Republican House Speaker evangelical Mike Johnson, who characterizes himself as a deeply religious man, was put on the spot Sunday about the morals of some of President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet picks.
Do morals "matter anymore?" CNN's Jake Tapper asked Johnson on "State of the Union."
"You're a man of faith, you're a man of God, you're a man of family. With some of these nominees, [Matt] Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, RFK Jr., I wonder — does it matter anymore for Republicans to think of leaders as people who are moral in their personal lives? Is that still important to the Republican Party?"
Hegseth, whom President-elect Donald Trump has nominated to be Defense secretary, was accused of sexual assault in 2017. He paid off the accuser as part of a nondisclosure agreement, his lawyer has revealed, but insists the sex was consensual.
Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz was investigated by the Justice Department in a sex trafficking probe, though he was never indicted and the investigation was dropped. He was also the target of a sex-trafficking probe involving an underage girl by the House Ethics Committee. That has also been dropped because he resigned his position after Trump nominated him to be the nation's attorney general.
Johnson insisted: "Sure [morals are] an important issue for anyone in leadership." But the speaker appeared to prioritize Trump's right to name whomever he wants to top positions, and that they should be people who "shake up the status quo."
Trump's nominees are "persons who will shake up the status quo. I think ... the mandate in this election is a demand that we shake up the status quo," Johnson, who referred to them as "disrupters."
"Any president has the right to name their own cabinet to nominate persons that they think the people that will fulfill their agenda," Johnson added. "And the people that are on this list will do that."
Check out the interview here:
