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The night before Speaker Mike Johnson defied the hard-right wing of his party and brought up a bill to send more than $60 billion in aid to Ukraine<\/a>, he spent a mostly sleepless night in a luxury hotel suite overlooking the Potomac River, bracing for a mutiny that would end his speakership.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was in turmoil,\u201d his wife, Kelly Johnson, recalled of that night last spring, in an interview conducted last fall. \u201cWe assumed we were done. I was saying, \u2018Well, it\u2019s been great. It\u2019s been a nice, but short little ride.\u2019 We thought we were going home.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Johnson spent the night praying in the living room of their suite at the Pendry. In the morning, he told his wife he was going to do what he thought was right, regardless of the personal political cost. He would move ahead with legislation to continue funding Kyiv\u2019s fight against Russian aggression, telling colleagues that he wanted to be on the right side of history<\/a>.<\/p>\n Less that one year later, Mr. Johnson still has his job and has made a 180-degree conversion on Ukraine. His reversal reflects a broader Republican capitulation to the president even from some of Congress\u2019s most vocal Russia hawks<\/a> as Mr. Trump pursues warmer relations with President Vladimir V. Putin, blames Ukraine for the conflict and labels its president<\/a> \u2014 but not Mr. Putin \u2014 \u201ca dictator.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The new alignment was on display during an explosive meeting in the Oval Office on Friday in which Mr. Trump berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, ultimately kicking him out of the White House in a dramatic rupture in relations. Mr. Johnson responded hours after the meeting concluded by cheering on Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cThanks to President Trump \u2014 the days of America being taken advantage of and disrespected are OVER,\u201d he wrote on social media, adding, \u201cWhat we witnessed in the Oval Office today was an American President putting America first.\u201d<\/p>\n It is a particularly striking turn for the speaker, who less than a year ago was so sold on the worthiness of Ukraine\u2019s struggle against Russian aggression that he was willing to lose his job to ensure continued financial support for it, in what the president now says was a terrible deal for the United States.<\/p>\n Back then, Mr. Johnson engaged in highly secretive talks with top Biden administration officials to figure out how to salvage the aid, going to previously unreported lengths to keep those negotiations under wraps. Now, he is siding with Mr. Trump as he blames those same officials for causing the war and botching the American response.<\/p>\n The Republican speaker doggedly took on naysayers in his own ranks last year, privately making the very arguments in favor of Kyiv that Mr. Trump is now rejecting as he resets American policy toward Russia and Ukraine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This account of those secret talks and internal conversations is drawn from interviews conducted last fall with people familiar with them, most of whom recounted them on the condition of anonymity for a forthcoming book, \u201cMad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man With Rats in His Walls Broke Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Johnson argues that his position has not changed a bit since last year, claiming that he was moving to shore up Ukraine\u2019s standing so Mr. Trump could come in and end the war. But behind the scenes, he was making a much more sweeping case about the need for strong U.S. backing to thwart Mr. Putin\u2019s march and keep peace in Europe.<\/p>\n In the days leading up to last year\u2019s vote, he engaged in tense talks with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who was threatening to oust him from his job if he allowed the Ukraine aid bill to come up.<\/p>\n In one such meeting, Ms. Greene warned Mr. Johnson that the classified intelligence he was relying on to justify sending the funds was exactly the kind of information that had led the United States to search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that turned out not to have existed. She warned him to be skeptical of the material he was being \u201cfed\u201d from the intelligence community, because, she said, \u201cthey have goals.\u201d<\/p>\n The level of distrust tested Mr. Johnson\u2019s patience.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat about Trump guys who say if we don\u2019t do this, we\u2019re going to start World War III?\u201d Mr. Johnson asked her \u2014 referring to people like John Ratcliffe, Robert O\u2019Brien, Mike Pompeo and Devin Nunes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThey\u2019re deep state, too,\u201d Ms. Greene shot back. \u201cOnce you go to the intel space, you just sell your soul.\u201d.<\/p>\n Wasn\u2019t there anyone at all at the Pentagon whose word she trusted, Mr. Johnson asked. There was not, Ms. Greene responded, saying they all deserved the \u201cdeep state\u201d moniker.<\/p>\n Mr. Johnson seethed and forced himself to remember the biblical admonition to be forgiving, even to one\u2019s persecutors.<\/p>\n He asked Ms. Greene whether she had ever served in the military, or visited Europe. She responded that she had not. But she still wanted him to take her gut feeling over all of the intelligence he was being shown? Mr. Johnson was incredulous.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe American people know,\u201d she shot back. \u201cAnd you ought to know, if you weren\u2019t such a coward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The meeting lasted 90 minutes, an investment of time that Mr. Johnson made because he had to.<\/p>\n At the time, any single member of the House had the power to bring up a motion to oust him from his job, and he knew that Ms. Greene was serious about her threat. Everyone from Mr. Trump on down was pleading with Ms. Greene not to do it, but there was no political downside to her forging ahead.<\/p>\n So Mr. Johnson needed to make Ms. Greene feel heard. He would vent to donors and colleagues that he spent half his days as speaker and the other half as a mental health counselor. Because of his tiny majority, he explained, he could not afford to be at odds with anyone. So he spent countless hours \u201con the couch\u201d with restive Republicans, listening and gently encouraging them to get back on the team.<\/p>\n Mr. Johnson viewed Ms. Greene, in particular, as more sympathetic to Mr. Putin than anyone he knew. He felt strongly that what he was trying to do was right and some days, he would come home and joke with his wife: \u201cSure, you\u2019re supposed to bless those who persecute you, but every hour of every day?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Mr. Johnson wanted to convince Ms. Greene and other Republican holdouts that the briefings he sat through were accurate. Mr. Putin was a threat who could potentially steamroll across Europe after taking Ukraine and threaten one of America\u2019s NATO allies. To those who did not agree, he offered briefings on the intelligence that had persuaded him that Ukraine needed American help. No one ever showed up to receive them.<\/p>\n Mr. Johnson ultimately moved the bill and survived politically, thanks to Democrats\u2019 blocking of Ms. Greene\u2019s motion to oust him<\/a>. He was elected again as speaker in January, with a hefty assist from Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Johnson\u2019s current stance is the one that many people expected of him when the little-known Louisiana lawmaker was elected speaker last year.<\/p>\n Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, then the minority leader, was concerned when Mr. Johnson, a third-term congressman he had never heard of, was chosen to lead the House. Mr. McConnell was staking his legacy on backing Ukraine\u2019s fight against Russia<\/a> and he was urging the inexperienced speaker to simply put a bill on the floor and see if it had the votes to pass.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to take quite a bit of time,\u201d Mr. Johnson told Mr. McConnell. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to trust me on this.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem was Mr. McConnell didn\u2019t, really. He assumed Mr. Johnson, a red-state lawmaker who in the past had voted against aid to Ukraine, would buckle under pressure from the far right.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n What he did not know at the time was that Mr. Johnson was deep into talks with top Biden administration national security officials about how to make it work. He held secret conversations with Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser; Antony J. Blinken, the secretary of state; and Steve Ricchetti, President Joseph R. Biden Jr.\u2019s main conduit to Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n Paranoid that the hard right would discover their talks and tank them, Mr. Johnson\u2019s staff tried to put nothing in writing and avoided meeting during work hours. His chief of staff, Hayden Haynes, would sometimes meet Shuwanza Goff, the Biden White House\u2019s director of legislative affairs, at a dog park in their neighborhood at night to trade folders of proposals, as if they were characters in the TV spy show \u201cThe Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n It took Mr. Johnson almost two months to get there, but he eventually did.<\/p>\n\u2018We\u2019re Going to Start World War III.\u2019<\/h2>\n
Late-Night Negotiating at the Dog Park<\/h2>\n