GUY BENSON SHOW: Speaker Mike Johnson Joins the Show and Discusses His “Moment of Truth”, Tax Cut Extensions, and the Reconciliation Battle

Mike Johnson (R-LA), Speaker of the House, joined The Guy Benson Show today–brought to you by Americans for Prosperity–to break down the seven principles of AFP and their importance to conservative governance in the House and the administration. Johnson also weighed in on Trump’s sweeping mandate after winning the popular vote, along with Republican control of both chambers. He explained why the House may hold off on a final budget vote until April, outlined key GOP priorities moving forward, and discussed the future of tax cuts, including the Trump tax cut bill. Plus, he shared his perspective on the two potential reconciliation bills in play and why he’s urging the Senate to let the House take the lead in the reconciliation battle. Listen to the full interview below!

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Read the full (automated) transcript below:

GUY BENSON, HOST, “THE GUY BENSON SHOW”: Earlier today, I sat down with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

It was an event at Americans for Prosperity’s Freedom Embassy here in D.C., a crowd in the room, a lot of important topics covered. Listen to my exchange with Speaker Johnson.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

BENSON: 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 boys to men to the Capitol. And a buddy of mine sent in and he said, Mike Johnson is on a journey, and I love it for him.

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: 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, because, like, the accidental speaker thing has turned into a pretty effective speaker reality. Give us a bit your journey up to this point, if you would.
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Well, as Kid Rock and Jelly Roll and I were talking about this stuff…

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: … it has been a wild ride.
These are consequential times. People ask me all the time about am I having fun in this position, and I just look at them and say, really don’t have time for fun. I mean, I’m really very much like a wartime speaker, and have been since they handed me the gavel on 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’m way older than most of you in the audience. But if you were in high school in 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.

BENSON: So, right outside here, there are the seven principles that you always talk about.
If you could 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?

JOHNSON: Yes, so, let me tell you the origin of this.
But when — in 2019, I was elected to be chairman of the Republican Study Committee, largest caucus of conservatives in Congress, largest caucus, but certainly the most conservatives. 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 sort of recalibration of who we were as a party. This is two years into the Trump administration. And a lot of the furniture is 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 on horizons, so to speak, right? So I stood in front of all the House Republicans in the conference, the caucus at the time, and I said — there was about 158 of them. And I said, guys, if you had just a of 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? 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 those things, there would be lots of subcategories and you can unpack it dependent 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 have 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’re based on those founding principles. And we don’t want to lose sight of them as things change in our modern era.

BENSON: When you look at the election that just happened, right, there’s always this it’s the most important election of our lifetime mantra.
Sometimes, that feels closer to the truth in other times. This was a very consequential election. And we have heard president 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 in mandate for the party generally? And what does that look like in terms of your priorities here?

JOHNSON: 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 eight 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 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 that 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’re 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.
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 and 40 states. I logged enough miles to circle the globe 5.5 times last year. That’s a real statistic.
I was four inches taller when I became speaker of the House, OK? They beat me down mercilessly.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: But we did grow the majority. And I was so proud, Guy, 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 any more.”
We’re going to be down to one. “Oh, my, did I do that?” “Yes, you did, sir. We’re down to one.”

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: So, now, really, I mean, this is true. We have a one-vote margin now, smallest in history, right?
So for a big chunk of the first 100 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 have had certainly in my lifetime, I think. And when we get this done, it will be an extraordinary achievement because the vote margin is so small.

BENSON: Two related questions, one on the timeline for filling some of the aforementioned Trump-created vacancies, right, 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, right?
Because the governance up there, they’re not as interested in helping you get some folks back into your caucus, right? I know they talk a lot about democracy.

JOHNSON: Oh, yes.

BENSON: But it seems like they’re pretty comfortable with a seat remaining vacant for as long as possible in Upstate New York.

JOHNSON: That’s true.
Florida, we have a date certain. It’ll be April 1, April Fools’ 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 space. It’s Mike Waltz’s seat, Matt Gaetz’s seat.
Elise Stefanik’s seat in New York is different, because you’re right, the liberal left Democrats run the state Assembly, and they have 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, is one of the suggestions. So…

BENSON: A delayed election for democracy?

JOHNSON: For democracy, yes.

BENSON: Yes.

JOHNSON: Not — don’t 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 will see what happens. They haven’t changed the law yet. If we get the budget resolution passed this week, which is the plan, then I think it’s possible that at least Stefanik would go ahead and move on to her assignment at the U.N. as the ambassador there once she gets through the confirmation process in the Senate, which I think would 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.

BENSON: 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 honeymoon that he never enjoyed last time. He’s had it. And 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’s still this extreme concern among voters about the cost of living and the price of everything.

JOHNSON: Yes.

BENSON: 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 of immigration. What about on that number one issue that really I think was so harmful to the Democrats in the fall?

JOHNSON: Yes, it was.
Clearly, the president and all of us ran on and the set of issues that were the most important to the people. We got to secure the border. We have to get the economy under control, reduce inflation. We have got to get the American energy dominance back and restore peace through strength, reduce the regulatory state, the bureaucracy, the deep state.
All those processes are under way. 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, reconciliation is the is — the one — the one exception to having to get 60 votes — the 60-foot 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. So we will use the reconciliation process to check a lot of the boxes of the promises we made. That is how we will get to the cost of living.
The price of eggs is up high because — that has more to do with bird flu than anything else, OK? 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 U.S. 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 to 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 — is the vehicle in which we’re going to get it done.

BENSON: Easier said than done. The way that logistics work out is something I want to delve into.
Before we do that, if you’re just joining us, we’re the AFP Freedom Embassy, Speaker Mike Johnson our guest.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BENSON: And, with that, it’s a good time to take a quick break here on “The Guy Benson Show.”
More of this event that I did earlier today with Americans for Prosperity and Speaker Mike Johnson on the other side. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BENSON: We’re back. It’s “The Guy Benson Show.” Thanks for listening.
Earlier today, I interviewed on stage Speaker of the House Mike Johnson at Americans for Prosperity’s Freedom Embassy here in the nation’s capital.
There were a few AFP activists who asked questions as well, starting with a guy named Eric (ph), a young man out of Louisiana.

Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 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?

JOHNSON: Great question. See, LSU students are so bright.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: They’re — look, I will 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. The best thing that we can do to ensure liberty, opportunity, security for you and your young family that you will 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, right? 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’s 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? So the — 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 U.S. 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 in 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 everybody who’s starting out. So I would say, help is on the way. Hang in there, and don’t leave Louisiana. OK? Stay there.

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: 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?

MIKE DOBLE, BUSINESS OWNER: Speaker Johnson, my name is Mike Doble (ph). I am a small business owner from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My wife and I own a hospitality group with six restaurants, 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 are 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 this? We need it. We need to keep hiring and growing or we’re dying.
So what’s your plan to bridge that gap?

JOHNSON: 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 will 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.
The reason that we’re putting the extensions of the TCJA, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the seminal achievement, 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.
And 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, like, 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. And so the way to do that is with one big, beautiful bill, OK? Like, that’s the president’s phrase. And I have adopted it. In fact, I have it tattooed on my chest here. I could show you.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: 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 have been pushing the two-bill strategy in the Senate. But I want you all to know the inside baseball is, my math is much more complicated in the House than the Senate.
For the first time in our lifetime, Senate Republicans have a wider margin than we have in the House, OK, and also have 160-plus additional personalities to deal with than they have with just their 53 over there. And I have a much more diverse caucus.
So, remember, I have got people who are elected in like R-plus 26 districts, in, like, deep-red rural states. And then I have got people who are elected in districts that Kamala Harris won 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 have 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.
And now I have 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.
And we have multiple caucuses and interests that I have got to contend with. So, finding the right point for all those dials is going to be the trick over the next several weeks. We will 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.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BENSON: But getting that done starts with a high-stakes vote likely this week. How’s that going to turn out? How’s he feeling? We will talk about that with Speaker Mike Johnson right after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: America is listening to “The Guy Benson Show.”

BENSON: We are back. It’s “The Guy Benson Show” happy hour. Thanks so much for tuning in.
Earlier today, I had a one-on-one with Speaker Mike Johnson. It was at Americans for Prosperity’s outpost here on Capitol Hill. And I talked to him about a headline today in Politico calling a vote this week on the budget resolution in the House, which would then be the first key step to getting a huge part of this agenda potentially through using reconciliation, they called this Mike Johnson’s moment of truth.
And I joked he’s had several of those as speaker already, but this one is certainly not insignificant. I asked him about how this plays out logistically, the timeline, et cetera. Listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

BENSON: It is a big one this week because step one is this floor vote maybe tomorrow, maybe later in the week. The committee was sort of a sigh of relief there, but you have 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, right, getting to the vehicle with literally no margin for error. Because I think there’s at least one member who’s a no.

JOHNSON: There may have been more than one, but they will 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 of 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 at it with genuine conviction about the dead 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 percent of what I want than go over the cliff with the flag waving. And for those of us who believe in limited government and liberty and opportunity and security and prosperity, we have to recognize that an aircraft carrier is not turned on a dime.
It takes three miles to turn an aircraft carrier, right? 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. So — 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.
And 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 I — this is the first step in what will be many steps. And it’s day by day.

BENSON: So if your analysis that it’s going to happen/prayer request comes through this week…

JOHNSON: Yes.

BENSON: … 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, right?
This is just getting on to something, the vote this week. Then it’s like, OK, what does 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 something. If something — if there’s a wrinkle this week and there’s a stumble, is there a plan B, or is it this or nothing?

JOHNSON: I have got a whole playbook, but I’m not going to tell you that. We’re going to score on this one, OK.
But when the resolution passes, as you note, this is just the sort of the opening — the starting gun basically for the real reconciliation process. And so that is scheduled out. And I put out a very aggressive timetable, a schedule, for the reasons we discussed. We need to do this quickly.

(CROSSTALK)

BENSON: And you think, in 2017, you took too long, the Republicans took too long?

JOHNSON: We took too long. 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 president, 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 have got a very favorable landscape and the right ingredients to do it, but we have got to perform. So 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 will see the committees.
What happens is we give instructions to 11 different House committees in areas of jurisdiction over all these issues, and they have 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.

BENSON: So, after April 1, perhaps?

JOHNSON: After April 1. You see how that works?

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: Yes, when I have got 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 in all of our lives.

BENSON: Yes. Just a couple more here.
I have 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, 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 they’re still — are they still saying, actually, no, you’re wrong?

JOHNSON: No, this is a very friendly debate. These are all very close friends, and there’s no daylight between the House and Senate Republicans, and that’s very important.
I mean, there’s no animosity here at all. We’re all trying to accomplish this same exact mission. They just see it from different lenses in the Senate that we do in the House. And when I lay out all the complexities, Ted, Lindsey, and John, none of them can refute that. They just go, oh, that’s tough. Yes, I know, thanks a lot. Welcome to my life.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: So, look, I think what happens, they passed their resolution last week, and whatever they’re calling that, that’s a plan B. 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. 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. I mean, 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 percent 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, I mean, they found almost $60 billion, the estimated, already, and they have 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 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 were 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.
Remember, most of the power is pushed down to the states, right? 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, that we 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 debt and requested the insight, it was hidden. How many of you know that bureaucracy was not forthcoming, right? They’re not transparent. 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, you know, transgender operas in Colombia or whatever. You know, 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.

BENSON: 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?

JOHNSON: I have AFP tattooed on my back.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: This is a very important, very important…

BENSON: You have a lot of tattoos.

JOHNSON: Lots of tattoos.
No, look, this organization does it better than anybody. And I mean that sincerely. I remember fondly 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 have ever seen to 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, OK? 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.
One of the most effective ways to do it, just in the one-on-one kind of contact, is to talk and share your story. Share your story about your small business and how the tax cuts of 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, right?
Talk about the challenges that your family has with inflation and the cost of groceries and all that. Make it real. Make it personal, because when you’re a constituent of one of these folks, they have 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, it’s a very effective thing.
And, look, we’re counting on you, right? So…

BENSON: We have got a wrap here. I think you have 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?
JOHNSON: Not directly, but he certainly knows…

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: Not yet.

JOHNSON: He certainly knows about it, OK? But, look, imitation is the greatest form of flattery, OK? That’s…

(LAUGHTER)

BENSON: That’s so true. That’s so true.

JOHNSON: Yes. Yes.

BENSON: Speaker Mike Johnson, everyone.
Thank you so much for coming in. We really appreciate it.

(APPLAUSE)

JOHNSON: Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it. Thank you.

BENSON: Wide-ranging. Made some news there. I enjoyed it. Hope you did too.