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House Speaker Mike Johnson recounted a frightening experience when his two teenage sons were caught in a rip current, nearly drowning, just a short time into his role as Speaker, during a conversation on “Pod Force One,” which aired on Wednesday.
While attending a fundraiser in Florida during Thanksgiving week in 2023, Johnson (R-La.) was interrupted by his security team with alarming news during a meeting.
“They were swept far out and were close to drowning,” the Republican speaker shared with Post columnist Miranda Devine, recalling the harrowing event. “My son Jack was holding up his younger brother, Will, who is 13, and he was on the brink of drowning. Then, his younger brother almost succumbed as well.”
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“Jack and Will. They went to the ER, had their lungs pumped. I mean, it was quite an ordeal.”
Details about his children’s close call were previously reported by The Atlantic last year. Johnson underscored the sheer strength of the current that took his children and how, by chance, a nearby parasailer happened to see them and save the day.
“They’re great swimmers, but the rip current was so strong that day, and they got pulled far, far out,” the father of five said.
“And the only reason they were saved is because a parasailer happened to be going by and saw just my youngest son’s head right before he went under, waving for help.”
That parasailer had alerted nearby lifeguards, who dispatched jet skis to rescue his young boys. By the time Johnson arrived on the beach, he saw medical personnel around them as their chests were getting pumped.
A year-and-a-half later, his son Jack, whom Johnson described as a “great athlete,” has since completed his first year at the Naval Academy and wants to become a member of Special Forces.
After having dinner with Johnson the night before, President Trump caught word of the scary incident and called him up about a day later.
“I didn’t even tell him,” Johnson recounted. “He was so alarmed by what he heard, and he said, ‘Mike, it’s like a miracle.’ I said, ‘It is. Had it not been for the parasailer, we would have lost both my sons.’”
“So fast forward to the Butler, Pennsylvania, event many months later, when that happened, when I spoke to him after that, I said, ‘God saved your life, just as he did my boys in Mar a Lago,’” Johnson added.
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The father of five stressed that “God works in mysterious ways sometimes teaching us all these lessons, but that was a tough one.”
On Sunday, Trump marked the one-year anniversary of the Butler, Pa., assassination attempt against him in which a bullet grazed through his upper right ear, coming within a quarter inch of killing him.
“He’s a different person now than he was in the first term,” Johnson remarked about Trump. “He’s more thoughtful, contemplative. He thinks very carefully about decisions and is open to counsel on it.”