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Trump praises House Speaker Mike Johnson

President Trump shakes hands with House Speaker Mike Johnson after speaking to the crowd in Emancipation Hall after being sworn in at his inauguration on Monday.
Bonnie Cash/Pool
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President Trump shakes hands with House Speaker Mike Johnson after speaking to the crowd in Emancipation Hall after being sworn in at his inauguration on Monday.

Newly sworn-in President Trump praised House Speaker Mike Johnson in remarks after the inaugural ceremony.

"We gave him a majority of almost nothing. And then I said, to make it tougher on him, let me take two or three of the people, right?" Trump said, referencing some of his Cabinet-picks that came from the House. "I said, he'll only have to suffer with that for about three months."

Republicans have a very slim majority in the House — 220 members — making it difficult to lose any member in order to get priorities passed.

Trump heaped on praise for the speaker, saying "he's a man that's liked by everybody."

Trump hasn't always made life easy for Johnson. In December, he threw a wrench into a bipartisan deal to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government by making a late-breaking demand to raise the debt ceiling. Eventually, lawmakers avoided a federal government shutdown and did not immediately address the debt ceiling.

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Barbara Sprunt is a producer on NPR's Washington desk, where she reports and produces breaking news and feature political content. She formerly produced the NPR Politics Podcast and got her start in radio at as an intern on NPR's Weekend All Things Considered and Tell Me More with Michel Martin. She is an alumnus of the Paul Miller Reporting Fellowship at the National Press Foundation. She is a graduate of American University in Washington, D.C., and a Pennsylvania native.