The meeting between House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and former President Donald Trump at his opulent Mar-a-Lago resort was a big step. Many people saw this conference as a positive step toward the much awaited 2024 election.
“The meeting, which took place at a fundraiser for Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., marked the first time the two have met in person since Johnson was elected on Oct. 25,” Punchbowl News broke the story on the gathering first, according to ABC News. In a CNBC interview earlier this month, Johnson declared that he was “all in for President Trump” in 2024.
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ABC News adds: “The meeting between the highest elected Republican in the nation and the leading GOP presidential contender comes as Johnson is adjusting to his speakership after a fractious, weekslong battle among Republicans following McCarthy’s ouster in early October. As speaker, Johnson helped pass a short-term government funding bill earlier this month that didn’t include steep spending cuts — similar to the kind of legislation that led GOP hard-liners to remove McCarthy — and Johnson faces the same challenges running the House, though he is seen as more economically and socially conservative. Johnson’s meeting at Mar-a-Lago further underscores Trump’s continued sway with conservatives, even as he faces an unprecedented four criminal cases, all of which he denies.”
Johnson keeps his promise to make public a large amount of video footage from the violence at the US Capitol on January 6.
“When I ran for Speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021. Truth and transparency are critical. Today, we will begin immediately posting video on a public website and move as quickly as possible to add to the website nearly all of the footage, more than 40,000 hours,” Johnson noted in an X post.
“In the meantime, a public viewing room will ensure that every citizen can view every minute of the videos uncensored,” he continued.
According to his administration, private persons’ faces would be obscured to prevent anybody from being “targeted for retaliation of any kind,” as reported by the UK’s Daily Mail. About 5% of the video, he continued, will not be made public in order to safeguard private security data.
“I commend Chairman Loudermilk and his team for their diligent work to ensure the thousands of hours of videos are promptly processed to be uploaded to the committee’s public website,” Additionally, Johnson mentioned the X platform.
“Processing will involve blurring the faces of private citizens on the yet unreleased tapes to avoid any persons from being targeted for retaliation of any kind and segregating an estimated 5% of the videos that may involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture,” he said.
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The main proponent of removing previous Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and making all camera evidence public, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), praised Johnson for his prompt steps.
“You won’t always agree with @SpeakerJohnson – but know this: HE WON’T LIE. If he says he is going to do something, he is going to do it. Thank you for keeping your word on the J6 tapes, Mr. Speaker. It is a refreshing thing in the Swamp of DC,” he tweeted.
“Doing what he said he would do. Good,” Representative Chip Roy (R-Texas) added X.
When McCarthy was still the Speaker of the House, he showed some video to Tucker Carlson, a Fox News presenter at the time.
Not long after, a number of media outlets wrote to the leadership of the House, requesting equal access to the video.
