In October of 2023, the Republican party held a majority in the House of Representatives, but their chosen Speaker, Congressman Kevin McCarthy of California, was under constant assault, not only from Democrats, but from the radical center of the GOP itself. And thanks to a small coalition of fringe-right nationalists, McCarthy was ousted as Speaker in favor of a guy who, at the time, no one had ever heard of.
Enter Mike Johnson, Louisiana Congressman, prosperity gospel evangelical, porn enthusiast, and easily the emptiest suit in the history of American government. In fact, his emptiness is why he was chosen. He had no agenda, no desire to create one, and no one in DC knew him well enough to hate him, or to have an opinion on him at all. Now he’s third in the line of succession because we are no longer governed by serious people.
And now, thanks to a new report in the New York Times, we know exactly why Trump chose him and forced the GOP to fall in line.
“I’m the speaker and the president,” Mr. Trump has joked, according to two people who heard the remark and relayed it on the condition of anonymity because of concern about sharing private conversations with him.
And while the Times has many more readers than I do, and I assume they also have a capable editorial team, they also have an ever-present need to normalize the abnormal, which is why they call it a joke when no one anywhere should think for a moment that Trump is joking. He may say it with a smile, but we can be certain that he is entirely serious about seizing any and all power he can. Johnson is certainly a joke, but the remark is not.
So, taking Trump at his word, we can now attribute any and all of Johnson’s actions directly to the president. And we have known for a long time now that Trump fears the release of the Epstein Files more than anything else, and he is acting specifically to prevent their release. This is why the House has been on a forced “vacation” for well over a month now. The House cannot convene because if it does, Democrats will force votes on the Epstein Files for as long as they have to until the files become public. That is something Trump can’t survive, and he knows it, so he has ground government to a halt because he has no other choice.
There will be no rush to end the shutdown unless Trump can find a way to hide, alter, or destroy the Epstein Files. It has nothing to do with healthcare, or spending cuts, or anything political at all, though these things will be referenced again and again because cable news networks need to fill 24 hours a day and pundits need to keep cashing checks. But it isn’t real, and we should stop filling empty time with discussions of an empty suit. Americans deserve better. We deserve a media that still has the backbone to speak to us directly rather than feeding us the “death by clickbait” that we have become so accustomed to.
The GOP is Trump, and it exists solely to protect and enrich the Trump family. I both invite and challenge any journalist, pundit, talking head, right-wing blogger, or red-hatted nutter anywhere to prove me wrong.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.
Blank slate, turned into a green light go for anything donnie, maga and the pursuit of a white nationalist 'merica!
What a conundrum that our entire country's ability to govern depends on this weak, impotent tiny man and his controller. It's hard to imagine what can be done to break this impasse until enough republicans are willing to accept their role in all this.