![[Speaker of the House Mike Johnson]](https://i0.wp.com/outsidethebeltway.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/mike_johnson_speaker_candidater-1024x576.webp?resize=1024%2C576&ssl=1)
Like Kevin McCarthy before him, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is unwilling to speak the truth about the 2020 elections in a clear demonstration of obeisance to Donald Trump. WaPo reports on his appearance on This Week: Johnson won’t say Biden won in 2020, raising worries on 2024’s process.
During the interview Sunday, Johnson accused Stephanopoulos of trying to get him to “litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future.”
“We’re not going to talk about what happened in 2020,” Johnson said. “I’m not going to engage in it. We’re — we’re not talking about that.”
But Stephanopoulos argued that Trump “every single day” claims that the “election was rigged, that he won and that Joe Biden lost.”
“I’m just saying if you accept that or not,” Stephanopoulos said.
“I’m not going to play the game,” Johnson said.
This is not different than being asked if you believe that the Earth is round or flat. Johnson has a view and I even think he knows the truth. But he also knows that answering either places him with the Flat Earthers or forces him to contradict the Flat Earther leader of his party and might upset many Flat Earther believing voters.
But, as the piece reminds us, Johnson has been willing to subvert the election process to aid said leader.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, Johnson led a congressional effort to overturn the presidential results in four battleground states, gathering 125 House Republicans to join him in signing a Supreme Court brief claiming that the results were fraudulent because state election officials changed voting procedures — without first seeking legislative approval — to address the challenges of casting ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. That effort failed.
Johnson was also among the Republicans who, on Jan. 6, 2021, voted against certifying the electoral college vote for Biden in two key battleground states.
What we can know for certain is the Johnson, despite his mild-mannered affect, is willing to subvert the electoral process if it helps his side. I think, too, that that attempt was utterly cynical because if he was a true believer, rather than an opportunist, we would be happy to forthrightly tell Stephanopolous that yes, Trump won in 2020. Instead, he doesn’t want to “litigate things that happened four years ago,” despite their clear relevance to now.
I mean, who needs resumes when making hires?
“So, Mr. Speaker, do you think we should hire this babysitter? It says here that he lost the three kids he was watching in his previous stint, and they were never heard from again.”
“That’s the past. We are looking for a babysitter for the future.”
But, I digress.
Back to WaPo:
In January, Johnson told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan during an interview on “Face The Nation” that while Biden was “certified as the winner of the election, he took the oath of office, he’s been the president for three years,” the Constitution was “violated” before the 2020 vote.
Here’s the deal: if, in fact, Johnson thinks that the Constitution was violated, he has been pretty calm about it. Organizing a vote that he knew would fail, as awful an act as that was because it fueled skepticism in the integrity of our institutions, is not a difficult thing to do. It is also utterly inadequate to address a violation of the Constitution.
Moreover, the courts, including SCOTUS, had chances to weigh in. What we saw was that election denialism failed spectacularly in court.
I started this post initially with the intention of calling out Johnson for cowardice. But, this isn’t cowardice. It is all calculated and cynical. His actions in 2020 were, at best a serious of symbolic actions that he knew would fail but that had the clear effect of damaging faith in American democracy; at worst they were a sincere attempt to steal an election.
I would again note that he has not acted like a man who believes we had a serious violation of the Constitution. Rather, he has been more than happy to serve in the House, and to ascend to one of the highest offices in the federal government and to govern more or less normally (in the clip below he talks about working with President Biden).
However, he is also willing to continue his cynical degradation of American democracy because it serves his narrow partisan and personal interests.
It is shameful.
Here’s the video:
By the way, asking about his position on this topic is asking about an issue facing the country.
The notion that such a question is a “gotcha game” is a sad commentary on the state of the Republican Party at the moment.
