Rep. Ralph Norman: What Trump Told Me After I Voted Against Johnson for Speaker

Rep. Ralph Norman was on the House floor Jan. 3 when Rep. Nancy Mace, a fellow South Carolina Republican, phone in hand, told him that President-elect Donald Trump wanted to speak with him. Norman had just voted for Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to become speaker of the House, rather than Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La. For this week’s episode of “The Signal Sitdown,” Norman joins Daily Signal Politics Editor Bradley Devlin to explain why he initially voted against giving Johnson a second term as speaker, to share the inside story on how he went from a “no” to a “yes” on Johnson, and to pull back the curtain on an exclusive meeting Trump held with House conservatives at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on Jan. 11. “I had one chance when we voted for the speaker to use my one vote out of 435 the way I thought it should be used, and I voted against [Johnson]. I voted for Jim Jordan,” Norman said. “Nancy Mace handed me the phone,” Norman recalled. “She said, ‘the president wants to talk to you.’” The first thing Trump told Norman? “‘You're interrupting my golf game,’” the South Carolina lawmaker said with a smile. “I said, ‘Well, Mr. President, I hate to be doing that.'” “‘Mike's the only one that can win it. Jordan can't win it,’” Trump said in Norman’s retelling, “‘I love Jim Jordan more than you do.’” “I said, ‘Mr. President, I get that, but you need to be calling Mike Johnson and going over where is he going to take a stand on [budget] offsets,” Norman claimed. “And that's why we've got the $38 trillion in debt.” Trump agreed Johnson and his House objectors should meet. In a side room, Norman, Johnson, and others huddled around the phone with Trump on speaker. “I said, ‘Mike, are you going to not put any more suspension votes up where more Democrats vote for it than Republicans?'” Norman recalled. “'Before you spend another dollar, are you going to have it offset with cuts?'” “After we talked back and forth, he said, ‘Yes.’” Norman claimed. “He said, ‘I will do that, and if I don't, you can put me out,’” essentially promising to make good on his promises to conservatives or suffer going the way of his predecessor, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Your government is out of control. It’s doing things it has no business doing. It spends way too much money. It gets involved in way too many wars. It not only tells you what you can and can’t say—it actively censors you. And the things your government should do, it can’t, or won’t, do at all. It can’t keep your streets clean of crime and filth. It can’t keep your neighborhoods safe enough for kids to play outside. It can’t even prevent your country from being invaded by millions of illegal migrants. Why is that? Because your leaders no longer represent you. They represent themselves and their friends. On each episode of "The Signal Sitdown," politics editor Bradley Devlin exposes how the sausage really gets made in Washington, D.C. with the help of guests who have experience on the inside. "The Signal Sitdown" takes you inside the biggest battles in Washington, D.C., as they happen. We’ll analyze the policymaking process from an unabashedly and unapologetically conservative perspective and together reclaim government from the self-serving elites. Fingers will be pointed. Names will be named.