Speaking to a crowd of supporters at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday, former president Donald Trump alluded to a “secret” plan that he said would help Republicans do “really well” in the House of Representatives.
Some journalists and politicians have interpreted Trump’s off-the-cuff remarks, delivered as he thanked House Speaker Mike Johnson for appearing at the MSG event, as a possible signal that Johnson is prepared to override the electoral college, should Vice President Kamala Harris win. “I suspect Donald Trump’s ‘little secret’ plan with Mike Johnson is a backup plan for when he loses,” Rep. Dan Goldman said on CNN.
Johnson, a central architect of the former president’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is well-positioned to launch such a challenge. Under the 12th Amendment, the House of Representatives selects the president if no candidate reaches 270 votes in the electoral college. Each state delegation gets one vote; Republicans currently control the majority of them.
“We can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we are gonna do really well with the House, right?” Trump said, appearing to gesture to Johnson. “Our little secret is having a big impact. He and I have a secret—we will tell you what it is when the race is over.” Trump then abruptly moved on with his planned remarks, thanking the CEO of Madison Square Garden.
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Trump and Johnson have become close political allies, though the Louisiana congressman was not House Speaker under Trump. The two men reportedly speak often, and Johnson recently said that Trump “fully” supports him staying on for another term as speaker if Republicans keep the House next month. (If Democrats win the House next month, Hakeem Jeffries would likely be elected Speaker on January 3, 2025, just three days before presidential election results are certified in the House.)
In late 2020, Johnson—a constitutional lawyer—supported a Texas lawsuit to overturn the election results in four swing states. More than 100 House Republicans signed on to an amicus brief Johnson led. He later voted, with 146 fellow Republicans, to overturn the election results in Congress.
Speaking at the Trump rally on Sunday, Johnson called House Republicans “the only firewall” between the American people and Washington Democrats, whom he misleadingly described as Marxists and socialists who hope to implement a “European-styled, Marxist and borderless socialist utopia” in the U.S. “We know we have to get Donald J. Trump back to the White House, and then we can get this thing fixed,” Johnson said.
On Monday, a new CNN/SSRS poll found that a vast majority of voters—69%—believe that Trump will not concede the election if he loses in November. Almost nine in 10 voters said they believed the loser of the presidential election has “an obligation” to accept the vote.
