Mike Johnson made a revealing 'admission' about Trump's 'open corruption': conservative

15 May

House Speaker Mike Johnson on March 4, 2025 (Joshua Sukoff/Shutterstock.com)

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) recently tried to defend President Donald Trump by making a Hunter Biden/Trump comparison, characterizing the Biden family as shady but arguing that Trump is trustworthy because he operates out in the open. But according to Never Trump conservative Bill Kristol, what was meant to be a defense of Trump was really a damning "admission."

Johnson argued, "The reason that many people refer to the Bidens as the 'Biden crime family' is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains, in the back rooms. They were trying to conceal it…. Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open. They're not trying to conceal anything…. President Trump has had nothing to hide. He's very up front about it."

But Kristol, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 15, stresses that Johnson made Trump look worse — not better.

"This defense is an admission," Kristol explains. "Johnson is correct that Donald Trump’s open corruption and lawlessness is fundamentally different from run-of-the-mill corruption and furtive law-breaking. The difference is that it is far more dangerous. After all, if you live in a nation where you expect laws and rules are mostly going to be enforced, you'll do your unlawful things in private. And you'll cover up what you’ve done. You'll behave like Richard Nixon."

Kristol adds, "But if you’re bolder than Nixon, if you think you can get away with more than Nixon did or more than Nixon even wanted to do, then you’re not going to bother with a little surreptitious law-breaking and a subsequent cover-up. You'll test the limits of impunity."

Kristol isn't the first Trump critic to argue that he is "more dangerous" than President Nixon. 1970s Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks and veteran Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein — both of whom have vivid memories of Watergate and Nixon's resignation in 1974 — have often made that point.

Kristol's argument, however, is that while Nixon was "dodgy," Trump is openly and proudly corrupt.

"Nixon was a dodgy character operating within a rule-of-law setting," Kristol explains. "That's why Nixon was 'Tricky Dick.' Trump's not a particularly tricky politician. He's much more like a crime boss. And he understands that you’re more powerful the more your criminality can afford to be demonstrated to others. After all, a mob boss needs shopkeepers to see that they need to pay him protection money. A gangster needs it to be known that if you cross him, you’ll pay a price."

Kristol continues, "So if such a politician wants not just a bribe or two but a cascade of bribes, he has to let people know that he welcomes bribes, and that everyone is expected to offer bribes. Everyone also has to understand that they can get away with the bribes and benefit from them, and conversely, that they’ll pay a price if they don't step up. And if you’re not just a mob boss, but also, the leader of an authoritarian movement, corruption is just part of the story."

According to Kristol, "authoritarian" Trump wants Americans to "understand that" in 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) "is not operating under traditional norms and constraints" and is "now more a department of political favors and retribution than one of justice and law."

"An authoritarian project has to come out of the shadows to really succeed," Kristol warns. "The ultimate intimidation of many depends on some early and well-publicized assaults against a few."

Bill Kristol's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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