After watching the sad charade yesterday of House Speaker Mike Johnson in Mar-a-Lago— gaslighting about the need for “election integrity”—I thought about asking the question Army lawyer Joseph Welch asked Wisconsin Sen Joseph McCarthy in 1954: “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Tragically, I think we know the answer. Like red-baiting McCarthy then, Johnson—standing beside Donald Trump—makes clear he is immune to shame.
Yes, Johnson went to Florida to help save his job, amid growing pressure from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene for him to vacate the speakership. This in the face of his possible decision to finally hold a vote on aid to Ukraine, an act that Putin propagandist Greene hideously condemns.
But after years of supporting Trump’s despicable and dangerous lie of election fraud—never forget election-denier Johnson recruited House Republicans to support a lawsuit aiming to overturn the 2020 results—he is now mouthing the nonsense that a federal law is needed because of all the undocumented migrants (non-citizens) who are voting in U.S. elections. It’s a flat lie, debunked over and over, but it hasn’t stopped the pathological Trump and his enablers from repeating it over and over. Just days after occupying the White House in 2017, Trump told GOP Congressional leaders that millions of migrants had illegally entered the country to vote for Hillary Clinton and deny him the popular vote.
The issue is not just that Johnson and Trump are lying, but that they are gaslighting low-information voters who are inclined to believe what they say, further exacerbating public mistrust of our democratic system of elections. That’s what Trump wants—to destroy any remaining shreds of trust and strengthen his eventual claims that the election was rigged and he was cheated. And, of course, to scapegoat immigrants as the reason why.
I try to imagine how our body politic can begin to repair itself when the leaders of one of its two major parties have abandoned factual reality and remain wedded to spreading poisonous lies. I am increasingly convinced that it will require their total defeat before another wave of leaders decides it’s time to return to the known world and begin treating the public with respect.
What do you think? Is repair possible with leaders who have abandoned factual reality? How many years or decades might it take to fix the damage?
As always, I look forward to reading your observations and the opportunity for this thoughtful community to learn from each other. Please do be respectful. Trolling will not be tolerated.
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*Photo: House Speaker Mike Johnson and criminal defendant Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on April 12, 2024. Photo by Joe Raedle via Getty Images.
