WASHINGTON — This evening, Speaker Johnson delivered remarks following a failed attempt to vacate the Speakership:
Hey everyone, just another Wednesday on Capitol hill.
I want to say that I appreciate the show of confidence from my colleagues to defeat this misguided effort, that is certainly what it was.
As I’ve said from the beginning and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job, I intend to do what I believe to be the right thing, which is what I was elected to do, and let the chips fall where they may.
In my view, that is leadership.
Members have just voted and made their voices heard on the motion to vacate matter, and now we have important work to do for the country. There are a lot of things to fix.
Last week, we announced a House-wide effort to crackdown on antisemitism on campus This morning, we introduced legislation to fortify American elections and ensure that only American citizens can vote.
I am glad this distraction will not inhibit that important work and all the other things on the table and on the agenda for us right now.
Hopefully, this is the end of the personality politics and the frivolous character assassination that has defined the 118th Congress. It’s regrettable and it’s not who we are as Americans. We’re better than this. We need to get beyond it.
The Speaker of the House serves the whole House, that’s the job. But I am a lifelong, movement conservative Republican and I intend to continue to govern in accordance with those core principles.
We believe in the core principles, I call them the 7 Core Principles of American Conservatism, but they’re also the core principles of America itself.
I believe in individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, and human dignity.
Those are the guiding principles that inform our work and that we work for every day here to pursue, to ensure that all Americans have more liberty and opportunity and security.
And those foundations are in jeopardy right now. We need steady hands at the wheel. We need people who understand what made America the strongest, the most powerful, the most free, the most successful, and the most benevolent nation in the history of the world.
We have to fight for that every day, because we’re in a battle between two competing visions for what America is and what it’s going to be. And that’s what I’m about every day here, and I’ll continue that.
We have important work, not only to keep the house majority, but to grow the majority, because that will be necessary to help save this country. And the work that we have to elect a Republican president, we’re on that as well.
In this moment, the country desperately needs a functioning Congress, and that’s what the overwhelming majority of the members in this body demonstrated today.
I’m proud to serve in this position. It’s not one that I aspired to. It’s not one that I ever expected to have or planned for, but it is the honor of my life and career to do this. And I will do it so long as this body will have me do that.
We have a great vision for the country. We’re not deterred. We have many problems to fix.
And I’m going to tell you what you all have heard me say many times: I believe in the goodness of America. I believe in the future of this country. I believe, as Reagan said, as he reminded us what Lincoln originally said, we are the last best hope of man on Earth. And by God’s grace, we’ll save this country, and I’ll keep fighting every day to make sure that happens.