God Is Not Done With America Yet, with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson, the 56th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, as well as an alum of The Action Catalyst’s parent company, Southwestern, breaks down his unique path to the speakership and the big role Southwestern played in getting him there, recounts danger in Tucson and getting a little help from Brett Favre, delivers an absolutely killer Trent Lott impression, outlines the importance of speaking with clarity, conviction, and consistency, and explains why “duty is ours, but result belong to God”. 

About Mike Johnson:

Speaker Mike Johnson is the 56th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and a Republican member of Congress proudly serving Louisiana’s Fourth District. On October 25, 2023, he was elected unanimously by his House Republican colleagues to serve as the Speaker. After a tenure of less than 6.8 years in the House, Mike was given the honor faster than any person in history except for Speaker John G. Carlisle in 1883, who had previously served for only 6.75 years. He was reelected on January 3, 2025, to continue serving as Speaker of the House for the 119th Congress. As a Member of Congress, he represents the nearly 760,000 residents of 20 parishes in the northwest, northeast, and western regions of his state. Mike was first elected to Congress on December 10, 2016, by the largest margin of victory in his region in more than 50 years.

Prior to being Speaker, Mike was elected by his colleagues to serve as Vice Chairman of the House Republican Conference, one of the seven elected leadership positions for Republicans in the House of Representatives, as well as Deputy Whip. He was also previously honored to serve as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, the largest caucus of conservatives in Congress, known as “the intellectual arsenal of conservatism in the House.”

With two decades of previous experience in Constitutional law, Mike previously served on the House Judiciary Committee, and as chairman of its Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government. He also served as a leader on the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, the House Natural Resources Committee, and the House Armed Services Committee. His district includes important military installations, including Barksdale Air Force Base, headquarters of the Air Force Global Strike Command, and Fort Johnson (formerly Fort Polk) and the Army’s Joint Readiness Training Center, as well as the Louisiana National Guard’s Camp Minden Training Site and other assets.

Mike is a dedicated husband and father and an attorney who has devoted his life and career to fighting for the fundamental freedoms and traditional values that have made America the greatest nation in the history of the world. He spent nearly 20 years successfully litigating high profile constitutional law cases in district and appellate courts nationwide, and previously served in the Louisiana Legislature (2015-17).

The eldest son of a Shreveport firefighter who was critically burned and permanently disabled in the line of duty, Mike learned early on the values of hard work, honor, and sacrifice. He has a practical understanding of the challenges that small business owners face because he, like his parents and grandparents, is one himself. Mike has also been a college professor, conservative talk radio host and columnist, a media spokesman for America’s largest religious liberty organizations, a constitutional law seminar instructor, a board member and legal counsel for national organizations and numerous community groups and ministries.

Mike earned his undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Louisiana State University in 1995, and his Juris Doctorate from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center at Louisiana State University in 1998. He and his wife Kelly, a former school teacher and now a Licensed Pastoral Counselor, have been married since 1999, and have four children, Hannah, Abigail, Jack and Will, and an older son Michael, who became a part of their family in 1999.

Learn more at Speaker.gov.

The Action Catalyst is presented by the Southwestern Family of Companies. With each episode, the podcast features some of the nation’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing meaningful tips and advice. Learn more at TheActionCatalyst.com, subscribe below or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to leave a rating and review!

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(Transcribed using A.I. / May include errors):

Adam Outland
The Action Catalyst recently had the chance to catch up with Mike Johnson, an American politician and lawyer currently serving as the 56th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives since October of 2023, having represented Louisiana’s Fourth Congressional District since 2017. While I was not able to speak with him directly due to scheduling conflicts, he was able to spend some time with our producers and provide some insight into the principles that crafted his leadership style and where they came from, which, as it turns out, the Speaker and I have in common in a very specific way…

Interviewer
You and our hosts have something major in common, which is that you all participated in the Southwestern Advantage Program in college.

Speaker Mike Johnson
I really can’t express to you how much this company and this experience meant to me, and there was a time in my life when I thought that it should be mandatory for every single person to do for at least one summer, because it was so formative in my life. I mean, I know everybody who’s alum of Southwestern has their own experience and why it was such a big thing in their life, but it really, really was to me. I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, a little town in Northwest Louisiana, and my dad was a firefighter. I was actually the product of an unplanned pregnancy. My parents were like sweethearts in high school. They’ve been dating since seventh grade, and I was conceived their junior year in high school, and it was a year before Roe v Wade became the law of the land, but all their friends said, take care of that problem, and they decided not to. So they dropped out of school. They got married. My dad went to work early on, and so he had a big heart for service, and he wound up joining the fire department, serving the community. And he was a pretty sharp guy, but he became assistant chief of our fire department, and in 1984 September, 1984 he was responding to what they thought was routine call, the big warehouse that was on fire and it blew up, and my dad got burned 80% of his body third degree burns, and he had a 5% chance to live. He was permanently disabled after that. Hugely traumatic event in our lives. And I was 12 years old at the time, the oldest of four kids, and that event kind of changed the trajectory of all of our lives to had to grow up real fast and start kind of taking care in large part of my younger siblings and our little, small family farm, and I just learned a lot about hard work and sacrifice and the faith of our family that carried us through all that. And you look back over your life and you realize how formative all that stuff is. And then, because I wanted to be the fire chief of my my hometown, until that happened, they wouldn’t let me do it. And so they said, No, you guys are gonna go to school instead. So I wound up being the first person in my family to go to college, and I went to LSU because, you know, if you go to college in Louisiana, you go to LSU. I wound up there, and I was wandering around campus that spring. I can’t remember exactly. I mean, it’s been a long time ago. This is 1991 okay, but I’m pretty sure they handed me a flyer and they hooked me in somehow, these guys give great sales pitches. And I don’t know what it was about me, but they thought maybe there’s a diamond in the rough here, and they convinced me to do it. So I said, Hey, yeah, man, you mean I can run my own business? Challenge? Let’s go. So I did it. Southwestern Advantage has innovated and got through. And now 1000s and 1000s, what 100,000 people now have had the experience. It was the greatest thing ever did. I mean, I’m not kidding. It’s just an incredible thing.

Interviewer
So where did you sell in your first summer?

Speaker Mike Johnson
The first summer, the greatest territory of all time, Tucson, Arizona. All right, so we all drove our college cars out there, and I was working about three weeks in Tucson. I’m from Louisiana. You know, the humidity is like 100% all the time, and in Tucson it’s not. I was at the lady’s doorstep, and I passed out part two and a half weeks into my summer, and I spent three days in the ICU. I got so dehydrated, almost died in Tucson, Arizona, true story. I mean, I, like, was out of it for like, a day and a half, almost died. And so after that, they said, you know, she would hydrate. I was like, I thought I was no so every door was somebody to offer me a drink or fruit or whatever I would take. We sold a lot of books in Tucson, in spite of my almost dying there. And so then I came back the next summer, and that summer, we went to Appleton, Wisconsin, and I had to learn a trick like, this is what you learned about life, right? Learn to deal with everybody and answer objections and find commonality, right? So now remember, this is about this is summer 92, Brett Favre at the height of his career. Green Day Packers, and we’re in Appleton, Wisconsin. Oh, you’re from Louisiana. You must know Brett Favre. Okay, so Brett Favre is from Mississippi. It’s not the same state, but in Wisconsin, you know, that’s close enough. And so, you know, I’m just disclaiming though I don’t know the Favres, unfortunately. Ooh, okay, you know. But I picked up on it, like, maybe I should just go with this, you know. I mean, the Favres are a great family. Oh, okay, come on in. You know, I start wearing his jersey. You do what you gotta do.

Interviewer
Definitely sounds like you picked up a few tricks.

Speaker Mike Johnson
It would be a slight overstatement to say, everything I know about life I learned on the book field, but it would not be an overstatement to say, its probably the most important experience that I ever had, informing the things that I do today. It’s difficult to overstate how important this is, and what those skills do for you as you go through life. Finished LSU, went to law school, became a, you know, a husband and a father, and then I became a constitutional law attorney for 20 years, and then I ran for the state legislature, ran for Congress, and now I’m the Speaker of the House, and I’m just telling you that in all this time, I’ve been practicing what I learned on the book field. The reason I’m the Speaker of the House right now is because, if you watched all the drama play out, I was the only person in the room that could get 217 votes. I did not aspire to this position. But the reason I am the Speaker of the House is probably in large measure because of what I learned in Southwestern. I’m not I’m not exaggerating. It’s true. Because when I got to Congress, I treated it like I treated everything in every stage of my life my career is that, you know, I want everybody to succeed. You know, I want to bring out the best everybody and let the whole team succeed together. And I have great empathy for people. You know, I learned perseverance. I learned that you don’t hold grudges. I learned to take rejection. They can’t hurt my feelings. I mean, really, you learn to deal with everybody’s objections and work through things and work through problems and get people to succeed together. And I mean, that’s just my approach in life. It’s Biblical values, but we learned how to implement it. And so I’ve been doing that since I got to Congress. And so when it came time when we had this void and we couldn’t find a leader that everybody would trust, I was in the back of the room. And, you know, I knew that I could get all those votes, but I was not trying to get I wasn’t running for it. I was trying to let all the more senior guys get the position who were like brothers to me. And at the end of the day, you know, it fell to me. And now I’m practicing all those principles in spades every day.

Interviewer
Yeah, so what are some of the unique challenges now, as Speaker, that you’re applying those principles to?

Speaker Mike Johnson
We have the smallest majority in the history of the United States Congress. The only exception was in 1917 in the 65th Congress, when they had a such a slim margin, they had a 0.46% margin. For the majority, ours is 0.9% so I can only lose one person to get anything over the line. So it’s an extraordinary challenge. I spend half the day as Speaker of the House, the other half of the day as a mental health counselor, and I bring in everybody and sit them down needed into my office and say, Well, how can we help you be successful? What is your best role team? You know, I’m going through all these, you know, answering their objections, doing all this stuff. And you learn to solve problems. You learn to earn people’s trust, and that’s what we do. So we practice it every day.

Interviewer
And you’re not the only person on the Hill who can relate to having this experience.

Speaker Mike Johnson
That’s right, Marsha Blackburn is a senator, you know, and she and I talk about this all the time. Rick Perry is an alum, been four governors. I think, I mean, it’s a extraordinary thing. I think I’m the first Speaker of the House in Southwestern, that’s pretty cool.

Interviewer
That is pretty cool. That’s got to be a big boost of confidence.

Speaker Mike Johnson
I’ll just tell you, in Washington, they beat me down mercilessly every day. But again, they can’t hurt our feelings, right? We learned how to get past that. But in seriousness, the country’s facing a massive collection of crises, and it’s probably as divided as it’s been. Maybe, I don’t know, since I don’t know, maybe the Civil War era, the collection of headwinds that we face as a nation are so extraordinary all at the same time, and the world is a dangerous place right now. And I mean, things are really unstable, and so it makes people feel unsettled. What we need to do is to walk in it and turn the temperature down and keep steady hands at the wheel. And that’s what I’m trying to do every day. Is just, you know, look, we got to treat one another with dignity and respect. The person on the other side of the aisle is not your enemy, that’s your fellow American. And the whole point of this exercise of the Constitutional Republic, which is still a grand experiment on the world stage, is that it is presupposed that we’re going to show up at the nation’s capital and have very different ideas and philosophy, right? But we’re never supposed to violate our core principles, but we have to give up on our preferences. That’s how this system is designed to work. I mean, it’s presupposed that people are gonna come with different ideas, but it’s also presupposed you’ll be willing to sit around a table and work it out, talk through your objections, find the solution, get to yes. And so what I’m trying to do every day is just navigate through this and that by the core principles and get people to recognize that we’re all fellow Americans, and we got to work through this together. You know, somebody said one time, it’s hard to hate someone if you know the names of their children. And the problem in Washington right now is we’re in a different era where after that last vote of the week, everybody jumps on a plane and goes home so they’re not there. They don’t live in Washington together. They don’t go to church, synagogue together on the weekends. They don’t do picnics together. They don’t get to know each other. And so it’s easy to stereotype people if you don’t know what they’re really about, where they come from, and it’s difficult to have sympathy, empathy for anybody. And then we have social media, right? Trent Lott came in to see me the other day. You know great senator. He said, Mike. He said, You remind me a lot of myself when I was a young man. I said, Yes, thank you Senator. He’s like a legend to me. And he said we had the same hair. Oh, well, thank you, Trent Lott. I don’t know if y’all know Trent Lott, but that’s a high, high compliment. I said, Thank you, sir. He said, You know I was, I was the, I was the leader in the Senate. And this is back in the 90s, you know? And he said we had a 50/50, split in the Senate, and I was a long time conservative on the South, and I had some of my Republican colleagues beating me up. They didn’t like me working with Democrats. And I said, hello, do the math. It’s 50/50, I got to work with the other side. He said, but you know what? Your job’s a whole lot harder than mine. Thank you for the pep talk, Senator. He said, Because you got social media. I can’t imagine if people go online telling everybody in America what a foul person I was every time I made a decision they didn’t like, that’s tough. Thank you, Senator. Are we getting to where’s the happy part? Right? Thanks, Senator, thanks for visiting. The people come by and they say that, wow. I mean, we got the greatest challenge right now, possibly of all time, because every member of Congress can go on social media every five minutes and share their opinion and burn down their colleagues, and some of them are really good at it. And so I’m from Louisiana, so I explained everything in either a football or a hurricane metaphor, and I said, let’s go the football metaphor, like, Hey guys, we need to be playing together as a team, right? And it’s probably not a game winning strategy to throw a Hail Mary pass on every single play, right? Probably not going to win a game that way. And also, it’s helpful if when we go take the field, you don’t run off of the bench and tackle your own quarterback, that’s helpful too, that, that’s helpful to win the game. It’s crazy.

Interviewer
So do you still lean on that positive self talk that you learned so many years ago during that college experience? Is that how you get through the craziness?

Speaker Mike Johnson
I am an optimist. I believe that America is the greatest nation in the history of the world. It’s not even close, we’re the most successful, most powerful, most benevolent. It’s not even close. And the reason is because we’re built on these foundations and our job all of us right now, no matter where we are, because we have to remind this generation of Americans that, as Reagan said, Freedom is not inherited in the bloodstream. You have to fight for it, pass it along the next generation, and we have to remember what made America great in the first place. It’s individual freedom and limited government and the rule of law and peace through strength and fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity. These are the ideas that set us apart and made us the extraordinary nation that we are. We cannot take for granted anymore, that the current generation, those coming behind us, know any of that, because they really don’t. This generation has no frame of reference to those great foundations, and so we have to speak with greater clarity, conviction and consistency than we ever have before. And it’s a serious challenge that we have. But I am absolutely convinced that God is not done with America, yet. I think he’s will give us another chance, and so we have to be faithful. And people say, Man, what a stressful job. How do you sleep at night? I say, actually, very easily. Only get like three hours of sleep, but I sleep well when I’m able to. And I said, you know why I go to sleep every night is that I remind myself what John Quincy Adams said. He said, The duty is ours. Results are God’s. Somebody gave me that admonition when I was selling books, and I applied it then too. And so it didn’t matter what, how many units I sold that day, I thought, well, I did my best today. I did my duty. Tomorrow will probably be better. I’m just going to keep plugging away, and the law of averages will kick in, right? And it did. You know, if you keep plugging away and keep working, duty is ours. Results belong to God. I’m not sovereign. I’m just doing my responsibility, and that’s what all of us are supposed to do. This is what America is built on, and I think our best days are ahead of us.

Interviewer
Well said, Mr. Speaker, thank you so much for making some time for us.

Speaker Mike Johnson
Thank you. Thank you so much.