Mike Johnson's lies keep getting lost in the facts
The shutdown is exposing the speaker's slimy disingenuousness.
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On Sunday, a Fox News interviewer asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson why he and Donald Trump are trying to coerce Democrats to end the government shutdown on the GOP’s terms by starving poor children.
A frustrated Johnson responded by saying: “Don’t get lost in the facts.”
It’s been a tough month for the beleaguered speaker. After shutting down the House weeks ago to avoid a vote to compel Trump to release the Epstein files, these days Johnson holds news conferences multiple times a week to “explain” why Republicans are so determined to make Affordable Care Act health coverage prohibitively expensive for millions of Americans that they are, literally, taking food out of the mouths of babies.
Donald Trump, to whom the GOP granted dictatorial powers nine months ago, has all but absented himself from fallout of the shutdown he and his cronies engineered. That’s left it to Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune to come up with a way to extricate Trump and his captive Republican Party from the political jam they put themselves in, even as polls indicate the GOP is at growing odds with most of the American people.
Johnson and Thune, who became legislative “leaders” at Trump’s sufferance and remain in their jobs only so long as they serve as his stooges, have proven themselves utterly unable to effectively negotiate with Democrats (perhaps because at Trump’s direction they refuse to). And Johnson has compounded what is becoming a full-blown disaster for his party by appointing himself to make the case for Republicans’ politically irrational, and increasingly amoral, course of conduct.
The speaker is a bad explainer, to say the least. Nearly every time he (and more rarely Trump) appears before the cameras to sell the GOP’s lies, he manages to unintentionally tell the truth — or, as Johnson puts it, “get lost in facts.” These admissions have advertised the fact that the regime is intent on using the shutdown to torment the poorest and most vulnerable among us, while Trump presides over the disaster as a self-declared dictator.
“I don’t know anything about that”
For instance, after spending weeks insisting the GOP’s “big beautiful bill” did not cut Medicaid benefits (in accordance with Trump’s repeated campaign promises), Johnson belatedly admitted the truth last Friday by bragging about all the purportedly lazy Americans whose healthcare Republicans are taking away.
Two days earlier, Johnson acknowledged that Congress was wholly abdicating its oversight responsibilities even as Trump is imposing massive tariffs and blowing up ships at his erratic whim, saying — in response to a question about Trump’s Argentina bailout — “look, we give the execution of foreign policy to the executive branch … we trust the president.”
And of course the list of things Johnson pretends he doesn’t know about is endless, ranging from a viral video of an ICE thug shooting a pastor point blank in the face with a pepper ball round in Chicago …
… to Trump’s grants of pardons to corrupt billionaires who enrich his family.
Faced with repeated questions about why has refused, for going on 40 days now, to seat Adelita Grijalva, the Democratic congresswoman-elect from Arizona who stands ready to cast the decisive vote required to pass the bipartisan Epstein files release resolution, Johnson has lied so shamelessly and so often that it amounts to a confession.
His slimy act is wearing thin even with MAGA extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Last week, Greene recounted calling Johnson to complain that, while he’s holding the House in recess and refusing to negotiate with Democrats, her own children’s insurance premiums were about to double. During a subsequent interview, Johnson “explained” that, 15 years out from the ACA’s enactment, the GOP’s purported “replacement” plan remains entirely secret, even from other Republicans.
Johnson’s already disastrous role as the GOP’s erstwhile explainer became a sadistic farce last Thursday when he defended Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’s announcement that her department was repudiating its recent commitments (and longstanding practice) by refusing to tap billions of dollars in readily available reserves to fund SNAP programs, thereby placing tens of millions of Americans at immediate risk of going hungry.
“On Saturday, things are gonna become very dire,” Johnson warned, all but advertising the fact that Republicans were stooping to holding children hostage in a desperate effort to coerce Democratic senators to vote for the GOP’s continuing resolution.
The next day, Johnson had the bright idea of inviting Rollins — who has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most shameless of Trump stooges – to join him in the House press room for another “explanation session.”
It did not go well.
Rollins used her time in front of the cameras to celebrate the fact that Republicans — who previously kneecapped portions of the SNAP program as part of their “big beautiful bill” — are proudly leading the way toward making poor Americans starve. She declared, without a whit of evidence, that SNAP is “extremely corrupt,” all but contending that poor children who account for 39 percent of the recipients are crooks. She opined that the imminent immiseration of tens of millions of Americans had a “silver lining” because it was going to start a “national conversation” about the nation’s “bloated” efforts to keep kids nourished.
Asked whether Trump would comply if a federal court ordered him to continue to fund SNAP, Rollins hemmed and hawed, suggesting the wannabe dictator might go so far as to place himself in contempt of court in order to keep food out of the mouths of children.
Rollins put the icing on the cake of her disastrous performance by acknowledging that “your government is failing you right now,” forcing Johnson to make a laughable effort to rescue her by “explaining” she was actually referring only to Democrats.
Suffice to say that Trumpers’ performative sadism strategy is not proving to be good politics.
Trump, apparently belatedly sensing this, disingenuously paid lip serve to supporting SNAP last Friday by declaring “I do not want Americans to go hungry.” He then jetted down to Mar-a-Lago to preside over a Halloween Party celebrating the excesses of the wealthy during the Roaring Twenties (just before the nation descended into the Great Depression).
But Trump apparently had second thoughts about showing “weakness” by complying with an order requiring him to feed kids. On Sunday, he dispatched another of his stooges, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — himself a hugely wealthy collector of antebellum Southern mansions — to the Sunday shows to clarify that Trump will keep food out of children’s mouths as long as possible.
True to form, yesterday the regime announced that — despite the court orders — they are going to try to get away with grudgingly funding only half of the federal government’s share of SNAP benefits. One can almost envision Trump gleefully denying hungry children their second bowls of gruel and sending to the workhouse those who have the temerity to join Oliver Twist in asking for more.
During a 60 Minutes interview that also aired Sunday, Trump defiantly declared he remains unwilling to negotiate with the Democrats, despite the fact they are only demanding the continuation of ACA tax credits that his own voters rely on and that his own pollsters have said the GOP should support.
Johnson has given every indication he and his fellow GOP legislative “leaders,” pliant as they are to the wishes of the party’s sole actual leader, will continue to prolong the shutdown. Trump, meanwhile, renewed his call for Thune and Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster.
Despite the increasingly transparent absurdity of the Republican position, Johnson keeps peddling the same talking points on behalf of their unpopular and incoherent shutdown “strategy” even as Trump’s numbers sink to new lows and an even larger majority of the country favors the ACA he’s working tirelessly to destroy.
Under the “leadership” of Trump and his lackeys, the Republican Party has created an entirely avoidable mess for itself. By taking a resolute stand in favor of making healthcare unobtainable for many Americans, and now threatening to starve children to achieve that perverse goal, they have made performative cruelty their political calling card.
And because Trump and his fellow GOP “leaders” have made their refusal to negotiate with Democrats a bizarre "principle,” when — as seems increasingly certain — they’re forced to make a deal to reopen the government, Trump, the self-styled dictatorial strongman, will end up substantially diminished. But at least we can hope the poor children of our very rich nation will come out of the imbroglio Trump and Johnson have manufactured with sufficient food to eat.
That’s it for today
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Ignorance is no excuse when you are Speaker of the House. It just makes you look stupid. Like you’re the fall guy for your mostly MIA President. Which increasingly he seems to be. When are these people going to realize that Trump may have immunity but they don’t? The court of public opinion will not be kind to Johnson, Bondi, Patel, Hegseth and the many other stooges for Trump. Johnson has learned lying and shifting blame at the feet of his Dear Leader. 🙄
I surely hope they televise the first ever surgery to remove a Speaker’s head from the President’s ass. Remember Kevin McCarthy? We don’t either. Hint… hint…😉