Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), the latest Republican Speaker and the one with the least experience, has accused President Biden of “projecting weakness” after the Democratic President’s meeting with Xi Jinping, in spite of the President calling Xi a dictator.
APEC was really about:
Biden and Xi met during the APEC Economic Leaders summit in San Francisco on Wednesday as part of the U.S. host year. While they didn’t agree on Taiwan, they did come to a globally important willingness to cooperate and stay in dialogue. One achievement announced was the investments into the U.S. of nearly $200 billion from companies in APEC economies since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration.
Secretary Blinken added color to initial reports, saying on CBS News “Yesterday we agreed that our militaries would start talking again at the most senior levels and at the operational level. And this is a very important way of trying to avoid a miscalculation, a mistake that could lead to conflict.”
Blinken also pointed to the agreement to crackdown on chemicals used to manufacture fentanyl, which he cited as “the number one killer of Americans aged 18 to 49”.
The State Department said the U.S. “secured significant outcomes” around “priorities of sustainability and inclusion, digital innovation, and resilient and inclusive growth.” This agenda touches on food insecurity, advancing gender equality, climate change and more.
Johnson said this makes Biden look weak:
“Anyone who looks at this objectively has to agree that President Biden is projecting weakness on the world stage,” Johnson, who has said his foreign policy is based on the “Bible,” said in an interview on Friday. “I am from the Reagan school. He always said we maintain peace through strength. He was exactly right.”
It’s unclear why Johnson thinks maintaining diplomatic openings with China as it aligns more and more with Russia against the United States and global democracy is “weakness.”
Does Johnson not understand or is he in support of China, Russia, etc over the U.S.?
The Republican Speaker should be asked what “peace through strength” looks like – would he send U.S. troops into a WWIII against Russia, China, Iran and North Korea? Because that’s the state President Biden and his surrogates are delicately balancing as Russia pushes for closer alliances with other anti-democracy powers. This is one reason why Biden is talking to Xi.
Biden’s leadership on the economy versus Johnson’s
The improving U.S. economy under Biden is a help against China. Bloomberg reported something astonishing in August, “So far this year US gross domestic product is growing faster than China’s in nominal terms.”
Inflation just fell and jobs are booming.
Johnson is not the governor of Louisiana, and can’t be held solely accountable for its poor showing economically, but he also hasn’t demonstrated any ability to lead on the economy for his state, let alone the nation and on the global stage in economic partnership with other countries. Johnson, meanwhile, represents a state that “sticks out as an outlier, landing second to last in a ranking of state GDPs as a share of national GDP. A recent CNBC report also listed Louisiana as the second-worst state for business — and labeled it one of the country’s ‘worst economies.’”
Johnson’s record as a leader so far isn’t strong
Johnson was just rescued by House Democrats days ago after his Republican conference was unable to agree on a funding bill to keep the government open, so one can be forgiven for questioning his so far failed diplomacy skills.
Johnson also couldn’t find the “strength” to call for embattled Rep. George Santos (R-NY) to be expelled from the House or even to start their own House investigation after the starkly damaging House ethics report was released on Thursday.
The report found that Santos committed fraud to such an extent they concluded he “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.” He even spent campaign funds on OnlyFans. The report recommended his case to the Department of Justice.
Johnson only managed to call it “troubling,” so one can imagine how he might be incapable of standing up to a dictator.
Johnson’s role as Trump surrogate against the U.S. is troubling
Mike Johnson’s anti-democracy pushes do not project “strength.” He was called the “architect” of 1/6, and he has now promised Trump supporters he will publish online 40,000 hours of the tapes from 1/6 in what appears to be a GOP-led push to whitewash 1/6 even more and falsely blame Antifa again.
A Republican was spotted on TV on Friday pushing the lie that Trump called the National Guard on 1/6. Perhaps Trump’s/Republicans’ internal polling shows that inciting an insurrection against one’s own country isn’t a great get out the vote tool.
A Colorado judge just officially labeled Trump an insurrectionist. Is attacking his own country Johnson’s idea of “strength”?
Empty attacks
Mike Johnson understandably wants to insult President Biden, that’s the code for relevance in Republican politics. But in doing so, he has only highlighted his own inability to even get his House conference to fund the government for a short time, which is a job that used to be taken for granted as a given for the House.
What does Mike Johnson know about even fundamental diplomacy? Why is the Speaker of the U.S. House insulting the U.S. President over diplomacy with a foreign power, especially when Johnson lacks self control to the point of requiring his son to monitor his p*rn usage?
The Republican Party seems incapable of finding their bottom, and Mike Johnson won’t be the one to rescue them from their failure to govern.
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