House

McCaul says respect for Johnson ‘has gone way up’ after passing foreign aid package

by Lauren Sforza - 04/21/24 12:31 PM ET

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) praised Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for the passage of the massive foreign aid package in the House over the weekend.

McCaul, who has long pushed for additional aid to Ukraine, said Johnson has his support after the House passed the foreign aid package on Saturday. Johnson has faced some pushback from some conservative members of his party for allowing a vote on additional aid to Ukraine on the House floor, potentially putting his job in jeopardy.

“I tell you what, he’s got my support … the stock in Mike Johnson’s gone way up. I think the respect for him has gone way up because he did the right thing, irrespective of his job. That garnered a lot of respect. And also from the Democrat side,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.”

McCaul said Johnson “went through a transformation” on getting the foreign aid package to the House floor. A package to approve additional aid to Ukraine, Israel and U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific region had been held up for months in the House due to GOP opposition to the legislation.

“I think he tried to do what the, you know, say the Freedom Caucus wanted him to do. It wasn’t going to work in the Senate or the White House. At the end of the day, we were running out of time. Ukraine’s getting ready to fall,” McCaul said.

“I think the briefings that he got in the classified space, the advice he got from people like me and [Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio)], House Intelligence, Armed Services, I think talking to world leaders, he became the man that went from a district in Louisiana to the Speaker of the United States, to also someone who had to look at the entire world and had to carry the burden of that and make the right decision,” he added.

The package, which has now been sent to the Senate for approval, would provide roughly $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid in Gaza and elsewhere, and $8 billion for Taiwan and other U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific.