Speaker of the House Mike Johnson opened up about the recent motion to vacate filed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., in an interview on "Sunday Night in America."
Greene has accused Johnson of having "betrayed" the "confidence" of the House GOP Conference by pushing through a bipartisan $1.2 trillion federal funding bill to avoid a partial government shutdown.
Host Trey Gowdy questioned the value of the motion to vacate amid the nation's crises. "How does this motion to vacate help win back the majority or win a bigger majority?" he asked Sunday night.
"I don't think it does, and I think all of my other Republican colleagues recognize this as a distraction from our mission," Johnson responded. "Again, the mission is to save the Republic, and the only way we can do that is if we grow the House majority, win the Senate and win the White House. So we don't need any dissension right now."
Speaker Johnson assured Gowdy that the motion filed by Greene is "not a privileged motion" so it won't move "automatically." He added, "It's just hanging there."
Johnson subsequently revealed that he had "exchanged text messages" with Greene on Easter Sunday, adding, "We're going to talk early next week."
Additionally, the speaker alluded to the "razor-thin majority" as being the reason that the bipartisan $1.2 trillion federal funding bill was not "perfect."
"Marjorie's a friend, she's very frustrated about, for example, the last appropriations bills. Guess what? So am I," Johnson added. "As we discussed, Trey, these are not the perfect pieces of legislation that you and I and Marjorie would draft if we had the ability to do it differently. But with the smallest margin in U.S. history, we're sometimes going to get legislation that we don't like, and the Democrats know that when we don't all stand together with our razor-thin majority, then they have a better negotiation position, and that's why we got some of the things we didn't like."
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE FILES MOTION TO OUST SPEAKER JOHNSON
He also expressed being "upset" about some of the "terrible stuff" that made it onto the federal funding bill.
The House speaker concluded by saying, "I want to talk with her about reforming the budgeting and spending process going forward. That's what Republicans are for, that's the transformational kind of changes that we can forge if we all stand together."
Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.
