Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump reacts during a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
The Bulwark's Will Saletan says that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) is worried that the United States could become a dictatorship, but he's "wrong about where that threat is coming from."
At a press conference on Wednesday, Johnson warned that “a Marxist ideology [is] taking over the Democrat party” and could soon be “turning us into a Communist country," Saletan writes.
On Thursday, Saletan notes, 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 is right to fear the threat of dictatorship, Saletan says, but "He’s just wrong about where that threat is coming from. It’s coming from his own party. And he’s paving the way."
The Speaker is enabling and abetting President Donald Trump in every which way, Saletan writes.
"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," he says. "That’s the role Johnson is playing in Donald Trump’s takeover of America."
Referring to Trump's Truth Social demands of Attorney General Pam Bondi to persecute his perceived enemies —former FBI Director James Comey, Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), and New York Attorney General Leticia James —Saletan says "Johnson pretended it didn't happen."
When CNN's Jake Tapper pointedly asked Johnson about Trump telling his AG to go after his political opponents, Johnson, "with a straight face" said, “I don’t think that’s what he did.”
Following Comey's indictment on charges of making false statements to Congress and obstruction of a congressional proceeding, CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin asked the speaker "about this plainly autocratic move," in Trump bringing his favored attorney to prosecute the case, to which he replied, "“I wouldn’t say that."
When YouTube journalist Piers Morgan asked Johnson about the “revenge act now going on against all of the Trump opponents,” the Speaker replied that there was a responsibility "to make an example" of people who "lied to Congress," despite proof suggestion that Comey did not lie at all.
"The notion that Trump cares about lying to Congress is comical. He pardoned Roger Stone, his intermediary in Russia’s 2016 election interference, after Stone was convicted of lying to Congress," Saletan says.
Johnson's excuses for Trump don't stop there. "Johnson is also happy to excuse Trump’s overt bigotry," Saletan says, in reference to his laughing off of a racist video the president posted of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
"This is the same Mike Johnson who once issued a report admonishing his colleagues that wasteful government programs were 'not a laughing matter'," Saletan says.
And, he writes, as Trump sends troops "into American cities against the will of state and local officials, Johnson—who calls himself a “constitutional law attorney”—stoutly defends the president."
He also defends Trump's calls for the imprisonment of local officials who don’t cooperate with his military takeovers, as seen in a fumbling response to a reporter asking him about Trump calling for the mayor of Chicago and governor of Illinois to be jailed.
"Um. (Pause) I’m not the attorney general. I’m the speaker of the House, and I’m trying to manage the chaos here. I’m not following the day-to-day on that," Johnson said.
"That’s the sound of a man who will do nothing to challenge—and anything to justify—presidential violations of the Constitution, as long as the president is of his own party," Saletan says.
“Have you ever voted against anything that Trump set forth, as far as policy?” a caller asked Johnson on C-SPAN.
The speaker didn’t name a single thing. “I typically vote with President Trump, I do, because that’s my party,” he said.
"And nothing Trump has done—the sham prosecutions, the threats of imprisonment, the invasions of American cities—has shaken that blind devotion," Saletan says.