Yesterday, both Fox and more legitimate news sources were reporting that Trump was defending MAGA Mike from Moscow Marge’s threats to vacate him… although reading between the lines, it was all about Trump assessing that voters’ anger at congressional GOP dysfunction and chaos could hurt his own chances in November.
Still, few people think Moscow Marge, who is widely disliked inside the Republican conference, has few allies and is— let’s face it, unintelligent— think she’s going to be able to vacate the chair. The Democrats are ready to join mainstream Republicans in slapping her down if she tries. Even Freedom Caucus chair, Bob Good, said that in his “judgment and estimation is that this is not the right time to do that.” Greene's still running around shirking that “Mike Johnson’s Speakership is over. He needs to do the right thing— to resign— and allow us to move forward in a controlled process. If he doesn’t do so, he will be vacated... [Republican voters] are absolutely done with Republican leadership like Mike Johnson, who totally sold us out to the Democrats, joined the uni-party faster than anyone we’ve ever seen in history, and literally made a night-and-day change in a matter of months.”
The only traction that’s getting— aside from the most extreme neo-Nazis in the House— is on Russian state television. Even Matt Gaetz is leaving Marge out to dry: “I think a motion to vacate right now would almost certainly turn the House over to Democrats, and that’s why I won’t support it.” It just keeps getting worse, at least in part because MAGA Mike is a weak speaker who holds no power over his fractious conference. With members like Gaetz, Chip Roy and Moscow Marge feeling empowered and entitled, the party will never be able to stand up on its feet. This week, The Atlantic published an extensive, somewhat sympathetic look at Johnson by Elaina Plott Calabro, The Accidental Speaker, who she started by noting that he’s “a curiously unimposing presence, with little gravitas… as one Republican adviser close to leadership, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, has come to conclude, ‘I think members can push him around a little more than they could with McCarthy and others.’”
He's very right wing in his policy agenda, but he’s committed to the kind of civility that can lead to, if not a “yes,” at least a compromise. Bannon calls him a “Sanctimonious Twerp” and Moscow Marge insists he’s a “traitor.” He’d not a fan of the incivility, lack of respect and coarsening of the culture he’s seeing in the House. That every Republican speaker since Newt Gingrich, who encouraged the incivility, lack of respect and coarsening, left the speakership under abnormal circumstances— including Gingrich and his successor, Denny Hastert, who wound up in prison— you have to blame the mess on the the conference more than on Johnson.
Since he became speaker, “he has seen his closest ideological allies become his most outspoken opponents, their belligerence manifesting in a ceaseless churn of failed procedural votes, public denunciations of his leadership, and, now, the threat of his removal… Whether Johnson is ‘deliberative’ or ‘indecisive’ depends on which member you ask; though the speaker’s agreeable nature usually assures smooth conversations conducted in indoor voices, it can also leave members— centrists and Freedom Caucus types alike— convinced that he is on their side. In meetings, Johnson can spend more time taking notes than talking, offering only the occasional I hear you, brother as members press their cases.”
The popular caricature of Johnson’s speakership, however— the idea that he arises each morning with a to-do list from Trump— assumes that Trump is actually paying attention. Generally, he’s not; if anything, Johnson can at times seem to wish there were a to-do list. Unlike Kevin McCarthy, according to two Trump advisers, Johnson occasionally hesitates before calling the former president directly. Instead, he and his staff often try to divine Trump’s position on this or that from conversations with those close to him. Earlier this year, when bipartisan border legislation in the Senate appeared close to passage, Johnson was “asking a lot of people around Trump what he should do,” said one of the Trump advisers, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations. In that instance, Trump ultimately did tune in and broadcast his thinking on Truth Social (“I do not think we should do a Border Deal, at all, unless we get EVERYTHING needed to shut down the INVASION of Millions & Millions of people, many from parts unknown, into our once great, but soon to be great again, Country!”), and soon after Johnson declared the bill “dead on arrival” in the House. (It was “absurd” to suggest that he had done so to help Trump, Johnson told reporters.)
Richard Ray, Johnson’s former law partner, told me he worries “every day” about Trump “turning” on his friend. During that especially catastrophic stretch of failed rule votes, according to the two Trump advisers, the former president resolved to vent his frustrations with the speaker on Truth Social. But aides stepped in and urged him to put down the phone. “It was explained to him over and over again, you know, ‘It’s the same thing with Kevin— there’s only so much he can do with a slim majority, and these guys aren’t playing ball,’” as the other Trump adviser summarized the aides’ pitch. Trump, as it turned out, did not precisely know what they were talking about. “So, he got a little bit of a congressional education” on the “rules process,” this person went on, after which Trump apparently became more sympathetic to Johnson’s plight. There was no post. (Trump declined to be interviewed for this story.)
In the months since, as Johnson has gotten more comfortable in his role, he’s gotten savvier at managing up. It was Johnson who pitched the former president on a media appearance at Mar-a-Lago in April, just three days before the House was set to return from recess and the far-right threat to his speakership was likeliest to crest. “I think he’s doing a very good job,” Trump told reporters, calling the efforts to topple Johnson “unfortunate.” “I stand with the speaker,” he said. “We’ve had a very good relationship.”
Trump’s inclination to support Johnson might stem, at least in part, from the simple fact that Johnson, shortly after taking the gavel, endorsed him for president— in an appearance on CNBC, no less, the same network on which McCarthy, a few months earlier, had questioned whether Trump was the “strongest” Republican to take on President Biden.
Their alliance is nevertheless a strange one. To the extent that people close to Trump find themselves wondering about Johnson, it is often with a kind of detached fascination. Here was a man who’d named his dog Justice; whose favorite song is the hymn “Be Thou My Vision”; who embroiders even casual conversations with quotes from Reagan, Washington, John Adams. No booze, no foul language; a marriage voluntarily stripped of the easier means of leaving it. The second Trump adviser told me he always thought Johnson’s earnest demeanor was just a show—“like, he’s not really like this; no one can be like this.” Cue this person’s surprise, then, at a small private dinner following a recent Trump fundraiser in Washington, where Johnson was among guests such as Senators Tom Cotton, J. D. Vance, and Steve Daines, as well as a number of media personalities and former Trump administration officials. “Everyone’s guard is down because it’s a room full of people that everybody trusts”— which is to say there was booze, foul language— “and the man is still exactly the same.”
Privately, Johnson has used humor to signal an awareness of the gulfs that separate him from Trump— that he is not blind to the patent absurdity of the man. Over the years, he has honed his impression of Trump, and frequently deploys it when recounting their latest exchange. Friends still get a kick out of a story about how Johnson once told Trump that he was praying for him, to which the then-president responded: “Thank you, Mike. Tell God I said hi.”
How Republicans castrated themselves, an Axios post yesterday, wasn’t necessarily about Johnson. It was more about the nihilists McCarthy empowered to get the speaker’s gavel for himself, something that backfired on him and destroyed his career. The structural changes McCarthy and other weak GOP leaders made, “made the place ungovernable," a former member of GOP leadership told Axios.
No one who is watching Washington doesn’t see the Republicans castrating themselves. One somewhat gleeful Democratic House staffer told me "It's like a series of MMA or Vale Tudo matches every other day over there." Yesterday, Patrick Svitek and Marianna Sotomayor wrote that after the contentious— at least in the GOP conference and on Fox News— votes on Ukraine and Israel, “House Republicans took aim at one another— in unusually sharp terms… Then Texas Republican Tony Gonzales compared Moscow Marge, Bob Good and Matt Gaetz to KKK members, called them “scumbags,” said Good is backing a neo-Nazi and that Gaetz is a child molester, all true, but you’re not supposed to say it out loud, let alone on CNN. That prompted Arizona neo-Nazi, Eli Crane, offended, to endorse gun nut Brandon Herrera, the neo-Nazi running against Gonzales, and donate to his campaign, something several other far right members, like Chip Roy (TX), Ralph Norman (SC) and Eric Burlison (MO) said they’re going to do as well. And then a free-for-all broke out with the mainstream conservatives and the fascists fighting with each other like school children.
Mainstream conservatives are demanding that Johnson “take harsher measures against” the fascists. “Last week during a meeting with the speaker and lawmakers of the conservative Main Street Caucus, who prioritize governing, conversations revolved around how to punish members based on what could improve House functions. Several members suggested removing the three hard-liners— Roy, Massie and Norman— who sit on the House Rules Committee. Johnson did not announce any decision on whether to follow through with that proposed plan, which many members from that meeting acknowledged is easier said than done since far-right members fundraise successfully off being targeted by ‘the establishment.’”
By the end of the day, Moscow Marge was whining that “It’s baffling hearing the establishment complain that it’s too much drama, too hard, and too risky to go through another Speaker race. Complete surrender is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.”
One bit of good news for the GOP— and America-- though: George Santos dropped his fake bid to run for Congress against Republican freshman Nick LaLota. He also tweeted that he’s “willing and able to step up to the plate and go fight for my country at anytime,” making some people wonder if he’s moving back to Brazil. Hmmm... I wonder if the prosecutors made him turn over his passport when they let him out on his own recognizance.