House Speaker Mike Johnson said the “little secret” that former President Donald Trump mentioned at his Madison Square Garden rally was just a get-out-the-vote tactic to help with voter turnout, downplaying rumors about an agreement between the two men to potentially throw the presidential election for the Republican candidate.
Johnson joked about the comments, which caused a furor among Washington insiders the next morning, at a small rally for Pennsylvania congressional candidate Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican challenging Democratic incumbent Rep. Susan Wild.
“It’s not scandalous, but we’re having a ball with this today because the media—their heads are exploding,” Johnson said, laughing off the comments to a small room of supporters. “It’s this thing we have about—it’s a get-out-the-vote… it’s one of our tactics on get-out-the-vote,” Johnson said. The speaker refused to elaborate any further on the strategy.
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Trump made the comments while boasting that Republicans were prepared to retake both chambers of Congress on Election Day.
“We can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House,” Trump told supporters at Madison Square Garden on Sunday. “Our little secret is having a big impact. He [Speaker Johnson] and I have a secret. We’ll tell you what it is when the race is over.”
But Johnson downplayed the moment the next day, insisting to the small crowd in Pennsylvania: “he just came up with that spontaneously on the stage. He really does call it ‘our secret.’ But it’s not diabolical.”
Sources told The New York Times earlier the same day the comment likely referred to Trump’s appearances at “tele-rallies” for individual congressional candidates.
Johnson’s office did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast. The House Speaker previously refused to elaborate on the comments to the Times, instead accusing Democrats of keeping secrets about President Joe Biden’s health, among other conservative grievances.
“By definition, a secret is not to be shared — and I don’t intend to share this one,” the defiant speaker told the paper.
