Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) urged President-elect Donald Trump to come to Washington to help the House Republicans pass a spending deal as a potential government shutdown looms.
Capitol Hill has been thrust into chaos after Trump and his close advisor, tech billionaire Elon Musk, torpedoed a bipartisan spending agreement that would have kept the government funded through mid-March. Congressional leadership unveiled the agreement on Tuesday, but conservatives and Trump allies railed against the deal for including too much spending.
With just a slim majority in Congress, House Republicans would need to agree on a deal to avoid a partial government shutdown come Friday.
But Kennedy expressed little optimism Thursday on “FOX & Friends” that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could unite the GOP House caucus by himself.
“If I were king for a day… here’s what I’d do. First, I would tell everybody to take their meds. Number two, I think President Trump is going to have to consider coming to Washington,” Kennedy said on Thursday. “Let’s face it, he’s the President now. It’s not President Biden. President Trump needs to sit down with Mike Johnson and John Thune and come up with a new skinny CR.”
“If the President wants to do something on the debt limit, we need to find out what it is and put it in the bill, and then the President is going to have to help Mike sell it in the House,” he added.
Musk spent most of Wednesday railing against the bipartisan spending agreement. Hours later, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance released a joint statement opposing the deal and demanding the House raise the debt ceiling before Trump takes office next month. While Musk and other Trump allies decried the legislation, Johnson spent most of Wednesday trying to defend the deal he helped negotiate.
Kennedy went on to compare some House Republican to “free-range chickens.”
“Speaker Johnson’s problem is that on the Republican side. He’s got a bunch of free range chickens. I’m not criticizing them, but they wander off, and Mike can’t catch all of them by himself,” he added.
When asked if Johnson could be Speaker, Kennedy reiterated that Johnson cannot control the Republicans.
“There’s one person that can control the Republican caucus in the United States House of Representatives right now, and that’s Donald J. Trump. That’s my best assessment at this point. Could that change, sure, but Speaker Johnson cannot,” he said.
“It’s clear he hasn’t been able to do it, it’s not his fault. I mean, I’m not sure anybody could, but he can’t get all the Republicans together in the House, and in order to pass the CR he’s got to do that without Democratic support. But I think President Trump could and I hope he’ll consider coming to Washington. Like I said: He’s the president. It’s not Joe Biden,” he said.
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