A seemingly clueless Mike Johnson, now stupefyingly elevated to the position of Speaker with very little experience under his belt and a world of what he doesn’t know overwhelming the bits he can grasp, told Sean Hannity last night that he would charge ahead with impeachment against President Joe Biden.
Johnson spent the interview in the supine position to Hannity’s firebrand, far-right agenda, going so far as to claim that Sean Hannity’s account of lies and fabrications about Joe Biden had been a “pretty good recitation of the facts.”
Watch here:
“If, in fact, all the evidence leads to where we believe it will, that’s very likely impeachable offenses,” Johnson said, in spite of the fact that the “evidence” actually was non-existent, with their own witnesses telling them as much. It was an exercise in televising nationally the mortification of relentlessly promoted and then dashed hysteria.
“I know people are getting anxious and they’re getting restless and they just want somebody to be impeached,” Johnson told Hannity, attempting to mollify him. “But that’s not, we don’t do that like the other team. We have to base it upon the evidence, and the evidence is coming together. We’ll see where it leads.”
We have already “seen where it leads” and it has been a big nothing burger of sad fiction, equivocation fallacy, and lies. Republicans clearly want to impeach Joe Biden for Donald Trump. The alleged ketchup-thrower has now been indicted 4 separate times on 91 criminal counts and he wants the other guy to be smeared as well. It’s not fair in the mind of a child if they are held accountable while others are not, even if others did not do anything for which to be held accountable. And so Joe Biden must be impeached. Not for the country; but for Republicans’ political hopes.
Johnson looks a little like the lamb led to the slaughter here, his own zealously overblown belief in himself notwithstanding. The little guy from Louisiana who has of yet has never really had to run in a tough race is now up against the right wing media machine that runs Congress in defiance of facts, logic, and the will of the people.
Of course, Johnson’s “beliefs” appear to meet up with Fox News’ on paper, but at some point the time will come when Johnson collides with reality and can’t make their impeachment revenge fantasies come true.
Philip Bump of the Washington Post pointed out that James Comer isn’t feeling the impeachment fever, “”The Biden “impeachment inquiry” has held no more hearings in the month since the first one. And, by his own admission, Comer doesn’t want to.”
“I don’t know that I want to hold any more hearings, to be honest with you,” Comer said while speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill last week. He complained that it was hard to keep members present for hours on end, given that so many had other commitments. Instead, he said, he preferred depositions, which “you can do more with.”
Yeah, the fake hearings haven’t gone well for House Republicans. They’re going to try to conflate depositions with hearings in the future, as it gives their media the ability to generate the strong emotional response it needs while avoiding pesky facts. But that means that there will not be a real impeachment.
There will be an imaginary impeachment. A rhetorical impeachment, if you will. And it’s on Speaker Johnson to sell the excitement and fervor of a fictional impeachment to the rabid and demanding base of true believers, in which Johnson himself seems to be currently included.
Johnson can’t see the inevitable humiliation and downfall coming his way. He is protected by the unfortunate meeting of own ego with his own ignorance right now. You can see from his face that he really believes he can save the country with his “legal ministry” of bigotry, racism and misogyny.
Eventually, after squeezing him for all he’s worth, the Right wing machine will drop him like it dropped Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, and so many others. It will take a year or so to set in, but it will happen.
It’s as inevitable as Republican conflation of Joe Biden’s brother paying off a loan is with Trump’s historic levels of corruption.
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
