Mike Johnson (00:01):
I am so profoundly grateful to represent this incredible community and the greatest people in the world. And I've been all around the world, and I can tell you, it's true. It's true, it really is, all the folks here. When I ran for Congress 10 years ago, I mean, Kelly and I, we could never have imagined that we'd be standing before you as the 56th Speaker of the House. I mean, that just wasn't in the... We wouldn't have imagined that we'd been here... Be 10 years later, we'd be thanking you again for your support. And we're truly, truly honored. Y'all know my story. I'm a Shreveport boy, a son of a Shreveport firefighter who is disabled and permanently burned in his line of duty. First person in my family to go to college. We've been blessed to raise our family here, our amazing kids, and to be a part of the community and we wouldn't have changed a single thing. This is the most amazing district, and I've seen them all around the country. The most amazing congressional district in America. I want to tell you that.
(01:06)
I do want to thank my sweet bride of now 27 plus years, Kelly. It is a long-suffering responsibility to be a Speaker of the House's spouse. And she's done an incredible job with grace and dignity and patience. And as I was traveling around the country during this campaign cycle, everybody, everywhere I go, "Where's Kelly?" They want Kelly to be with me all the time. It's much better when she is, but she's had to maintain the household and all of our big family and everything else going on. And I want to thank all that big family here. Here's Hannah and her husband, Cody. Hannah's our oldest, as you know, and Abby and her fiance, Erin, they're getting married next August. And Will over here is our caboose. And his big brother Jack is at the Naval Academy today, and they... I don't...
(02:14)
Him and... Oh, well, there we go. Okay. Sorry, Jack. It's the Russians, they don't like my son in the Navy. That's what happens. I also have to give out a big, big debt of gratitude that I have for my incredible staff. They're all around the room everywhere. Our official staff in DC and the district staff, and of course the campaign team, it's just an incredible group of people, and we couldn't have gone one day without them. And I'm so, so grateful. I also want to acknowledge every one of my Republican colleagues all around this country who really left it all on the field in this cycle, as they do all the time. It's a big commitment for every family. I want to thank their families for their sacrifices as well. It takes a great deal to run for office. And same is true for local and state offices as well, all those who step forward.
(03:08)
We're on the 250th anniversary of the greatest nation in the history of the world. It's the most free, most successful, most powerful, most benevolent nation that's ever been, but it's still a grand experiment in self-governance. And it's a government of by and for the people. We don't have a king. We don't have a monarch. We have to do this ourselves. And for all those who take that sacrifice to step up and serve, we're really, really grateful for them all. I also want to thank President Trump and Vice President JD Vance, and the whole cabinet. They ran with our Republican colleagues hand-in-hand alongside our candidates all around the country, and this was a team effort. It really was.
(03:44)
Now look, I just want to tell you what we face, some real odds here. From the first day of this election, we knew that to keep the House and sustain our majority, we would have to defy more than a century of midterm history. It's only happened twice in 90 years that a sitting president has picked up or held seats for his party in that first two-year cycle. And there's a lot of reasons for it. It's very, very difficult to overcome. It looks like history will be kept tonight. We went on offense early. We launched one of the most dynamic political operations in the history of Congress. I promise you that. We made our case in terms of language of common sense. We said this is a contrast election between common sense and crazy. And I will maintain that that is exactly what it was. I said from day one that I was going to leave everything on the field in this endeavor, and I'm proud to say that's exactly what we did.
(04:34)
They gave me the stats tonight. In this two-year cycle, I led almost 500 individual campaign events across 36 states. I broke every fundraising record there's ever been by God's grace and because of the help of a lot of people in this room, we raised more than $526 million direct and super PAC funds for this cycle. Listen to this, and I'm telling you because you're friends and family and you all been a big part of this. Since becoming speaker, I can't believe what I'm about to tell you, I've raised more than $870 million, which makes me, I think, the largest fundraiser in the history of the Republican Party except for Donald J. Trump. Listen to this. I've also traveled enough campaign miles to circle the globe more than 14 times, okay.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Oh my gosh.
Mike Johnson (05:29):
I know, right? I know. I adopted a long time ago the motto of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president, one of our great leaders in the history. And he said, "Duty as ours, results are God's." And that's a family motto of all of ours, and we take it seriously. I've tried my best every single day as speaker and as the campaign leader here to fulfill our duty. And I know before the Lord, we have an honest heart for that.
(05:53)
Now look, we're going to continue to watch the results as they come in across the country tonight. It'll be a long night. They haven't even closed the polls in some states out there in the West. We have a giant war room behind you. You don't even know what's going on. There's like 20 people in there with screens and metrics. It looks like the situation room. We're watching every race. I'm reaching out to all my candidates and incumbents and encouraging them, the ones that won and encouraging the ones that didn't tonight, and that's just part of the deal. But they've all worked so hard, they've overcome expectations. So many of them, they all left it all in the field and ran through the tape. Once we know the final results, I'll speak a lot more about the midterms and the coming days.
(06:28)
But as we look at just the weeks ahead of us, we're going to be ready to build on our record of accomplishment. We still have a lame duck. They call it the lame duck, the November, December, end of this Congress, two more months ahead of us. And I want to tell you, as we enter the final weeks of the 119th Congress, I am really proud of what we were able to do in this last two years. The voters gave us control, unified government of Washington. We had the White House, the Senate, and the House. Even though we had the smallest margin since the Great Depression, and even though we had obstructionist Democrats at every turn, I mean, they truly do have Trump derangement syndrome. It's a very real disease. They dug their heels in and they shut the government down three times. In fact, they set the record, 120 days, the longest shutdown in history. That's what the Democrats did because they refused to work.
(07:16)
In spite of all those things, my friends, we had one of the most productive congresses in the history of the institution. We gave the largest tax cut in US history just a few months back. That's exactly right. The largest middle and working class tax cut ever, $4.6 trillion. We also cut more spending than any Congress in history. In fact, any legislative body in the history of planet Earth, we cut $1.6 trillion in fraudulent and wasteful spending to make government work more efficiently and effectively for the people. We also secured the border. That was the biggest thing in 2024 everybody forgot. We've not had one single illegal alien released into the country in 17 straight months. That's promises made, promises kept. Exactly.
(08:06)
And because we brought back the principle of the rule of law and law and order, because that's what Republicans do, we have brought the lowest crime rate. We have the lowest violent crime rate in 126 years across this country right now because we did what we said we were going to do. We also have Trump accounts for every newborn. We have the first ever nationwide school choice program that we codified, the biggest drop in prescription drug cost in over 60 years. Companies are reshoring production. We've added a million jobs in the private sector just in the last 19 months, and it goes on and on and on. Trillions have been invested in the country because we put the economic conditions in place to do that.
(08:44)
It's an extraordinary record and we did that with the smallest margin, but when it mattered most, Republicans stayed unified as one team, and we delivered. But our job is nowhere close to being finished yet, and the outcome of an election on one night doesn't change that a bit. Republicans have much more work to do; to give every American a shot at a better life, to ensure that the United States remains the freest and most prosperous, most powerful nation in the history of the world. We will never give up on that endeavor and that vision.
(09:16)
A new Congress doesn't change that at all. Now look, I'm not going to exaggerate when I tell you that there's not a single American, not a single American family anywhere that's going to be made better off if Democrats turn Congress into a circus. I'm afraid that is what some of them want to do. If they make the next two years about retribution and lawfare and partisan games, every American will suffer by that. I'll tell you what we will do. We will put a firewall of House Republicans standing in their way to ensure that doesn't happen. Okay? All right.
(09:53)
Now, to every American disappointed by tonight's results, I mean, I'm disappointed too, but we are never discouraged because we live in the greatest nation in the world. Millions of Americans voted because they love their country. They voted in this election, and they're alarmed about the direction the Democrats are taking and their embrace of this socialist Marxist platform that is a threat to people everywhere. And every single time it's been tried, it's ended in human suffering and misery and pain and even death. Remember, Karl Marx wrote the communist manifesto, and he used socialism and communism interchangeably. He said socialism was just a step to get to communism, which they thought was the utopia, the perfect society. It's a dangerous fool's errand.
(10:35)
You know why Marxism begins with the wrong premise and ends in death? In fact, the communists have been responsible for the murder of tens of millions of innocent people in the 20th century alone. You know why it always leads to that? Because it begins with the wrong premise. If you were all with us in DC tonight, I'd take you on a capital tour and we could do this whole group. I don't know, a thousand people. We could do it. We could do it. I couldn't get you all on the floor at the same time, but we could go in a couple of groups, few groups. But if you came on the floor with me and you walked in with us, and we've done this with many of you, if you walk in at eye level as members do, the first thing you see that you can't miss it, when you walk down that center aisle, you see, "In God we trust," right above the Speaker's head on the rostrum, okay? Yeah, exactly.
(11:17)
I know this speech is being covered nationwide, and I want everybody to listen to what I'm about to tell you. If we were there tonight with all my friends there, I'd show you in the Visitor's Guide to the People's House. It's a book about this thick. It talks about all the symbols in the chamber and why they're there and what it means. If you turn to page 20, it talks about the national motto, and it says, "In 1962, Congress voted to put the national motto above the Speaker's head and the rostrum in the marble." It says in the book, "Is a rebuke to the Soviet's philosophy during the Cold War." Now, what was the Soviet's philosophy during the Cold War? My friends, it's exactly what a bunch of Democrats right now are espousing.
(11:54)
When they voted in 1962, it was a unanimous vote. Every Democrat voted with every Republican. I shudder to think what would happen if I put that resolution on the floor when we get back. I don't know where that would be, but I'll tell you what, the reason they rebuked the Soviet's philosophy is because it begins with the wrong premise. Marxism, socialism, communism begin with the premise that there is no God. That is not what America's about. We better remember that in the days ahead. Listen, this election was always about much more than just one policy and red team versus blue team. It was about whether we're going to preserve and strengthen the American experiment or we're going to hand our country over to far left radicals who have captured the Democrat Party. The battle for our country, that battle against this insurgent socialist movement and the battle to restore American greatness, none of that is over in any way. In fact, I'm going to tell you right now, that fight has just begun for our generation. Okay? We will win that fight for America. Yeah, that's right.
(12:55)
I'll just close with this. Look, it has been the honor of my life to serve as the representative of the people of Louisiana's fourth district, the greatest people in the world. It's been the honor of my life to serve as the 56th Speaker of the House, not a position we ever aspired to or expected to have. We tried to be good stewards of that. We're trying to steward the greatest nation in the history of the world, and I look forward to continuing the fight with my colleagues in the 120th Congress. Republicans will not be deterred by the outcome of one election. In fact, you know what we do? We double-down. We double-down. We will continue pressing forward with our agenda of common sense and our vision to make America great again. And come 2028, we will take back the house and we will finish this job. All right?
(13:52)
There have always been twists and turns in the last 250 years of this great nation. There's been highs and lows, and there's been lots of challenges, but we do not lose faith. And I'm absolutely convinced. In fact, I'm more convinced right now than I ever have been before, that God is not done with America yet. All right? No matter what the outcome of an election, that's right. So I want to thank you all sincerely for your faithful friendship and your constant support and encouragement, of course, your prayers that has sustained us. This family is eternally grateful for the friends and everyone in this room. We have all done this together and a government of by and for the people will continue to do it together. May God bless the great state of Louisiana and may God bless the United States of America. Thank you so much.