Exclusive Interview With Speaker of The House Mike Johnson

The Supreme Court of Virginia has made their decision. They strike down the gerrymandering. It was an improper procedure to get out of the ballot in the first place. This is a news radio, WRVA, exclusive. We're joined right now. It's my honor to welcome the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Honorable Mike Johnson, joining us here on News Radio, WRVA. Good morning, sir. Thank you so much for joining us. Your reaction to the news from Richmond. Rich, thank you so much. We are really excited about this outcome, and we're greatly relieved. The Virginia Supreme Court did exactly the right thing here. They affirmed what we have been saying from the very beginning. This was a hastily drawn egregious gerrymander, and it was clearly unconstitutional. And I think anyone who looked at that objectively knew it from the very beginning. So the rulings of victory for democracy and for everybody in the state of Virginia, because it ensures that they have fair representation in Congress, and that's a critically important principle to advance. One of the things that I keep seeing across the country is every state or a Commonwealth in our case gets to pick their maps and who they send to represent us in each and every way. Can you talk about the difference between what Texas, California, and what we do here in Virginia, because we all have our own ways of sending representatives to D.C. That's exactly right. It's a really important idea to make sure everyone understands here. What's happened is you have two parties who are addressing this in different ways, and you've had Democrats around the country that have relied on literally breaking their state laws and promoting unconstitutional maps to try and rig their way to a majority in Congress. Republican states, on the other hand, have followed their state laws. And you have many states, even as we're talking today, including my own home state in Louisiana. that are making sure their maps follow the Constitution after last week's Supreme Court ruling. House Republicans are on offense to win the midterms, but we're doing it lawfully. And the big difference is the reason the blue states had broken their laws and the red states haven't is that you have states like California and Virginia, for example, that amended their state constitutions a few years back to have these nonpartisan redistricting commissions. And what they literally tried to do in Virginia was tell the voters and the people, hey, we're just going to temporarily suspend our Constitution and do this because we must, as opposed to in a state like Texas, where they don't have those prohibitions in their state constitution. So they were at liberty to draw the maps to accurately reflected population, whereas some of the blue states were not. And that's a very important distinction, and the courts are upholding it. And I respectfully have said all along, I want the voters to have a fair election. I want the voters. to choose our representatives that we send to go work with you, to go work with Hakeem Jeffries. I didn't like it the other way around where I was going to get guaranteed. Ten here from the Democrats won. It just took my vote away, sir. My representative right now is Rob Whitman. If you have this map go through, it wouldn't matter whether I shut up to vote or not because a Democrat was guaranteed to win. That's exactly right, and that's a critically important point. Virginia is a quintessential purple state. I mean, it is almost literally divided down the center in terms of the vote tallies, and the actual vote tally on this ballot initiative proved that. It was almost 50-50 divided down the middle. It's not a 10-1 state.

It actually is accurately divided. It's currently six, five, six Democrats, five Republicans, and that reflects the population. So if they had been able to succeed in this unconstitutional gambit, to your point, they would have silenced the voices and the votes of over two million Virginians in one fell swoop. And it's just not right. And I think the court acknowledged that. And we're really glad because at the end of the day, this is not about politics. This is about... protecting the rule of law, the integrity of the Constitution, and doing what's right. And I think that's what happened here. I did ask the representative who was representing the General Assembly, the lawyer. I said afterwards, I said, is this about the rule of law or is this about the election results? And he clearly looked me in the eye and he said, this is about the process. It has nothing to do with the election results yet. As I was waiting to talk to you today, I'm watching CNN, MS now. I'm watching all the results and all the spin coming back out. All I keep hearing is this is wrong because it puts aside the vote of the people. This was not about the vote of the people. This was about whether this should be on there in the first place. Jason Mierrez had a response saying, wait a minute, this is completely unconstitutional, and they bulldozed right over the top of it. They certainly did. And mentioning that, your Republican delegation worked really hard. Representative Whitman and Elena Kagan's and Klein, McGuire, and all of them doing what they could across the state to make sure people understood what you just articulated there. And of course, former Governor Glenn Youngkin was very involved in. Jason Mayores, of course, did great work. And they tried to make sure people understood what was at stake. And I'll also note. that this backfired fantastically when you break the rules and you do what's frankly immoral here which is what it was uh it backfires and the democrats literally threw away house democrats wasted 64 million dollars on this this unconstitutional gambit and that's money they won't be able to use now to prop up the radical Democrat candidates in November in other states and elsewhere. So I think it backfired. I think it's an important lesson for people to regard. You got to follow your state constitution. You got to follow the procedures. That's what's right for the people. What bothers me the most, sir, is everything was so confusing. And I look at the double speak that George Orwell will be proud of when it comes to what's fair districting, what's not fair districting, what's a threat to democracy, what's not a threat to democracy. I don't think any of this helps any of the discourse, and it just drives us further apart. It does. I was heartened to see that once people recognize what was going on, they did the right thing, and they stood out. We had a really strong turnout of Republicans, not just Republicans, but also people across the board who recognized it was wrong. I was talking to Congressman Morgan Griffith, who represent kind of the south and southwest part of the state, and they had one of the biggest turnouts they've had in voter. any ballot initiative ever because they just felt like it was so wrong. And so an important message, I think, is sent in this outcome. I'm grateful that the court did the right thing. These are not activist judges. They called it squarely like umpires. That's what they're supposed to do. And that rebuilds credibility in the court system as well. And we need that at the same time. If you don't mind just a few more questions. We're talking with Mike Johnson, our guest here, the Speaker of the House, an exclusive on News Radio, WRVA.

You're the Speaker of the House. You're not the Republican Speaker of the House, the Democratic Speaker of the House. You represent the People's House. I've been in your chambers. I was honored to be there. As you're speaking to the people of Virginia today, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, progressives, what do you say for us going forward because there will be some hurt feelings? There will be some people have their noise at a joint, but we still want them to be a part of the process and make their voices hurt and be part of this Constitutional Republic. Well, of course, and that's what the founders, the system that they set up, so wisely they put this system together, and it does require the engagement, the involvement of all citizens, and we've got to be able to work out these differences. I do believe that it's not a talking point. I believe it's true that what's happened here at the end of the day is about protecting the rule of law and the integrity of the Constitution, and that is a nonpartisan proposition. That is something that everybody should support. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but we still have the best system in the world, as flaws as it is, it's still the best. And so this is another affirmation of that. We'll get past these hurt feelings and we'll get everybody in the room working together again. We have to because that's what our republic depends upon. And if the Commonwealth wants to send 10 Democrats in a fair election, then that's the voice of the people. It doesn't need to be a rigged map to get there. That's exactly right. Exactly right. One last thing for Republicans. There's a lot of Republicans here, sir. I'll be quite honest. I get people call up all the time. How do I get involved? What do I need to do? And the first thing people tell them is, we'll write a check. That turns people up. But I think it did wake people up that had been kind of sitting around thinking, oh, Donald Trump's in the office. We don't have to worry about this anymore. Your suggestion for people that saw their votes almost taken away by just a 4-3 decision, I'm going to have my vote reinstated. I won't be disenfranchised. What do you say to people that are now awake and have worried, I got to get involved? I got to make my voice heard on both sides of the aisle. Well, it is a wake-up call, right? I mean, it's a very important high-stakes battle for the majority in Congress so that we can keep common sense moving forward and do what's right for the country. And I think people who are concerned about that are concerned about the future and their children's future. Now is the time to be engaged. We do not have the time for complacency. This is going to be, I genuinely believe, objectively stated, the most important midterm election, at least in the modern era, maybe of all time. Because you have a very wide. divergence between the two major parties and their visions for America, just be educated. You know, we tell everybody, do the homework, be involved and engage. That's what the founders, the framers at this fantastic matchless constitution that we have on the federal level. This is what they insisted was necessary. We do well by that. We'll be great citizens and we'll have the right outcome. Last question. We saw how much money poured in from out of state, from King Jeffrey's friends and so many people out of state. What do you think we're going to expect this midterm? Now that we'll have a legitimate map, sir, I was calling them placement because if you had elected these people, they were going to be working for a patron and they were just going to be doing what somebody else said. Now I'm going to vote for a representative. What do you think we're going to expect here in Virginia? Will this be a big battleground in the House race?

It's going to be a battleground. It is. We've got a couple of seats there that are hotly contested every time. And you have members like Representative Jen Kiggins and Rob Whitman, your representative, extraordinary members of Congress, great leaders. They're in tough districts because they're kind of marginal districts. We'll be fighting tooth and nail to hold that ground. I'm convinced that we will. Our candidates have a great record to run on. They have a great message. Newt Gingrich and I were on the phone the other night, and he said, you know, in summary, what this election is about, he said, this isn't a contract with America election year. This is a contrast for America. And to summarize it simply, in terms of policy, this is a contrast between common sense. And really crazy. And the Republican Party represents common sense. It's getting America back on track. We've got to continue that. And it's a really important choice for the voters. I know and believe they're going to do the right thing. Speaker Johnson, I appreciate you taking time. I know that you're very busy to give us your comments here on News Radio, WRVA. Your time, again, I appreciate it so much. Let me just tell you right now, I want to wish you a happy Fourth of July. It is going to be glorious in Virginia. We've reinstated our voices here as we get ready to celebrate 250. Amen. And, you know, I'm reminded of the admonition of Ronald Reagan. He used to say freedom is not inherited in the bloodstream, right? It's got to be fought for and protected and taught to the next generation passed along. So they too will have and enjoy the same liberty and opportunity and security that we've known. And frankly, sometimes too often take it for granted. But we won't do it this year. We're going to have a great 250th. And we're excited about the days ahead. America's best days are still ahead of us, Rich. We're going to get it done.