Flunky of the House

The Speaker of the House Is Abetting Authoritarianism

Every Trump needs his Johnson: a flunky who will rationalize his crimes.

MIKE JOHNSON, THE REPUBLICAN SPEAKER of the House of Representatives, worries that the United States could become a dictatorship. At a press conference on Wednesday, he warned that “a Marxist ideology [is] taking over the Democrat party” and could soon be “turning us into a Communist country.” On Thursday, as he fielded calls on C-SPAN, Johnson invoked the language of The Communist Manifesto: “What if the socialists take over the Senate, and Democrat socialists are in charge, and they want to grow government and take over the means of production?”

Johnson isn’t wrong to fear dictatorship in this country. He’s just wrong about where that threat is coming from. It’s coming from his own party. And he’s paving the way.

To bring a democracy under authoritarian control, you need more than a strongman. You need politicians who will assure the public, as we slide toward one-man rule, that nothing odd is happening. That’s the role Johnson is playing in Donald Trump’s takeover of America.  From Will Saletan at The Bulwark

Soooo disingenuous. Soooo stupid. Somehow the Democrats are moving us towards a dictatorship when, last time I checked, the Democrats controlled no part of the federal government. That's some gaslighting, right there.

Of course, the current shutdown is all about the Epstein files. If the House comes back into session, Johnson will have to swear in the new Representative from Arizona and the House will have enough votes to release the Epstein files. If that happens, apparently Trump and many others are cooked. So Johnson would rather keep the government closed than allow that.

And he'll continue to lie to the rubes about a leftist dictatorship.