Stephen King Slams Mike Johnson

Horror author Stephen King regularly weighs in on politics—and this time he's criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Congress is barrelling toward a government shutdown for the third time under Johnson's speakership. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden met with Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle including Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to discuss a possible compromise on different legislation, such as government funding to avoid a shutdown and military aid to Ukraine and Israel.

A bill to provide military aid to Ukraine and Israel previously passed in the Senate but Johnson initially expressed opposition to voting in favor of it in the House. However, without a compromise met by members on both sides of the aisle, Congress will enter a partial shutdown—and King has expressed his dissatisfaction on X, formerly Twitter.

"Mike Johnson: What is the point of you?" he posted Wednesday night. At the time of writing it had received 543,200 views.

Newsweek contacted spokespeople for King and Johnson for comment via email Thursday.

King's posts are often divisive and people have taken to the comments to criticize his post.

"What's the point of you, Stephen King? Some spooky books really contributed to society, huh?" one person responded.

"Your books were good, but your political commentary has me wondering why I thought your books were good," said another.

A third person added: "Go write a book and stay out of politics."

However, others agreed with the author.

"Zero point. Speaker Moscow Moses is utterly useless!" one X user wrote.

"Punishment for our not dealing with MAGA earlier," stated another.

"...everyone across the political spectrum is asking this," someone else commented.

King's post comes after Johnson was quoted saying to a reporter regarding a government shutdown, "No, we're going to work to prevent that" as he headed into Tuesday's meeting with Biden and other top U.S. leaders.

Meanwhile, Biden spoke about working with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle saying, "We got a lot of work to do, we gotta figure out how we're gonna figure out keep funding the government which is an important problem and an important solution we need to find and I think we can do that."

King isn't shy about making his political opinions known and often shares his thoughts on Donald Trump, having previously posted to X: "Trump is Putin's running dog."

The author joined the Democratic party in 1970 and has been an outspoken critic of Trump since before the 77-year-old was elected president in 2016.

On May 24, 2016, King was one of 450 writers to sign an open letter opposing Trump's candidacy, with the author supporting Hillary Clinton's campaign.