Biden, and the Incompetent Democrats, if I were president, this War never would have started!' 

The package has laid to bare a rift within the GOP almost as vast as the on between the two parties. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., tore into Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance for his anti-Ukraine aid stance over the weekend. 

Vance had written in a New York Times op-ed that Ukraine could not win the fight against Russia even with U.S. aid. 

'Ukraine's challenge is not the GOP; it's math. Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide,'  Vance wrote.

'That is garbage,' Graham shot back on Fox News Sunday. 

Trump on Monday came out against banning TikTok; a provision in the foreign aid bill would force Chinese-owned ByteDance to divest TikTok within nine months or else face a U.S. ban. 

'Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok. He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the Republican Party. It’s called ELECTION INTERFERENCE!' the former president sounded off on Truth Social on Monday. 

In 2020, Trump signed an executive order banning the platform in 45 days if it were not sold by ByteDance, but a court blocked the ban before it could take effect. 

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., meanwhile raised First Amendment concerns and called Ukraine 'corrupt.'

'The censors who abound in Congress will likely vote to ban TikTok or force a change in ownership,' he wrote in an op-ed for Reason. 'It would violate the First Amendment rights of over 100 million Americans who use TikTok to express themselves.'

He sounded off about Democrats waving 'corrupt' Ukraine flags on the House floor as they voted on the package. 

'Ukrainian flags fly in the chamber of the UNITED STATES House of Representatives as they vote to send more of your hard-earned money to a corrupt foreign regime. 

And just like that they shout “UKRAINE! UKRAINE!”while happily working to secure Ukraine’s borders, not ours.'