Navalny was willing to take on Vladimir Putin and risk his life. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is so afraid of losing his speakership that he caves to Marjorie Taylor Greene
Upon the news of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, House Speaker Mike Johnson denounced Vladimir Putin.
“As Congress debates the best path forward to support Ukraine, the United States and our partners must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states,” he said in a statement.
Of course, Johnson’s words would hold much more weight if he had actually put through the aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that the Senate passed on the floor of the House of Representatives. Indeed, as the Senate labored late into the night on Monday and into the wee hours of Tuesday to pass that aid bill, Johnson summarily killed the bill because it did not address immigration at the US-Mexico border.
This came after Johnson and the rest of House Republican leadership blew up a bipartisan agreement that would have included aggressive restrictions to immigration in exchange for aid to Israel and Ukraine. Johnson, like most of the Republican Party, did so in the service of Donald Trump after he came out in opposition to the deal — despite the fact it would give him sweeping authority to deport migrants if he became president again.
Just a reminder that this guy came out of bumfuck nowhere, politically speaking, straight into the position of third in line for the presidency.
With that fact in mind, I don’t think his malleability and cowardice are accidental; I think they were prerequisites of the job, and specifically why he was chosen.
Let’s not forget that for several years, it took a lot more than a single majority vote to oust a Speaker of the House, and that those rules were changed in December 2022 specifically for the 118th Congress, and as a condition of Kevin McCarthy’s speakership. Consider also the group that did the deed of getting McCarthy booted, and their inordinately tight Russian ties.
Which is to say that booting McCarthy and putting in a far weaker player like Mike “my teenage son has to monitor my porn intake because I can’t be trusted to make adult decisions about my own sex life” Johnson was the plan all along.
Cowardice? It’s why he was chosen. If your ultimate plan is to gain the presidency via non-official means – including fake electors, a coup, an unforeseen fiery tragedy, what have you – then you gotta have someone in line for the role who is amenable to taking orders and doing whatever the fuck they are told without the slightest hint of shame at their own apparent hypocrisy and dishonesty, and without being an unpredictably deranged howler monkey that the entire world hates and ridicules, like the gang that ousted McCarthy.
Think about it. In these terms, Mike Johnson is the PERFECT man for the job.