Trump lauds House speaker as a ‘good person’ after Ukraine aid bill passage

Mike Johnson is a “good person” and is “trying very hard”, Donald Trump said, after the US House speaker oversaw passage of military aid to Ukraine, long opposed by Trump, in the face of fierce opposition from the right of the Republican party.

“Well, look, we have a majority of one, OK?” Trump said in a radio interview on Monday night, after a day in court in his New York hush-money trial.

“It’s not like he can go and do whatever he wants to do,” Trump said of Johnson. “I think he’s a very good person. You know, he stood very strongly with me on Nato when I said Nato has to pay up … I think he’s a very good man. I think he’s trying very hard. And again, we’ve got to have a big election.”

Johnson faces opposition from rightwingers in his party, in particular from Marjorie Taylor Greene, a fervent Trump ally who has threatened to trigger a motion to vacate, the mechanism by which a speaker can be removed, and called for Johnson to quit.

No less than 112 House Republicans voted against Ukraine aid, leaving Johnson reliant on Democratic support. A similar scenario saw his predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, removed last year, but with an election looming, many see Johnson as safe for now.

Trump’s distaste for Nato was often on show when he was president and has been prominent in his campaign to return to the White House despite facing 88 criminal charges and multimillion-dollar civil penalties.

Trump recently said he would encourage Russia to attack Nato allies he deemed financially delinquent: remarks Joe Biden condemned as “dumb, shameful, dangerous [and] un-American”.

Trump’s apparent fondness for Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader who ordered the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, has also been a constant of his time in politics.

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