Speaker Mike Johnson Optimistically Declares 'The Kitchen Table Issues Are Going To Determine The Midterms'

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: MEDIAite

May 24th, 2026, 4:51 pm


Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) joined Fox & Friends hosts at the Indianapolis 500 Sunday, where the House Speaker found time to discuss some big issues affecting Americans as the country gears up for the midterm elections. Johnson said he was “very confident” that President Donald Trump will announce a peace deal with Iran very soon.

“This will allow 60 days to get the details done,” Johnson said, “and the number-one condition has been that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. We’ll take care of the nuclear dust. We’ll get the Strait of Hormuz reopened, which will be great for gas prices here and stability around the world. And that’s why all the regional allies there and all the regional countries are following U.S. leadership under President Trump.”

“Let’s talk politics here,” said host Rachel Campos-Duffy. “What does this mean for you and the midterms? Because I know this consumes your thoughts a lot.”. “Yeah, it’s a big thing,” Johnson said. “Obviously we’ve done a lot of work: The Big Beautiful Bill, the working families tax cut — all of the legislation has been geared towards the cost of living, affordability, bringing the cost of living down.”

Johnson continued, “We put in all those conditions in the economy to let it take off like a rocket, and we were doing that at the beginning of the first quarter, and then the Iran skirmish began. So, when this settles down, gas prices come back down to earth, that means your grocery prices come down again because of transport costs and all the rest. It’s going to be a big factor. The kitchen table issues are gonna decide the midterms.”

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/speaker-mike-johnson-optimistically-declares-the-kitchen-table-issues-are-going-to-determine-the-midterms/

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Mikie has done ZERO (including "kitchen table issues" ) except keeping the House out of session for most of the past year and slithering in and out of his swamp home.

[SSJVegeta]

1. Maybe hes just excited he wont have to be in charge anymore

[Chemical Bill]

2. Republican cheating is going to determine the midterms.

Just like the last 20 something years.

[slightlv]

49. Yes... cheating... but we've already seen they can think they've got it all

figured out and STILL lose. Why do you think they hate Biden so much?! trump should have walked away with the office, he sure cheated enough to get it. One prez election later, and he got it with the help of his techbro Musk and his satellites. THIS Is what we have to guard against somehow. I dunno how. I was IT all my adult career, but it's so beyond me now I can't even imagine. I'd say go back to pencil and paper and people counting the ballots, with another person validating each ballot count. It would take forever, and be so completely dumb considering the tech that *could* help us. But if it keeps the tech from hurting us, I'd be all for waiting a week or so for the election results... as long as their was true and verifiable chain of custody involved.

Johnson is right, tho... kitchen tables issues will decide the election, IMO. But he's not thinking straight. The groceries and food commodity people are not going to bring down their prices comparable to pre-trump. They had a "reason" to raise those prices or change the amount of food in a box for the same price, and they're not going to give up those profits. Same with gas. What goes up STAYS up. Otherwise, we'd have been paying 90 cents a gallon or less prior to trump.

People have been hit and hit hard thanks to trump and the repuglicans. And they see all the money he's ripped off from them to demolish their capitol city to build a legacy to trump in name only... knowing that each block of concrete will be ripped from one another and piled into garbage dumps. And knowing they'll have to pay for that, too. All the while, they go without food and medicine, collection agencies howling at the door. Yes, it will be kitchen table issues. But Johnson is on the wrong side of those issues. He lives in a made-up god fantasy world. It may all be roses for he and his. the rest of us don't forget, tho...

[modrepub]

3. Republican's Will Have A Better Chance

Of Trump insisting that gas prices are $2 a gallon, eggs are 30 cents a dozen, electric bills are $50 a month and a complete family healthcare plan can be had on the new Trump market for the low price o $29.99 per month than anything returning to “normal”.

Everyone knows prices go up like a rocket and fall like a feather in an updraft. The only thing that truly cuts prices is a recession and we all know how well politicians want that.

[Hieronymus Phact]

33. politicians may not love a recession

but the wealthy sure do. They buy up assets for pennies on the dollar, they have a good excuse to trim headcount, employees are more afraid than usual, interest rates get lowered, and "All the money comes back to it's rightful owners".

[modrepub]

55. If They Aren't Leveraged

Lots of these maga rich borrow on their assets to avoid taxes. Margin calls may hit them and their companies real hard in a stock market correction.

Our job is not to allow politicians and the M$M to bail them out. “Too big to fail” government bail outs allows these folks the opportunity to wreck our economy with impunity.

The correct path is to prosecute and break up big businesses like we did for the S&L crisis back in the 80s not the massive bailouts and consolidation we chose after the 2008 crisis.

[SamuelAdams]

4. They have done so much work he can only list one bill they passed.

[nuxvomica]

13. He talks like an underperforming employee

Desperate to keep his job.

[SergeStorms]

5. So, depleting our ordnance supply on Iran....

and achieving absolutely nothing is now a "skirmish," right, Mr. Speaks-out-of-his-ass? What a freaking tool.

He's correct, though. When there's no food on that "kitchen table" it'll become quite an issue.

[Whip-poor-will]

6. Child porno flicks

Everything will change when the tapes escape, and escape they will one day to our shame.

Roll the rape tapes then we'll see how big trump is what the republican MO is rape

[IronLionZion]

7. Prices for everything are high. It will take a while to come back down

Plenty of oil infrastructure has been damaged in the war. It will take time to rebuild.

It'll be hard to blame this on immigrants or DEI but they'll try anyway.

[duhneece]

24. And they will (try to) blame Biden & Democrats nt

[slightlv]

50. Yes, they'll blame Democrats because they're too stupid to add 2+2.

History is whatever anyone in their ranks tells them. What goes up (price wise) does NOT come down... ever. It used to cost me 25 cents for fill the tank on my motorcycle when I was 16. Gas wars were held among the stations... gas at a nickel a gallon or around there. If it got to 50 cents, the station went out of business because no one would shop there. And the hard part of that is the gas stations have convenience stores because that's the only place they can make money. The mom and pop gas station couldn't survive these days just by selling gasoline. This is what america as become thanks to the billionaires.

[azureblue]

8. they are ---

Like why don't we have enough food on the table, and why is gas so expensive?

[JohnnyRingo]

9. He assumes "kitchen table issues" are boys playing in girl's sports.

Or all this Medicaid fraud. "Honey, pass me the green beans, and did you hear about the NASDAQ outperforming the market today?"

[ananda]

56. Well, I've been wondering what "kitchen table" is code for.

Is it white people sitting around talking about
their hate?

[chouchou]

10. "As we sit around the Kitchen table, our topics will be those ...

...girly-men and manly-women are ruining sports"

[GreenWave]

11. Oh no honey bunny. You have a lot of 'splaining to do...

Sitting idly by while Trump destroyed America both within and abroad.
Sitting idly by while Musk and Doge ransacked our government, stealing our info.
Sitting idly by while Trump flunkies kept pushing the Epstein files away.

etc.

[Karma13612]

12. The house mouse says wut??

Of course those are going to be the issues! The very issues that Trump ran on and promised he would fix.

He didn’t and he won’t.

He has too many wars to fight and too much grievance left to address.

[travelingthrulife]

16. I like the House Mouse. Perfect for him.

[Karma13612]

35. Thank you!

The graying hair was the icing on the cake.

He is Speaker of the House (Or should I say squeaker?)
He acts like a meek little Mouse
He has the whole graying hair thing-but that seems to change since he probably touches it up periodically, to go along with his make up.

[hadEnuf]

54. A dunce could figure out those will be the issues, so he wins the cap.

But he would also like to steer people away from thinking of the butchery of DOGE, the Epstein Files, pardoning terrorist insurrectionists and now trying to pay them for it, the Iran war for nothing, Venezuela and the rest of the atrocities that Trump has done to this country. And let's not forget the fact that ol' Mikey and his Republicans have approved of everything Trump has done.

[Karma13612]

57. It's absolutely sickening.

[Pinback]

14. "...then the Iran skirmish began."

As I recall, that skirmish, or kerfuffle, if you will, “began” with unprovoked air strikes and missile launches by U.S. and Israeli military forces on Feb. 28, 2026, not by spontaneous combustion.

This phrasing reminds me of a quote attributed to Frank Sinatra after he assaulted somebody in a drunken fury: “He became punched.”

[rampartd]

15. after 50 years of neoliberal economics they still do not undersrand

that their economic model does not approximate current conditions.

"We put in all those conditions in the economy to let it take off like a rocket" johnson

no, you didn't. you gave your rich donors a Christmas list.

[DBoon]

28. you are too kind

I'd say, "their economic model does not approximate reality"

[Escurumbele]

17. How can someone be so full of s&*it? All repubs are...these people cannot be more awful, its like they were all

born with the same mental virus and never recovered!

When gas prices go up, everything goes up, and then when gas prices come down, nothing else comes down, we are stuck with high prices for everything. If he thinks the only issue is what is on the table, he is dilutional, he is detached.

[Onthefly]

21. Lying is like breathing. And they believe their lies.

[Dulcinea]

18. "Kitchen table issues"

The costs of gas, food, housing, health care, etc., are going to bury the Repubs in the fall. So I can't completely disagree with Tiny Johnson here.

[Baitball Blogger]

19. Which begs the question, how many racists can you fit around the kitchen table.

[paleotn]

20. Right for all the wrong reasons, Mike.

Kitchen table issues are going to kill your party in Nov. Ain't nothing coming down by Fall. In fact, as the fallout from the Iran debacle peculates through the economy, they're going to go up even more.

What an f'ing moron he is.

[nakocal]

22. Republicans are horrid on "kitchen table issues"

The only thing that they do well is lie and control the media to repeat their lies.

[Mysterian]

23. Bootlicker Johnson is the second-worst Speaker in history

Convicted republican pedophile child molester Dennis Hastert takes the #1 spot.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

25. Well you better pull your head out of Trump's ass Mike

You guys are losing on those issues.

[Norrrm]

26. 'The Kitchen Table Issues' - like Trump not caring about people's finances?

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221235062

Trump Says He Doesn't Care "Even a Little Bit" About People's Finances

[mzmolly]

27. If I never hear the words "kitchen table" again

I will be pleased.

[Blues Heron]

29. "Nuclear dust" Moses Mike is such a sniveling ass kisser for using trumps idiotic term for enriched uranium

[keep_left]

51. Ugh...I can't believe he actually said that.

Just a total sycophant.

[not fooled]

30. We can only hope

voters understand why prices have risen sharply under krasnov and vote accordingly.

[twodogsbarking]

31. Mike is what happens to people when they have had too many atomic wedgies when young.

What a joke.

[ShazzieB]

32. Whistling past the graveyard

This cartoon is a little old, but I think it applies here...

[Talitha]

34. Hey Mikey, homeless people don't even HAVE a kitchen table.

Think about that while you pat yourself on the back, ya' little twerp.

[Blue_Roses]

36. One of the many

"kitchen table" issues is talking about healthcare and affordability--something he's gonna have a hard time explaining, since they let the much-needed subsidies expire! I'm still so pissed off about that and so are others...

[Katcat]

37. Absolutely

My table is empty and it’s his fault!

[Renew Deal]

41. lol

Exactly!

[Javaman]

38. there are kitchen tables an then there are kitchen tables.

most normal people gather with their family, have meals and discuss just how fucking shitty life and the economy is at the moment.

repuke congress morons, is were they snort their crack.

[phxjurist]

39. Maybe he's correct. The cost of what people put on their tables just might decide the midterms.

[Renew Deal]

40. The #1 condition will be to get the Iranians to agree to what they already agreed to before the war

The #2 condition is for the Strait to be open like it was before the war. So basically, the war was fought for nothing but jacked up inflation globally, and Johnson did nothing to stop it.

[efhmc]

42. Skirmish?

[Karasu]

43. Republicans couldn't give less of a fuck about said issues if they tried...and did he seriously just call the fucking war

a SKIRMISH?

Skirmishes don’t last more than a couple of hours. They don’t drag out for months of “It’s over now! Really!" just because a bunch of grifters are too busy manipulating the fucking market.

[SamuelTheThird]

44. Unctuous, prevaricating, sycophantic weasel

[Attilatheblond]

45. If he has any brain cells,

He should be scanning the Help Wanted ads

[Hope22]

46. That's right Mike....

Like where to load the kitchen table in the UHaul….

[pat_k]

47. Mike Johnson to reality: "I'm not listening to you" la la la la la la "

[Aussie105]

48. It will be all sunshine and jolliness soon enough, around that kitchen table!

So says Mikey.

But, being a Disney Micky Mouse clone in human form, you have to wonder.

Not-in-touch-with-reality at work there - a common Republican trait, often enhanced with prescribed or self-selected medication.

But the kitchen table issues that need to be discussed will be:

- why is there no food on the kitchen table?
- why start an unwinnable war?
- Epstein files released yet?
- when will the GOP and Trump shrivel up and die, and stop making life difficult?

[mdbl]

52. Just follow the gaslighting playbook

I know the magats will still eat it up. Don't know about the rest of them that voted for Dump last time.

[jmowreader]

53. The "Iran skirmish"?

You mean the illegal unprovoked war Trump started to knock the Epstein files off the front page?

In fact, he's absolutely right - "kitchen table" issues will decide this election. And the problem is, those issues include gas rapidly approaching $5 per gallon and food screaming upward in price. A few days ago I read an article on new fancy home-grilled burgers for Summer 2026 that started out "if you're splurging on ground beef this year." Before the Orange Menace got into office people grilled burgers because it was the cheapest form of beef you can get - and now it's a splurge.