House Speaker Mike Johnson: Herding Lawmakers Is Basically Running a Mental Asylum with Fires

Speaker Johnson has some thoughts to share about being the Speaker of the House.

Mike Johnson says leading the House is like being a ‘mental health counselor’ and ‘firefighter’ with constant emergencies https://t.co/vNpVbRBcAL pic.twitter.com/Wz8ocrHvmf
— New York Post (@nypost) November 26, 2025

Speaker Mike Johnson compared leading the slim Republican majority in the House Tuesday to being an overworked “mental health counselor” and “firefighter” constantly grappling with emergencies and lawmaker drama.
Johnson, who his wife, Kelly, divulged is a “really remarkable” portrait artist, painted an unglamorous picture of being the most important man in the House – marked by constant phone calls, a lot of take-out food and his teenage son being “embarrassed” to be dropped off at school by his dad.
“I don’t think any of us fully realized how much life was going to change in making the transition from the sort of rank-and-file member to Speaker,” Johnson (R-La.) said of his family, during an interview on the “The Katie Miller Podcast.”
“It’s an all-encompassing, literal 24-hour, 7-day-a-week, assignment,” the House speaker added.

Dealing with the drama of adult lawmakers has to be exhausting.

“We have this joke that I’m not really a Speaker of the House. I’m really like a mental health counselor,” Johnson said, “and so when the pressure gets turned up really high and then the stakes are so high and the votes are so tight, I just try to sit down and listen to everybody and figure out what their primary need is and how we can meet that.”
“And sometimes those are long counseling sessions, but we get that done,” he continued, adding, “it’s not unlike, I mean, it’s the same skills you use as a parent.”
Johnson and his wife both agreed that the most annoying part of being House speaker is the lack of any sort of lull.
“Hardly any downtime,” Kelly said.