Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., has declared that he will not vote for House Speaker Mike Johnson to retain the speakership next year.
“He does not have my vote,” Massie told CNN’s Manu Raju. Asked whether he would change his mind, Massie said that would require “a Christmas miracle.”
Earlier this year Massie supported Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in pushing to remove Johnson from the speakership, but the vast majority of members in both parties ultimately voted to spike the ouster effort.
JOHNSON HIT WITH POSSIBLE SPEAKERSHIP RIVALS AS CONSERVATIVES REBEL OVER GOVERNMENT FUNDING PLAN
“It’s a new paradigm in Congress. Nancy Pelosi, and most republicans voted to keep Uniparty Speaker Mike Johnson,” Massie tweeted at the time.
This week Johnson had advocated in favor of a more than 1,500-page government spending measure that would have averted the looming prospect of a partial government shutdown.
During a Wednesday interview on “Fox & Friends” Johnson said that the spending measure would kick the government funding issue until March when Republicans will have control of Congress and the White House, enabling the GOP to “decide spending for 2025.”
The measure also included disaster relief funding as well as aid related to farmers.
“Disaster aid and Farm aid is not ‘Pork’. It’s called governing. That’s what we were all ELECTED to do,” Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., declared in a post on X.
Left: Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., is seen outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024; Right: Speaker of the House Mike Johnson speaks to the press at the US Capitol in Washington, D.C., after the Republican Conference meeting on Dec. 17, 2024. (Left: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Right: ALLISON ROBBERT/AFP via Getty Images)
But conservatives savaged the proposal and Elon Musk spoke out against it.
President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance also weighed in. In a statement, they called for passage of “a streamlined spending bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.”
“Republicans want to support our farmers, pay for disaster relief, and set our country up for success in 2025. The only way to do that is with a temporary funding bill WITHOUT DEMOCRAT GIVEAWAYS combined with an increase in the debt ceiling. Anything else is a betrayal of our country…” they said in the statement.
HOUSE GOP LEADERS SCRAMBLE FOR PLAN B AFTER TRUMP, MUSK LEAD CONSERVATIVE FURY AGAINST SPENDING BILL
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks at a campaign event for Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at McDivot’s Indoor Sports Pub on Jan. 7, 2024, in Grimes, Iowa. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Massie mocked Johnson this week by sharing an AI-generated image that depicted the speaker holding a hose while a house burned in the background.
He shared the image after declaring in a tweet that “US foreign aid spending is like watering the neighbor’s yard while your house is on fire.”