House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) met with Donald Trump at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort to discuss the party’s summer plans on the campaign trail heading into the 2024 election.
Johnson, along with National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC), met with Trump on Monday, although the exact details of what was discussed are currently unknown. However, the meeting comes just days after Trump met with House and Senate Republicans in Washington to discuss campaign strategy as well as a 2025 agenda in preparation for if he is reelected to the White House next year.
“It was great to meet with President Trump today at Mar-a-Lago,” Johnson said in a post on X. “Our Party is united, and working together, I am confident we will send President Trump back to the White House, win back the Senate, and grow our House Republican majority!”
Democrats were quick to criticize the meeting, accusing Republicans of continuing to “bend the knee” to Trump as the party’s de facto leader.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee specifically targeted Trump’s revived strategy on abortion after it was reported last week that the former president advised lawmakers in closed-door meetings to lean into tough topics such as abortion that Republicans have typically shied away from in previous cycles.
Part of that strategy is to hammer Democrats on abortion and to frame the opposite party as being too “radical,” one lawmaker told the Washington Examiner.
Democrats have historically dominated the conversation surrounding abortion, often framing Republicans as restricting personal freedoms. That message has been used to motivate voter turnout, most recently evidenced in the 2022 midterm elections, in which Democrats managed to fend off a predicted “red wave” by targeting Republicans over the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Now Trump is urging lawmakers to go on the offensive and reframe the overturning of Roe as a win for states’ rights and the Republican Party. Democrats have homed in on that strategy, arguing they can once again use the issue to motivate turnout in their favor.
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“Vulnerable House Republicans are so obsessed with their wannabe dictator that they are going to Mar-a-Lago to get tips from him on how to remind voters that they’re to blame for ripping away reproductive freedom and overturning nearly 50 years of fundamental rights under Roe,” DCCC spokesman Viet Shelton said in a statement. “Voters will remember come November.”
Other details of the meeting were not immediately available. However, the meeting comes as party leaders say they want to work in “close coordination” with a possible Trump administration in the future that will keep the party united on all fronts, a special message as House Republicans have experienced a tumultuous year in the majority that has been marked by intraparty tension and public feuding.
