With some House Republicans threatening to withhold vital support to Johnson’s bid to keep the speaker’s gavel this week, Johnson received a pivotal endorsement from Trump on Monday. 

Gaetz celebrated Trump’s move in a statement the same day, saying that the resistance to Johnson is “now futile” as he referenced the president-elect’s famous bestseller, Art of the Deal. 

“Trump endorsing Johnson is ‘art of the deal’ level practicality,” Gaetz said in a post to X that asked Republicans to unite to make the House speaker “the best version of himself.”  

Gaetz has been an ardent Trump supporter for years. Their relationship became even more prominent in November when the president-elect nominated Gaetz to become the country’s next attorney general. The nomination ultimately failed after Gaetz became mired in allegations of sexual misconduct contained in a now-released House Ethics Committee report.

Although he has resigned from his House seat, Gaetz continued to push his former colleagues to support Johnson, expressing concern that opposing the speaker could delay the lower chamber’s role in certifying Trump’s Electoral College win. He also suggested that the movement to remove Johnson was critically different from the fight he helped lead to oust former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last year. 

“We could never have held up McCarthy two years ago for concessions if a Trump certification hung in the balance.  Now, it does,” Gaetz said. “We were able to hold up McCarthy because Republican voters weren’t all that eager to see us getting back to being Biden’s bitch (which Kevin ultimately did anyway).” 

Spurred by disagreements over government spending packages and other issues, Gaetz and McCarthy have engaged in a bitter feud since January 2023, even after McCarthy was toppled from the speaker’s position last fall. 

Similar to some of Gaetz’s concerns about McCarthy last year, the current speaker drama has been fueled largely by some Republicans’ antipathy toward how Johnson handled a major government spending deal earlier this month.

Saying Johnson has worked with the Democratic Party “to send money to Ukraine, authorize spying on Americans, and blow the budget,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has emerged as a ringleader of efforts to oust Johnson, holding firm in his opposition against the speaker even after Trump’s endorsement.

Lawmakers will vote on Jan. 3 to determine whether Johnson keeps his gavel. With only a slim Republican majority in the lower chamber, Johnson can only afford to lose one vote from his conference, assuming everyone shows up and Democrats are opposed, if he wishes to keep his position.