House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has a lot to deal with these days—Ukraine aid, Israel aid, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) attempts to vacate him from the speakership, how to deal with Joe Biden’s manufactured border crisis.
See:
Not Backing Down: Defiant Marjorie Taylor Greene Says ‘Mike Johnson’s Speakership Is OVER!’
House Freedom Caucus in Uproar Over Ukraine Funding Bill and Shock Move to Stop Vacate-the-Chair Votes
It’s easy to forget sometimes, though, that politicians aren’t just automatons; they’re actually people, and they’re mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. The point was brought home to Johnson when something much more important than politics interrupted a meeting with donors—his sons had almost drowned. Surprisingly, the incident was not widely reported at the time, but Johnson is now revealing the dramatic tale in an interview with The Atlantic:
…Johnson was meeting with donors at a beachside hotel, not far from Mar-a-Lago, when his security detail burst into the conference room. “Mr. Speaker, we need you right now,” they said. His sons had been swept out by a rip current.
In Johnson’s telling, Will, who was 13, was drowning; 18-year-old Jack, prepared to give up his own life, tried to push his brother back to the surface. A parasailer happened to spot Will’s head from above. He hurried back to shore and alerted the lifeguards, who went out on jet skis to bring the boys in. Johnson arrived at the beach to find medical personnel hovering over his sons, pumping their chests. They would spend four hours in the emergency room before being cleared to go home.
Johnson, who is outspoken about his Christian faith, believes that God saved his children, and former President Donald Trump evidently agreed:
“President Trump heard about it somehow—miraculously, this never made the news,” Johnson recalled. The two got on the phone. “He was just so moved by the idea that we almost lost them, and we talked about it at great length. And we talked about the faith aspect of that, because he knows that I believe that, you know—that God spared the lives of my sons. That’s how I understand those events, and we talked about that.” Johnson continued: “And he said, he repeated back to me and said, ‘God—God saved your sons’ lives.’”
The speaker was moved by the experience and spoke about providence:
For Johnson, repetition was window enough. Much like a parasailer glancing down at just the right moment, a Trump victory in November would not be accidental, Johnson told him, but “providential.” A gift to be embraced soberly, for a purpose larger than oneself. “And we talked about that, and I think he has a real appreciation for that, and that’s been, you know—it’s been encouraging to me.
“So we’ll see, we’ll see,” he said, his voice a touch quieter. “We’ll see where all that goes.”
As a parent, I can tell you that nothing is more important than the welfare of our children—not politics, not Ukraine aid, not even the ’24 presidential election. My son visited Costa Rica during the pandemic—mainly to escape the draconian policies in California, which basically shut the state down for two years—and when he came back, he told a horrible story about how his girlfriend got caught in a riptide, and they both almost drowned as he tried to save her.
I was not brought up in a strongly religious household, but I attended many chapels at the various schools I went to, and I’ve always believed in Something Greater Than Myself—greater than all of us. When it comes to my children, I find myself praying to God regularly. We can never understand His ways, but we can be thankful that Mike Johnson’s kids didn’t meet their end that day.
Perhaps the Trump-Johnson interaction can best be summed up by this exchange:
Friends still get a kick out of a story about how Johnson once told Trump that he was praying for him, to which the then-president responded: “Thank you, Mike. Tell God I said hi.”
