It’s not easy to defend Donald Trump, who has spent the final stretch of the 2024 race spewing even more dangerous rhetoric—and engaging in even more bizarre behavior—than normal. But House Speaker Mike Johnson gave it a shot Sunday, as he tried during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper to clean up the former president’s direct threat to use the military against political foes—or the “enemy from within,” as Trump describes them.
“What he’s talking about is marauding gangs of dangerous, violent people who are destroying public property and threatening other American citizens,” Johnson insisted.
“Nope,” Tapper interjected, noting that Trump’s “enemy” remarks explicitly referenced Democrats like Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi while playing a clip of Trump ranting about “radical left lunatics” in a recent Fox News appearance. “These people, they’re so sick and so evil,” Trump said at the time.
But Johnson was undeterred: “Trump is talking about restoring law and order.”
That’s just plainly untrue, as an exasperated Tapper noted at the conclusion of the exchange. “It’s like you were answering questions from a completely different interviewer,” he quipped to Johnson. But it was typical of Johnson, who also spent time Sunday brushing off questions about Trump’s lewd rally tangent about late golfer Arnold Palmer’s anatomy. “This shouldn’t be about personalities,” Johnson told Tapper. “This is about policy.”
Of course, Trump has no actual interest in or capacity for substantive policy; his movement is a cult of personality, and its ultimate project is “retribution” against the opponents, scapegoats, and other villains he conjures for his supporters at rallies. That Johnson and other Republicans pretend otherwise says a lot about them—none of it good.
Indeed, this decade of Trump’s political dominance has laid bare the character of Republicans like Johnson and Mitch McConnell, who know that Trump is “despicable” and “stupid”—as the Senate leader reportedly put it privately—but put their personal and party interests ahead of those of the country. “We are all on the same team now,” McConnell said of his previous criticisms of Trump, noting that running mate JD Vance and lackey Lindsey Graham had been perhaps even more critical of him before closing ranks.
Their bargain with Trump isn’t just a temporary blight; it is once again bringing American democracy to the brink, as Liz Cheney—one of the few prominent Republicans to pass the Trump era’s moral test—has warned. “I do not have faith that Mike Johnson will fulfill his constitutional obligations,” Cheney told NBC News earlier this month.
Johnson was “disappointed” by that criticism, he told her in a text exchange reported by Axios. “It’s just nonsense,” Johnson said, telling the outlet that the two “agreed to disagree” as to whether Trump represents a threat to democracy. “We did not ‘agree to disagree,’” Cheney, who is campaigning on behalf of Kamala Harris, responded to Axios. “Mike knows this is a conscious choice between right and wrong and can’t honestly rationalize supporting Trump on this.”
Evidently, that’s not an issue for Johnson and his Republican allies, who have long ago shown themselves to care as little about “honesty” and “right and wrong” as their party leader.
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