Leigh Ann Caldwell: Donald Trump’s Endorsement of Johnson Has Swayed a Lot of Republicans

EXCERPT:

CALDWELL: "Most people think that he's not going to get there on the first ballot. Now, if he doesn‘t get there on the first ballot, remember, they vote again and they vote as many times as Johnson is still in the race and until there is a speaker elected. And so people think that potentially, eventually, he will get there, but how many ballots it takes is another question. Now, you know, another thing that I‘m hearing is that one of the things that Johnson has really struggled with is meeting the demands of this hard-right faction on these spending bills. And this was — this was escalated again just last month when he came to a bipartisan agreement with Democrats on a short-term government spending bill. This is something that‘s going to persistently be more complicated for Johnson. Now, he was working with Democrats, and that‘s part of what Johnson‘s argument is. He‘s saying, 'Look, moving forward for the next two years, we are going to have a Republican Senate, a Republican in the White House, and it is going to be much easier to do what a Republican conference wants. And so, you know, he‘s hoping that these hard-line Republicans buy into that and acknowledge the fact that he was dealing with a divided government before and moving forward, it‘s going to be easier. But Donald Trump‘s endorsement of Mike Johnson has swayed a lot of Republicans. And the numbers could be much greater if Trump had not come out in support of Johnson."