How Mike Johnson disobeyed congressional Trumpists on Ukraine

The Republican speaker of the House risked his career to get a package for $95 billion in international aid passed by the US Senate. The US House of Representatives approved $95 billion in expenditures on April 20. Of that amount, $60 billion was allocated to Ukraine, $26 billion to Israel, and $8 billion was set aside to counter the danger posed by Chinese development in the Indo-Pacific. Three factors contributed to the passage of the Ukraine package: first, all Democrats in the House supported it; second, over 100 Republicans did as well; and third, and perhaps most importantly, speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a Republican, let the bill to be brought to the House floor after months of delay.

Johnson is the most prominent Republican at the present, aside from Donald Trump. Fearing the backlash from his party’s opposition, Johnson postponed a vote on aid for Ukraine for months. However, he finally acknowledged that history was starting to weigh on him. On April 18, he declared, “My philosophy is you do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may.” “I would never be able to do my job if I was afraid of a motion to vacate [a vote of no-confidence like the one that was filed against the former speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in October 2023]. We are judged by history for our actions. Right now is a crucial moment.on the global arena. I could act selfishly, but I believe that giving Ukraine deadly assistance at this time is really crucial.Johnson explained how he had been persuaded that “Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Iran really are an axis of evil” by a number of recent briefings, chief among them that from CIA director Bill Burns. In my opinion, they are working together on this, and if given the chance, Putin would keep advancing over Europe. He could head to the Balkans next, in my opinion. He may be facing up against Poland or one of our NATO members, in my opinion. And to be very honest, I would prefer send Ukrainian bullets than lads from the United States. His kid, who is about to enrol in the US Naval Academy, was mentioned. “Like so many American families, this is a real-life exercise for me. This isn’t a game.It’s not a jest.Johnson was the target of public and private lobbying for months. Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Speaker of the House David Cameron, who had been pushing for Johnson to meet him in recent weeks, and outgoing Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who has been unwavering in his support for Volodymyr Zelensky, were among those pleading with him to expedite aid to Ukraine. The Democratic leader of the House minority, Hakeem Jeffries, called the choice “a Churchill or Chamberlain moment.” That parallel may have influenced Johnson in recent weeks, maybe jeopardizing his career as a speaker in the process.Born into a family of teenage parents in Louisiana, Mike Johnson’s father was a firefighter, a career he may have followed if his parents had permitted it. Elected to the House in 2015, he was virtually unknown as a congressman from Louisiana until 2020. An evangelical Christian, he is the father of five children, including an adopted black son. In 2015, Johnson and his wife took in Michael Tirrell James, then homeless at the age of forty, who has since thanked the Johnsons for keeping him out of jail.Johnson was a young, conservative attorney who supported anti-same-sex marriage legislation and opposed sodomy restrictions. He was elected speaker six months ago when McCarthy was removed due to his support of Ukraine’s financing; three more well-known contenders were not able to get the approval of the majority. Johnson benefited from not having a prominent career to stain him. He is completely unknown: just 55 per cent of Americans have an opinion about him.

He has asserted that he has always supported Ukraine. On January 7, he stated, “I’ve always said Vladimir Putin needed to be defeated,” on CBS’s Face the Nation. “I have never altered my stance.”However, he has. He continued to push in January to condition assistance for Ukraine on Congress enacting new legislation to stop an unprecedented influx of undocumented immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border. Johnson declared at the time, “We have to secure the US border before we secure anyone else’s.” He gave up on it on April 20, putting Ukraine first and receiving acclaim from the media and people in Washington.

Should history render a verdict on Mike Johnson, it must do so on several counts. His backing for the effort to void the 2020 election must be combined with his support for Ukraine.You can observe how deeply ingrained the GOP’s belief in a rigged election is by attending any Trump rally. That is mostly the result of people like Johnson. Republicans were the only ones who were impacted by Trump’s post-election complaints because others believed them. Johnson said on a Louisiana radio program ten days following the 2020 election that “many of us know intuitively that there was a lot amiss about this election day.” He stated that the theory that Dominion’s voting machines were “rigged” had “a lot of merit” and that the software of the devices was “suspect because it came from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.” Later on, Fox News was made to pay Dominion $787 million for permitting its journalists to make such defamatory statements. Johnson was lucky to avoid the company’s notice. Johnson asserted in the interview that “it really was rigged – it was set up for the Biden team to win” in Georgia, a swing state. He mentioned that there were eight times as many mail-in ballots for Biden in 2016 than there were for Hillary Clinton, but he also said that voter ID was not needed for these ballots (actually, state mail-in ballots need voter ID). He asserted, “The system is set up for massive fraud, error, and irregularity.” Johnson then supported a fruitless legal attempt to have the Supreme Court examine the election results in several battleground states by filing an amicus brief, a third-party legal contribution. In an email to them, he solicited support from 125 congressional Republicans by stating that Trump was “anxiously awaiting the final list” of congressional backers “to review.” Rather than a sincere effort to examine election processes, others interpreted that communication as a blatant attempt to appease the enraged former president. Johnson disputes this, stating that “if Trump had won, I would have had the same concerns… as God is my witness” and that he never planned to “overturn” the election. Johnson’s amicus brief took issue with the manner authorities in swing states changed mail-in voting procedures to allow for absentee voting in response to the epidemic. According to Johnson, the constitution prohibits any body other than state legislatures from making changes to these regulations. Johnson stated to CBS News in January that “what happened in many states by changing the election laws without ratification by the state legislatures is a violation of the constitution.” “That is an undeniable fact that cannot be disputed.” However, the Supreme Court disagreed, dismissing the case in June 2023.
However, many Republicans have cited Mike Johnson’s legal arguments as evidence to back Trump’s allegations of election fraud. Johnson tweeted, “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic!” early on January 6, 2020. In October 2022, he distanced himself from the ensuing uprising by telling the New York Times, “I never egged on any of that.” On April 20, he disowned the route he had used to achieve the position he now has and attempted to establish a new reputation for himself as the legislative savior of Ukraine.