Many Republicans have made a reversal on Russia and Ukraine, falling in line behind President Trump. No turnabout has been more striking than that of the Republican speaker.
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, he spent a mostly sleepless night in a luxury hotel suite overlooking the Potomac River, bracing for a mutiny that would end his speakership.
“He was in turmoil,” his wife, Kelly Johnson, recalled of that night last spring, in an interview conducted last fall. “We assumed we were done. I was saying, ‘Well, it’s been great. It’s been a nice, but short little ride.’ We thought we were going home.”
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’s fight against Russian aggression, telling colleagues that he wanted to be on the right side of history.
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’s most vocal Russia hawks as Mr. Trump pursues warmer relations with President Vladimir V. Putin, blames Ukraine for the conflict and labels its president — but not Mr. Putin — “a dictator.”
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.
“Thanks to President Trump — the days of America being taken advantage of and disrespected are OVER,” he wrote on social media, adding, “What we witnessed in the Oval Office today was an American President putting America first.”