Speaker Mike Johnson sheds light on his ‘secret’ with Trump

There was no shortage of ugly rhetoric at Donald Trump’s event at Madison Square Garden, but one of the comments that generated conversation had nothing to do with racism or bigotry. It instead related to an unscripted moment about the former president and House Speaker Mike Johnson.

“We gotta get the congressmen elected and we gotta get the senators elected, because we can take the Senate pretty easily, and I think with our little secret we’re going to do really well with the House, right? Our little secret is having a big impact,” Trump said while looking in the Louisiana congressman’s direction.

The former president added, while appearing to point at the House speaker, “He and I have a secret. We’ll tell you what it is when the race is over.”

To put it mildly, this caused some unease, especially among Democratic officials. The anxiety did not dissipate when the GOP congressman confirmed that he and his party’s presidential nominee do, in fact, have some kind of secret. “By definition, a secret is not to be shared — and I don’t intend to share this one,” Johnson said in a statement.

Hours later, as The Hill reported, the House speaker elaborated a bit.

“It’s nothing scandalous, but we’re having a ball with this. The media, their heads are exploding. ‘What is the secret?’” Johnson told a crowd of about 90 people on Monday at a rally to support GOP congressional candidate Ryan Mackenzie, after a person in the crowd asked about the comment. “It’s this thing we have about — it’s a get-out-the-vote. It’s one of our tactics on get-out-the-vote,” Johnson said.

To be sure, it’s possible that Trump and Johnson have some kind of “secret” related to get-out-the-vote “tactics,” though there’s reason for some skepticism. After all, the House speaker doesn’t really have much of a role in guiding his party’s GOTV efforts, so there’s no obvious reason why he and the former president would feel the need for a confidential arrangement.

As for Johnson’s suggestion that there’s no real need for scrutiny, perhaps he’s unaware of the broader context. The New York Times reported on the worst-case scenario on Democrats’ minds: “It is a scenario in which Mr. Johnson, who worked with Mr. Trump to undermine the 2020 election results, would again be in cahoots with the former president to steal the election and stop the certification of the results on Jan. 6, 2025, should Vice President Kamala Harris win.”

Look, this isn’t junior high. It’s not as if Trump told Johnson during homeroom which girl he has a crush on, and the congressman feels the need to keep his pal’s information under wraps.

The stakes are vastly higher. A convicted criminal is facing a multi-count federal indictment accusing him of, among other things, illegally trying to overturn an election. Johnson, meanwhile, helped spearhead an ill-fated effort to convince the Supreme Court to keep Trump in power despite the voters’ verdict, and voted with his party to reject certifying the results of a free and fair election.

Johnson also echoed some of the wilder conspiracy theories about the race, and nearly four years later, the Louisiana Republican is still reluctant to acknowledge the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

It’s against this backdrop that Trump and Johnson, by their own admission, have a “secret” related to the election. What could possibly go wrong? Quite a bit, actually.

Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MSNBC political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."