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WASHINGTON — This morning, Speaker Johnson joined Axios’ Hans Nichols for a wide-ranging interview at an “Axios News Shapers” event. Speaker Johnson addressed the necessity of quickly codifying President Trump’s agenda into law, House Republicans’ efforts to strengthen and preserve Medicaid, and Democrats attempting to run their impeachment playbook again.

Watch the full interview here

On quickly codifying the Trump agenda into law:

The treasury secretary said July 4 this week in public statements, and we applauded that. But I really hope we do it sooner. And here's the reason why: this has nothing to do with pride of authorship in the House or any of that, we just want to deliver for the American people, and so do all of our Senate Republican colleagues on the America first agenda. The vehicle to deliver that is reconciliation. And the sooner we do it, the better Hans, because I think this will be a very important thing for stability.

I think it'll send a very important signal to the bond markets, the stock market, to investors and job creators here and around the world, and it'll send a message to our allies and our enemies that America is serious. We have stabilized tax policy. Everyone will know what their tax rates are. That will be helpful for making decisions for companies and also, of course, we're going to be deficit neutral or deficit reducing. We're trying to reduce the debt. And I think that's a really important message to send out there, that America is serious about our financial stability, and this bill is going to be that's one of the many things that will be accomplished in it. 

On strengthening and preserving Medicaid:

The number of waste, fraud and abuse over a 10-year period, it's $51 billion a year as an estimate. We think that's a low estimate of just fraud, waste and abuse in Medicaid alone. Who could be for that? I mean, we have a responsibility to tighten this up. When you're talking about work requirements, that's over an 80% public approval rating. But you eliminate fraud, waste and abuse, you bring in work requirements, and you tighten up the program, and you can find a lot of savings. And the whole point here, the whole idea - make sure illegal aliens are not receiving it all the rest. The whole idea is that we're trying to preserve the program.

Democrats were frankly lying about the intention of Republicans. It's so much so that we were able to get their ads and billboards taken down in swing districts by a cease and desist letter because it was based on nothing, they just made it up. I've been saying just everybody, please reserve judgment till we get the product out, but you're going to see what the President said yesterday, accurately, that Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security are programs that are sacrosanct the people. They depend upon these things, and our job is to shore them up and make sure that they're there, that we preserve the programs for the people who genuinely need and deserve it. 

On Congressional Democrats impeachment theatrics:

You know, we've already seen the movie. They tried it twice already, based on absolutely nothing, and they would do it again. I mean, Al Green filed impeachment articles like, I don't know, the fifth day of Congress. I mean, I think he did it before the President took his oath. So, it shows you where they are. It's all raw politics, and it's terribly destructive for the country. I mean, it's a waste of time. We need the American people expect their Congress to work. They expect Congress to work with the President. They want big things done. And we had a first, a really impressive first 100 days of the Trump administration. We're just getting started. We have a lot of work to do, and we don't have time for nonsense.