House Speaker Mike Johnson says he joked with Elon Musk about taking his job after several members of the Republican delegation in the chamber floated the billionaire Tesla CEO for the role.
Johnson successfully passed a resolution to continue funding the federal government after days of GOP squabbling. The third attempt at funding the government beyond midnight tonight was without an agreement package to suspend the federal debt ceiling for two years, something President-elect Donald Trump insisted upon.
The speaker lost 34 Republican votes on the bill, some of whom lambasted the speaker earlier in the week for playing ball with Democratic Party leadership on a budget extension. If Johnson is worried that those defectors will take the gavel from him in next year’s Congress, he didn’t show it while chatting with reporters.
“Elon Musk and I talked about an hour ago. We talked about the extraordinary challenges of this job,” Johnson said on Friday. “I said, ‘Hey, you wanna be Speaker of the House? I don’t know.’ He said this may be the hardest job in the world.’ I think it is.”
Johnson, who took the speaker role in a MAGA-led revolt against former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, faces a difficult path in retaking the position. He will have to contend with a slim 5-vote GOP majority in January when the caucus chooses a speaker. Any alternative candidate could block Johnson’s selection with just a handful of votes.
Prominent Republican voices, including Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Utah Sen. Mike Lee, have argued that Johnson has to go. Musk’s name has been tossed around as a serious alternative contender by Republicans.
“The Speaker of the House need not be a member of Congress… Nothing would disrupt the swamp more than electing Elon Musk… think about it… nothing’s impossible,” Rand Paul wrote in a post to X.
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