Johnson, Mike (1972- )

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      McCarthy Claimed Trump Was ‘Not Eating’ After Leaving Office, Cheney Says

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      In a new memoir, Liz Cheney wrote that Kevin McCarthy justified his trip to Mar-a-Lago by saying the former president was depressed after losing re-election.Former President Donald J. Trump was “really depressed” in the days after losing re-election and leaving office in January 2021, so much so that he was “not eating.”At least that is what Kevin McCarthy told Liz Cheney in trying to explain why he had traveled to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, an act of solidarity that many have identified as a pivotal moment in reviving the former president’s political viability.Mr. McCarthy, the California congressman who was then the House Republican leader, had condemned Mr. Trump for fueling the Jan. 6 mob attack on the Capitol and even suggested that he resign, only to turn around and effectively absolve the former president by embracing him again. In her new book, Ms. Cheney, perhaps the country’s most vocal anti-Trump Republican, reports that Mr. McCarthy justified the Jan. 28 visit as an act of compassion for a beaten ally.Ms. Cheney wrote that she was so shocked when she first saw the photograph of Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Trump standing side by side with grins on their faces that she thought it was a fake. “Not even Kevin McCarthy could be this craven, I thought,” she wrote. “I was wrong.” She went to see Mr. McCarthy to confront him about rehabilitating the twice-impeached former president who had just tried to overturn an election he lost.“Mar-a-Lago?” she asked Mr. McCarthy, according to the book. “What the hell?”He tried to downplay the meeting, saying he had already been in Florida when Mr. Trump’s staff called. “They’re really worried,” Mr. McCarthy said by her account. “Trump’s not eating, so they asked me to come see him.”“What?” she recalled replying. “You went to Mar-a-Lago because Trump’s not eating?”“Yeah, he’s really depressed,” Mr. McCarthy said.Ms. Cheney’s book, “Oath and Honor,” a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times ahead of its publication on Tuesday, offers a scathing assessment of not only Mr. McCarthy but an array of Republicans who in her view subordinated their integrity to curry favor with Mr. Trump. Her account of his subjugation of the party presents a tapestry of hypocrisy, with inside-the-room scenes of Republicans privately scorning “the Orange Jesus,” as one wryly called him, while publicly doing his bidding.Ms. Cheney with Kevin McCarthy a few weeks after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe much-anticipated memoir arrives on bookshelves even as Mr. Trump is in a commanding position to win next year’s Republican presidential nomination. Ms. Cheney, who represented Wyoming in Congress and led the House Republican Conference, making her the third-ranking member of her party, has assailed him as a budding autocrat in more visceral terms than most of his challengers for the nomination.The daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and a conservative star in her own right who was once on track to become House speaker, Ms. Cheney ultimately paid a price for her opposition to Mr. Trump and her service as vice chair of the House committee that investigated his role in instigating the Jan. 6 attack. She lost her leadership position and eventually her seat in a Republican primary last year. But she has vowed to do whatever she can to keep Mr. Trump from returning to the Oval Office.Indeed, she subtitled her book “A Memoir and a Warning” to make the point that Mr. Trump represents a clear and present danger to America if he is on the ballot next November. “We will be voting on whether to preserve our republic,” she wrote. “As a nation, we can endure damaging policies for a four-year term. But we cannot survive a president willing to terminate our Constitution.”A re-elected Mr. Trump, she said, would face few checks on his power. “Step by step, Donald Trump would tear down the other structures that restrain an American president,” she wrote. “The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves,” she added, “is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way.”Asked for comment on Wednesday, Mr. Trump, who has openly called for “termination” of the Constitution to immediately remove President Biden from office and reinstall himself without waiting for another election, did not directly address any of Ms. Cheney’s specific assertions but simply dismissed her as a disgruntled critic.“Liz Cheney is a loser who is now lying in order to sell a book that either belongs in the discount bargain bin in the fiction section of the bookstore or should be repurposed as toilet paper,” Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said by email. “These are nothing more than completely fabricated stories because President Trump is the clear front-runner to be the Republican nominee and the strongest candidate to beat Crooked Joe Biden.”Likewise, Mr. McCarthy did not deny anything in the book, copies of which have also been obtained by CNN and The Guardian. His office released a statement saying, “For Cheney, first it was Trump Derangement Syndrome, and now apparently it’s also McCarthy Derangement Syndrome.”In Ms. Cheney’s telling, Mr. Trump knew that he lost the 2020 election even as he told the public that he had not — and she cited no less than Mr. McCarthy as a witness. Just two days after the November election, she said, Mr. McCarthy told her he had spoken to Mr. Trump. “He knows it’s over,” she quoted him saying. “He needs to go through all the stages of grief.”That could in theory make Mr. McCarthy an important witness in the federal or state criminal cases against Mr. Trump, refuting any defense by the former president’s lawyers that he was acting on good-faith belief that fraud had stolen the election from him.Also depicted as a Trump acolyte is Representative Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who in recent weeks vaulted from the backbench to the speakership after Mr. McCarthy’s support for Mr. Trump failed to save him from a right-wing rebellion.Mr. Johnson took the lead in trying to corral support for Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. He sent an email to all House Republicans telling them that he had spoken with the president, who expected them to sign onto a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court. “He said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review,” Mr. Johnson wrote.Also depicted as a Trump acolyte is Representative Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who in recent weeks vaulted from the backbench to the speakership.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesMs. Cheney took that as a veiled threat and said she was surprised about Mr. Johnson, whom she had thought of as a friend. “He appeared especially susceptible to flattery from Trump and aspired to being anywhere in Trump’s orbit,” she wrote. “When I confronted him with the flaws in his legal argument, Johnson would often concede, or say something to the effect of, ‘We just need to do this one last thing for Trump.’”At first, Mr. McCarthy agreed with her that the pro-Trump brief went too far and told her he would not sign it because it would interfere with the power of states to run their own elections. “It federalizes too much,” he told her. But a day later, his name was added to the brief after all.Mr. Johnson did not back down even after the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the case, sending Ms. Cheney a Fox News poll showing that 77 percent of Trump voters and 68 percent of Republicans believed the election had been stolen. “These numbers are big,” Mr. Johnson said, “and something we have to contend with as we thread the needle on messaging.”Ms. Cheney noted that Mr. Trump’s supporters believed the election was stolen because Republicans like Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Johnson were echoing his lies.Other Republicans were willing to toss aside traditions, norms and constitutional processes in the name of satisfying Mr. Trump’s desire to stay in power. When one Republican said during a meeting that they should not claim the election was rigged when there was no evidence, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies, said, “The only thing that matters is winning.”Likewise, she assailed Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, for seeking to set aside the counting of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 while a commission investigated election results that had already been recounted and certified. “It was one of the worst cases of abandonment of duty for personal ambition I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Ms. Cheney wrote.In some cases, she found that Republicans stayed loyal to Mr. Trump out of outright fear. One colleague told her he was worried about the safety of his wife and baby if he spoke out.Behind the scenes, though, other Republicans cheered her on. After she was one of only 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, former President George W. Bush sent her a note. “Liz, Courage is in short supply these days,” he wrote. “Thank you for yours. You showed strong leadership and I’m not surprised. Lead on. 43.”Her vocal criticism of Mr. Trump grated on other Republicans, highlighting what she called their “cowardice” in the face of the former president. When she contradicted Mr. McCarthy on Mr. Trump’s future role in the party during a joint news conference, Mr. McCarthy complained to her privately afterward.“You’re killing me, Liz,” he said.“Kevin, this is about the Constitution,” she replied. “Think of what Trump did. Think how appalled any of our previous Republican leaders would be about this. How would Reagan have reacted to this? How would Bush have reacted? Think of my dad.”Mr. McCarthy dismissed that line of thinking. “This isn’t their party anymore,” he said.On that, she wrote, she had to agree. More

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      Should Biden Bow Out, as David Axelrod Urged?

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      More from our inbox:Mike Johnson’s LamentSkip the Drive-Through, for the Sake of the Environment and Mental HealthThe Threat to New Orleans Drinking Water Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “The Axe Is Sharp,” by Maureen Dowd (column, Nov. 19):While reading Ms. Dowd’s column on whether President Biden should run for a second term, I was struck by a historical parallel. Like Mr. Biden, President Lyndon B. Johnson had served a deeply charismatic president and used his extensive senatorial experience to seal that president’s vision with legislation.But facing health concerns and declining popularity because of the Vietnam War, as well as surprisingly strong opposition by Robert F. Kennedy, Johnson decided that his moment had passed.As David Axelrod has noted, it is time to consider allowing other Democratic leaders to step forward. Mr. Biden has served the nation honorably for longer than most Americans have been alive, guiding the country through dark times and leaving a clear legislative mark.For his swan song, he can try to hold on to power until he is 86. Or he can choose to guide the nation peacefully through the turbulence of the coming electoral storm — not from the campaign trail, but as a steady presence in the Oval Office. I can think of no higher service.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Mike Johnson’s Rise to Speaker Cements Far-Right Takeover of GOP

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      After their party was decimated in the 2008 elections, mainstream Republican leaders believed they could harness rising far-right populist forces. Instead, they were overrun by them.The roots of the Republican crackup this fall that paralyzed the House, fueled the unexpected rise of Speaker Mike Johnson and now threatens to force a government shutdown crisis early next year lie in a fateful choice the party made more than a decade ago that has come back to haunt its leaders.In early 2009, congressional Republicans were staring down a long exile in the political wilderness. Barack Obama was about to assume the presidency, and Democrats were within reach of a filibuster-proof, 60-vote supermajority in the Senate and the largest House majority in more than 20 years after the economic crisis of 2008.But Republicans saw a glimmer of hope in the energized far-right populist movement that emerged out of a backlash to Mr. Obama — the first Black president — and his party’s aggressive economic and social agenda, which included a federal health care plan. Republicans seized on the Tea Party and associated groups, with their nativist leanings and vehemently anti-establishment impulses, as their ticket back to power.“We benefited from the anger that was generated against the one-way legislation of the Obama years,” said Eric Cantor, the former House leader from Virginia who became the No. 2 Republican after the 2010 midterm elections catapulted the party back into the majority. “It was my way or the highway.”Mr. Cantor and his fairly conventional leadership team of anti-tax, pro-business Republicans set out to harness that rage to achieve their party’s longstanding aims. But instead, the movement consumed them.Within four years, Mr. Cantor was knocked out in a shocking primary upset by a Tea Party-backed candidate who had campaigned as an anti-immigration hard-liner bent on toppling the political establishment. It was a sign of what was to come for more mainstream Republicans.“We decided the anger was going to be about fiscal discipline and transforming Medicare into a defined contribution program,” Mr. Cantor said recently. “But it turned out it was really just anger — anger toward Washington — and it wasn’t so policy-based.”The forces that toppled Mr. Cantor — and three successive Republican speakers — reached their inexorable conclusion last month with the election of Mr. Johnson as speaker, cementing a far-right takeover that began in those first months after Mr. Obama took office.Eric Cantor, Republican of Virginia and House majority leader, was defeated in a 2015 primary by David Brat, a member of the Tea Party.Gabriella Demczuk/The New York TimesMr. Johnson, who identifies as an archconservative, is the natural heir to the political tumult that began with the Tea Party before evolving into Trumpism. It is now embodied in its purest form by the Freedom Caucus, the uncompromising group of conservatives who have tied up the House with their demands for steep spending cuts. And the situation won’t get any easier when Congress returns from its Thanksgiving respite to confront its unsettled spending issues and what to do about assistance to Israel and Ukraine.The ranks of more traditional Republicans have been significantly thinned after the far right turned on them in successive election cycles. They have been driven out of Congress in frustration or knocked out in primaries, which have become the decisive contests in the nation’s heavily gerrymandered House districts.“They thought they could control it,” Michael Podhorzer, the former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. who has studied the House’s far-right progression, said of G.O.P. leaders. “But once you agree essentially that Democrats are satanic, there is no room in the party for someone who says we need to compromise with Democrats to accomplish what we need to get done.”The result, Mr. Podhorzer said, is a Republican majority that his research shows across various data points to be more extreme, more evangelical Christian and less experienced in governing than in the past. Those characteristics have been evident as House Republicans have spent much of the year in chaos.“It isn’t that they are really clever at how they crash the institution,” Mr. Podhorzer said. “They just don’t know how to drive.”From the start, members who were more rooted in the traditional G.O.P., which had managed to win back the House majority in 1994 after 40 years, struggled to mesh with the Tea Party movement, which was driven to upend the status quo. Many top Republicans had voted for the bank bailout of 2008, a disqualifying capital crime in the eyes of the far-right activists.Leading congressional Republicans were leery of the Tea Party’s thinly veiled racism, illustrated by insulting references to Mr. Obama and the questioning of his birthplace, though they said they saw the activists as mainly motivated by an anti-tax, anti-government fervor.Traditional Republicans appeared at Tea Party rallies where they were barely tolerated, while the far-right Representatives Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Steve King of Iowa, then outliers in the party, were the stars. They tried to mollify activists with tough talk on taxes and beating back the Obama agenda, but saw mixed results.The Republican National Committee also sought to align itself with the Tea Party, encouraging angry voters to send virtual tea bags to Congress in a 2009 Tax Day protest. Tea Party activists rebuked the national party, saying it hadn’t earned the right to the tea bag message.But the Tea Party paid huge electoral benefits to the House G.O.P. in 2010, as it swept out Democrats and swept in scores of relatively unknown far-right conservatives, some of whom would scorn their own leaders as much as the Democrats. The steady march to the modern House Republican Conference had begun.“It truly was bottom up,” said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who was then the spokesman for the R.N.C. “Then how do you have control over that? When you have that big a win, you are going to have people who just aren’t on your radar screen, but if they were, you would have tried to prevent them from winning their primary.”In the Senate, the Tea Party was having a different effect. Far-right conservatives such as Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware managed to prevail in their primaries, only to lose in the general election. That cost Senate Republicans a chance to win a majority in that chamber. The extreme right has had less influence in the Senate than the House ever since.Speaker John A. Boehner resigned in 2015 amid opposition from hard-line conservatives.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe ramifications of the far-right bargain for congressional Republicans quickly became clear. Mr. Cantor was defeated in 2014, and Speaker John A. Boehner, dogged by hard-line conservatives he branded “knuckleheads,” resigned in 2015. In 2018, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Mr. Boehner’s successor and the party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2012, had his fill of clashes with President Donald J. Trump — who aligned himself with the Tea Party in its early days — and chose not to run for re-election.Then Representative Kevin McCarthy — the last of a trio called the “Young Guns,” with Mr. Cantor and Mr. Ryan, that once seemed to be the future of the party — fell from the speakership in October. That ended the reign of House Republican speakers who had tried unsuccessfully to weaponize the ultraconservatives in their ranks while holding them at arm’s length.Mr. McCarthy’s ouster cleared the way for Mr. Johnson, who was chosen only after House Republicans rejected more established leaders, Representatives Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Tom Emmer of Minnesota, who would have easily ascended in the previous era.Despite his unquestioned conservative bona fides, Mr. Johnson is already encountering difficulties in managing the most extreme element within his ranks.Last week, Freedom Caucus members blocked a spending measure in protest of Mr. Johnson’s decision to team with Democrats to push through a stopgap funding bill to avert a government shutdown.The move underscored the far-right’s antipathy to compromise and the dominance it now enjoys in the House, and raised the prospect that Mr. Johnson could face another rebellion if he strays again. More

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      House Speaker Mike Johnson Visits Trump at Mar-a-Lago

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      It was the speaker’s first trip to see the former president since he won his post, and it came as he faced anger from right-wing lawmakers for moving to fund the government.Speaker Mike Johnson on Monday night visited former President Donald J. Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to a person familiar with the meeting, making his first pilgrimage to see the Republican presidential front-runner since his surprise elevation to the top post in the House last month.The visit to Mr. Trump’s Florida home came at a tricky moment for the inexperienced speaker, who is already facing criticism from hard-right allies livid at him for teaming with Democrats last week to pass legislation to avert a government shutdown. The person confirmed the private meeting on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.Mr. Trump’s influence over spending fights in Washington may be limited, but Mr. Johnson’s decision to meet with him within weeks of his election is a sign he knows he cannot afford to have Mr. Trump weighing in publicly against him and hardening right-wing opposition to his leadership.Mr. Johnson has taken other steps to ingratiate himself to the far right and cement his hold on the gavel. Late last week, he announced he was publicly releasing surveillance video of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, a step far-right lawmakers and activists have been demanding as they seek to undercut the facts about how supporters of Mr. Trump violently stormed the complex seeking to overturn his electoral defeat.Since Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, Republican congressional leaders have had to cultivate some kind of working relationship with him. But Mr. Johnson, who defended the former president in two Senate impeachment trials and played a lead role in trying to help him invalidate the 2020 election results, is positioning himself as the first speaker to be in complete lock step with the former president.The meeting at Mar-a-Lago was reported earlier by Punchbowl News.Last week, Mr. Johnson officially endorsed Mr. Trump — a move former Speaker Kevin McCarthy resisted even while proclaiming that the former president would be the Republican nominee and would be re-elected.“I endorsed him wholeheartedly for re-election in 2020, and traveled with his team as a campaign surrogate to help ensure his victory,” Mr. Johnson said in a statement to The New York Times. “I have fully endorsed him once again.”The endorsement came in response to a report by The Times that in 2015, Mr. Johnson had posted on social media saying that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and could be a danger as president.“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a lengthy post on Facebook on Aug. 7, 2015. “I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes. He is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”Mr. Johnson, who until last month never held a top-tier position in leadership, was in Florida for a fund-raising trip. He made a stop at Mar-a-Lago for an event for Representative Gus Bilirakis, Republican of Florida, according to the person familiar with the meeting with Mr. Trump.A spokesman for Mr. Johnson did not provide additional information about the meeting. More

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      Johnson Said in 2015 Trump Was Unfit and Could Be ‘Dangerous’ as President

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      Speaker Mike Johnson, then a Republican state lawmaker, posted on social media that Donald J. Trump lacked the character and morality to be president and could be vindictive.Years before he played a lead role in trying to help President Donald J. Trump stay in office after the 2020 election or defended him in two separate Senate impeachment trials, Speaker Mike Johnson bluntly asserted that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and could be a danger as president.“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a lengthy post on Facebook on Aug. 7, 2015, before he was elected to Congress and a day after the first Republican primary debate of the campaign cycle.Challenged in the comments by someone defending Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson responded: “I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes. He is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”Mr. Johnson, then a state lawmaker in Louisiana, also questioned what would happen if “he decided to bomb another head of state merely disrespecting him? I am only halfway kidding about this. I just don’t think he has the demeanor to be President.”The comments came at a time when many Republicans who would later become loyalists of Mr. Trump were disparaging him and declaring him unfit to hold the nation’s highest office. Only later did they fall in line and serve as the first-line defenders of his most extreme words and actions.But Mr. Johnson’s anti-Trump screed has, until now, flown under the radar, in a large part because Mr. Johnson himself did, too, before his unlikely election as speaker last month put him second in line to the presidency.These days, Mr. Johnson only praises Mr. Trump and defends him against what he dismisses as politically motivated indictments and criminal charges. Mr. Trump has lauded Mr. Johnson as someone who has acted as a loyal soldier since the beginning of his political rise.In a lengthy statement to The New York Times on Monday night, Mr. Johnson said his comments were made before he personally knew Mr. Trump, and attributed them to the fact that “his style was very different than mine.”He continued: “During his 2016 campaign, President Trump quickly won me and millions of my fellow Republicans over. When I got to know him personally shortly after we both arrived in Washington in 2017, I grew to appreciate the person that he is and the qualities about him that made him the extraordinary president that he was.”Mr. Johnson, who campaigned for Mr. Trump in 2020 and has endorsed his 2024 bid, added: “Since we met, we have always had a very good and friendly relationship. The president and I enjoy working together, and I look forward to doing so again when he returns to the White House.”A spokesman for Mr. Trump declined to comment on the posts.In 2015, Mr. Johnson, who would announce his first run for Congress the next year, wrote that he was horrified as he watched Mr. Trump’s debate performance with his wife and children.“What bothered me most was watching the face of my exceptional 10 yr old son, Jack, at one point when he looked over at me with a sort of confused disappointment, as the leader of all polls boasted about calling a woman a ‘fat pig.’”In one of the most famous exchanges from that debate, Megyn Kelly, a moderator and then a Fox News host, asked Mr. Trump about his history of referring to women as “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.”“Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Mr. Trump responded. He added that the country’s problem was political correctness, something he didn’t have time for.Mr. Johnson was horrified.“Can you imagine the noble, selfless characters of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln or Reagan carrying on like Trump did last night?” wrote Mr. Johnson, an evangelical Christian. He noted that voters needed to demand a “much higher level of virtue and decency” than what he had just witnessed.During the Trump administration, Mr. Johnson enjoyed a friendly relationship with the president. In 2020, he accompanied him, along with other House Republicans, to the college football national championship game between Louisiana State University and Clemson.After the election that year, he played a leading role in recruiting House Republicans to sign a legal brief, rooted in baseless claims of widespread election irregularities, supporting a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results. On Nov. 8, 2020, Mr. Johnson was onstage at a northwest Louisiana church speaking about Christianity in America when Mr. Trump called him to discuss legal challenges to the election results.In recent years, Mr. Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, has used a podcast he hosted with his wife to defend Mr. Trump against four different indictments and the criminal charges against him.“I think every single one of these bogus prosecutions is overtly weaponized political prosecutions of Donald Trump,” Mr. Johnson said on one episode.On another, Mr. Johnson proclaimed, “No one did it better in the White House than President Trump.” In last month’s speaker’s race, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Johnson, noting that he was someone who had “supported me, in both mind and spirit, from the very beginning of our GREAT 2016 Victory.”Mr. Johnson is far from alone in having expressed deep concerns about Mr. Trump, only to go on to later embrace him and his agenda.In 2015, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina called Mr. Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” as well as a “kook,” “crazy” and a man who was “unfit for office.” He went on to serve as Mr. Trump’s most loyal defender in the Senate.Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the second-to-last man left standing in the 2016 Republican primary race, called Mr. Trump a “pathological liar” who was “utterly amoral,” a “serial philanderer” and a “narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.” Mr. Cruz has explained his decision to become a loyal defender of Mr. Trump as something that was a “responsibility” to his constituents.Mick Mulvaney, the former Republican congressman who went on to serve as the president’s acting chief of staff, in 2016 called his future boss a “terrible human being” who had made “disgusting and indefensible” comments about women.Unlike the other lawmakers who fell in line, however, Mr. Johnson has pitched himself as someone of deep religious convictions, whose worldview is driven by his faith. 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      In Politics, There Are Worse Things Than Wishful Thinking

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, my attention these past few weeks has been devoted almost entirely to outrages and tragedies in the Middle East. But I couldn’t help smiling for a second when Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” at last week’s G.O.P. debate, after he raised the subject of her daughter’s use of TikTok.Aside from the deep truth of the remark — I wouldn’t have faulted her if she had thwacked him — it also made me think there’s life in this primary yet. Your thoughts on the G.O.P. race?Gail Collins: So glad to be back conversing every week, Bret. And you must be pleased that Haley, your Republican fave, was generally judged the winner of that debate.Bret: As she was of the first two debates.Gail: Not hard to make Ramaswamy look bad, but she certainly did a great job of it.Bret: Ramaswamy is like the human equivalent of HAL 9000 with an addiction to Red Bull.Gail: But what’s this going to do for her? Can you really imagine a path to the presidential nomination here?Bret: There was a great story last week in The Times by Natasha Frost, about an Australian man who freed himself from the jaws of a saltwater crocodile by biting its eyelid. Which is only believable because, well, it’s Australia. That’s about the situation in which the G.O.P. contenders find themselves with respect to Donald Trump.I know it’s a long shot, but at some point there will be just one person left standing against Trump, and I bet it will be Haley. She’s not just the best debater. She also comes across as the most tough-minded and well-rounded, given her experience both as a governor and a U.N. ambassador. She’s in second place in New Hampshire and in her home state of South Carolina, and her numbers have been moving up. As formidable as Trump’s own numbers look, it won’t be lost on centrist-minded G.O.P. voters that he’ll be campaigning while on bail.Now you’ll tell me that’s wishful thinking ….Gail: Hey, in our current political climate, there are worse things than wishful thinking. And we do have a likely Republican nominee who’s under indictment for virtually every nonviolent crime on the books except double parking.One thing I was wondering, looking at the debaters: Trump is going to have to find a new vice-presidential nominee. I keep thinking Tim Scott is campaigning hard for that job, although now he has suspended his campaign. You’ve got better Republican insight — see anybody on the stage you could imagine on Trump’s ticket?Bret: Good question. Trump will want someone with Mike Pence’s servility, minus the fidelity to the Constitution. Somehow I don’t think Scott fits that bill. I’m thinking of someone with more MAGA appeal, like Arizona’s Kari Lake or Ohio’s J.D. Vance.Gail: Ewww. Well then, I guess Scott’s sudden girlfriend reveal won’t do the trick.Bret: Only if the engagement were to Lauren Boebert.Gail: Last week’s election was a very, very good time for the Democrats. Big wins in Kentucky and Virginia, not to mention Ohio. I know a lot of it was attached to the very strong public support for abortion rights, but I can’t help but feel it was also a general Republican fizzle. You agree?Bret: It was a great antidote to that depressing Times/Siena poll, showing Biden’s political weakness against Trump in crucial swing states, which we talked about last week. My read on the results is this: Democrats win when they run with centrist candidates, like Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who ran as a pragmatist, not an ideologue. Also, Republicans remain deeply vulnerable, mainly thanks to their abortion extremism. That second fact should, well, abort Ron DeSantis’s campaign. The first fact suggests Democrats can win and win big — with a younger candidate, from a purple state, with a record of governing from the center.Speaking of which, any feelings about Joe Manchin’s decision not to run for re-election? Are you going to miss him?Gail: Well, I’m gonna miss having a Democratic senator from West Virginia. Never found any of his standing-on-my-own shutting-all-progress-down antics to be all that endearing.Bret: Loved them. Democrats won’t easily hold the Senate without him.Gail: What worries me is the possibility that Manchin’s going to run as a third-party candidate for president. As our readers know, I hate, hate, hate the idea of people who could never win a major-party nomination jumping into the general election on their own lines. It has a terrific potential to mess things up. Speaking also to you, Jill Stein, another new entrant, via the Green Party. And Bret, to your pal Joe Lieberman’s shenanigans with No Labels.Bret: To say nothing of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. Both of whom, I think, are bigger political threats to Biden than they would be to the Republican nominee. But none of them would be anything but an afterthought if Biden weren’t such a weak candidate.On the other hand, we have Trump and his trials. Do you think any of these many cases against him are going to do any lasting political damage?Gail: Really wondering. On the one hand, good Lord — 91 felony counts and a civil suit in New York that might just wipe out any semblance of proof that he really has the money he always claims to have. Who could possibly win an election with that kind of record?Bret: Well, Trump could.I haven’t delved too deeply into the particulars of the civil suit filed by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, but I have my doubts about the strength of a case that rests on the theory that it’s unlawful for a real-estate developer to overstate the value of his assets. The market value of any asset is only determined at the point of sale, and real estate is often a classic “Veblen good,” in which demand increases as the price goes up.Gail: None of this can possibly be a surprise to his die-hard supporters, and they’re still with him. They just see it all as persecution. But once the campaign is really underway and voters keep hearing Biden ads reminding them Trump is a crooked underachiever, do you think the swing voters could keep ignoring it?Bret: Hillary Clinton ran on precisely that in 2016. She lost because she came across as the entitled representative of a self-dealing system, and he won because he came across as a disrupter of that system. That’s exactly the scenario Democrats risk repeating now.Would you mind if we switched to a more local topic? Wondering what you think of the mounting legal jeopardy of your mayor, Eric Adams.Gail: Well, Bret, New Yorkers are not unaccustomed to seeing our mayors skating around some corruption pond. But I have to admit this one is pretty mind-boggling. We’re engulfed in a crisis over the enormous influx of migrants, and now we’re engulfed with stories about Adams’s relationships with Turkish leaders … who are, surprise surprise, into Manhattan real estate.Bret: The question that always hovered over Adams’s mayoralty was whether it would send him to greater heights or to jail.Gail: And meanwhile the F.B.I. raided the home of his chief campaign fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. We will be hearing a lot more about this, I’m sure. But the immediate reaction was, she’s 25 and she’s his chief campaign fund-raiser?Bret: Ageism. Just terrible.Gail: My prediction: More trouble to come. Your thoughts?Bret: Sounds bad for Adams, for which I’m sorry since I still think that he was the best of the lot in the last mayoral election. But it’s also worth remembering that the F.B.I. has a very mixed record of going after prominent political figures. Remember when Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman, was going to be charged with sex trafficking? Gaetz is an otherwise despicable person, but that case was a travesty and ultimately collapsed. Or the way the F.B.I. went after Ted Stevens, the Alaska senator, destroying his political career shortly before his death? That was another travesty, in which prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence and engaged in “reckless professional misconduct,” according to a Justice Department report. The F.B.I. was just as bad in its investigations of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.Which is all to say: Innocent until proven guilty.Gail: Yipes, I’m not going to argue that one. Did you note that one of the City Council winners here in New York is Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, who spent nearly seven years in jail for a sexual assault that he didn’t commit?Bret: I hadn’t. I need to start paying attention to New York City politics. They’re getting interesting again.Gail: Now looking forward, what’s your bet on Congress achieving its very basic-minimal job of passing a budget before we’re … budget-less? Think the dreaded new House speaker, Mike Johnson, can make the grade?Bret: Burn-it-all-down conservatism is much easier to practice from the bleachers than from the field. Johnson will have to come up with a budget, he’ll have to learn how to compromise, and he’ll have to learn, like Kevin McCarthy before him, that the price of being a political grown-up is bending to realities that don’t bend toward you.Most of us learn that lesson pretty early in life. Speaker Johnson is only 51, so he still has time.Gail: Ah, if only we didn’t have to be stuck in his classes.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Growing Republican Battle Over War Funding

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      Rob Szypko, Carlos Prieto, Stella Tan and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicIt’s been one month since the attack on Israel, but Washington has yet to deliver an aid package to its closest ally. The reason has to do with a different ally, in a different war: Speaker Mike Johnson has opposed continued funding for Ukraine, and wants the issue separated from aid to Israel, setting up a clash between the House and Senate.Catie Edmondson, who covers Congress for The Times, discusses the battle within the Republican Party over whether to keep funding Ukraine.On today’s episodeCatie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to force a stand-alone vote on aid for Israel has set up a confrontation between the House and Senate over how to fund U.S. allies.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesBackground readingThe Republican-led House approved $14.3 billion for Israel’s war with Hamas, but no further funding for Ukraine.Speaker Johnson’s bill put the House on a collision course with the Senate.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Catie Edmondson More

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      Christian Nationalism ‘Is No Longer Operating Beneath the Surface’

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      Mike Johnson is the first person to become speaker of the House who can be fairly described as a Christian nationalist, a major development in American history in and of itself. Equally important, however, his ascension reflects the strength of white evangelical voters’ influence in the House Republican caucus, voters who are determined to use the power of government to roll back the civil rights, women’s rights and sexual revolutions.“Johnson is a clear rebuttal to the overall liberal societal drift that’s happening in the United States,” Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, wrote by email in response to my query. “His views are far out of step with the average American and even with a significant number of Republicans.”“Yet, he was chosen as speaker,” continued Burge, who is also a pastor in the American Baptist Church. “If anything, it shows us that white evangelicals still have a very strong hold on the modern Republican Party. They are losing overall market share in the larger culture, but they are certainly taking on an outsized role in Republican politics.”Burge provided The Times with data on the changing religious composition of the Republican electorate. In the 1970s, mainline Protestants dominated at 46 percent, compared with evangelical Protestants at 24 percent and Catholics at 19 percent. By the decade of the 2010s, evangelical Protestants were a commanding 38 percent of Republicans, mainline Protestants had fallen to 17 percent, and Catholics had grown to 25 percent.Robert Jones, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, described Johnson in an email as “the embodiment of white Christian nationalism in a tailored suit.”What is Christian nationalism? Christianity Today described it as the “belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation’ — not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.”Johnson’s election as speaker, Jones went on to say, “is one more confirmation that the Republican Party — a party that is 68 percent white and Christian in a country that is 42 percent white and Christian — has embraced its role as the party of white Christian nationalism.”Jones argued that “while Johnson is more polished than other right-wing leaders of the G.O.P. who support this worldview, his record and previous public statements indicate that he’s a near textbook example of white Christian nationalism — the belief that God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians.”In a long and data-filled analysis posted on Substack on Oct. 29, “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Sources of MAGA Madness,” Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., argued that the election of Johnson reflects the success of the Christian right in a long-term struggle to wrest control from traditional Republican elites, in battles fought out in Republican primary elections.Over the past two decades, Podhorzer wrote, “the political might of organized right-wing Christianity was successfully redeployed against establishment Republicans.”The decimation of moderate and centrist members of the House was most striking over the election cycles from 2010 to the present, according to Podhorzer: “From 2010 through 2022, a historically high number of House Republicans were defeated in primaries, with the vast majority of successful challenges happening in the most evangelical districts.”The result: When House districts are ranked by the percentage of voters who are white evangelicals, the top quintile is represented by 81 Republicans and 6 Democrats and the second quintile by 68 Republicans and 19 Democrats. The bottom three quintiles are represented by 188 Democrats and 73 Republicans.Not only do Republicans overwhelmingly represent the districts with the most white evangelicals, but those Republicans are deeply entrenched, with little or no danger of losing the general election to a Democrat:“Republicans represent 98 percent of the most evangelical safe districts and 82 percent of the remaining above-median evangelical safe districts,” Podhorzer wrote. “These two categories elected just shy of three-quarters of the Republican Caucus in safe districts.”The MAGA movement, in Podhorzer’s view, was unleashed with the Tea Party movement in 2010, well before Donald Trump emerged as a dominant political figure, and the elevation of Johnson marks the most recent high point in the movement’s acquisition of power: “Mike Johnson becoming speaker is better understood in terms of the ongoing white Christian nationalist takeover of the American government through MAGA,” he writes.White Christian nationalists, Podhorzer contended, “were once reliable votes and loyal foot soldiers for almost any Republican candidate since the 1970s,” but they “rebelled when John McCain and other establishment Republicans treated Obama’s win as legitimate.”From 2010 forward, Podhorzer wrote, “the political muscle provided by white Christian nationalism’s extensive church-based infrastructure in congressional districts, and its national reach through Christian broadcasting and national organizations, has turned MAGA into a ruthlessly successful RINO-hunting machine.”It should not be surprising, Podhorzer said, “to see an election-denying evangelical Christian who favors a national abortion ban, Bible courses in public schools, and ‘covenant marriage,’ and who believes that L.G.B.T.Q. people are living an ‘inherently unnatural’ and ‘dangerous lifestyle’ elevated to the speakership.”There is a strong correlation between election from a district with a high share of white evangelical voters, Podhorzer found, and election denial: “More than three-quarters of those representing the most evangelical districts are election deniers, compared to just half of those in the remaining districts. Fully three-quarters of the deniers in the caucus hail from evangelical districts.”The most recent P.R.R.I. American Values Survey, conducted in late August, “Threats to American Democracy Ahead of an Unprecedented Presidential Election,” further illuminated the priorities of the contemporary Republican electorate.The survey asked respondents whether they would “prefer a presidential candidate who can best manage the economy” or a candidate who will “protect and preserve American culture and the American way of life.”Democrats chose a candidate who can manage the economy 57 to 40, a view shared by independents by a smaller margin, 53 to 45. Republican voters, in contrast, preferred a candidate who will preserve American culture, by 58 to 40 percent.A different P.R.R.I. survey, released on Feb. 8, “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” measured support for Christian nationalism based on responses to five statements:The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.On the basis of the responses, P.R.R.I. created four categories:Christian nationalism adherents: the 10 percent of Americans who overwhelmingly either agree or completely agree with the five statements above.Christian nationalism sympathizers: the 19 percent of Americans who agree with these statements but are less likely to say they “completely agree.”Christian nationalism skeptics: the 39 percent of Americans who disagree with the statements but are less likely to completely disagree.Christian nationalism rejecters: the 29 percent of Americans who completely disagree with all five statements in the scale.Among Democrats, the survey found that 15 percent were either adherents (5 percent) or sympathizers (10 percent). Among independents, 23 percent were adherents (6 percent) or sympathizers (17 percent).Among Republican voters, 54 percent were either adherents (21 percent) or sympathizers (33 percent).In a series of questions on racial issues and immigration, Christian nationalist adherents were well to the right of Americans as a whole.Asked whether “discrimination against white Americans has become as big a problem as discrimination against Black Americans and other minorities,” 85 percent of Christian nationalist adherents agreed, compared with 41 percent of all those surveyed.Asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background,” 81 percent of Christian nationalist adherents agreed.Philip Gorski, a sociologist at Yale who has written extensively about Christian nationalism, replied by email to my inquiry about Johnson’s election:He says out loud what most others just feel: that America was founded as a Christian nation, that the founders were “evangelical” Christians, that the founding documents were based on “biblical principles,” that God has entrusted America with a divine mission, that he has blessed America with unique power and prosperity and that those blessings will be withdrawn if America strays off the straight and narrow path of Christian morality. And that it is every good Christian’s duty to make America Christian again.Christian nationalism, in Gorski’s view,is no longer operating beneath the surface or in the background. It’s now front and center at commanding heights of power. It will now be much harder for right-wing Christian activists to claim that Christian nationalism is a fringe phenomenon or a left-wing smear job. In 2021, it was still hard to find an avowed Christian nationalist in the top ranks of the G.O.P. Not anymore.Gorski wrote that Johnsonlikes to say that the United States is a “republic” and not a “democracy.” By this, he means that the majority does not and should not get its way. That would be democracy. A republic means rule by the virtuous, not the majority. And the virtuous are of course conservative Christians like him.Eric Schickler, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, stressed in an email his view that Johnson’s election as speaker demonstrated once again the weakness of the centrist wing of the House Republican caucus, writing that the elevation of the Louisiana Republicanreinforces the message that the most conservative voices in the Republican Party have decisive influence on the party in the House of Representatives. Less conservative members from swing districts have repeatedly made noises, suggesting that they were willing to wield power to ensure that leaders would reflect their needs — but once again, when push came to shove, they gave in despite having the numbers to hold the balance of power in the House.In addition, the “entire episode” — from the ousting of Kevin McCarthy on Oct. 3 to the election of Johnson on Oct. 25 — reflects the collapse of the unwritten rule that “majority party members would stick together on the floor in speakership contests.” There is no way, Schickler added, that “the Freedom Caucus would have voted for a member seen as distant from them on key issues.”Does Johnson’s election as speaker improve Democrats’ chances to retake the House in 2024? I asked.Schickler: “It is hard to know. Johnson starts with such a low profile, it is not clear whether Democrats will be able to make him a target.”Johnson’s relative anonymity in the House served him well in his bid for the speakership, insulating him from acrimony. More recently, however, some of Johnson’s out-of-the-mainstream views and alliances have begun to surface.In a July 20, 2005, opinion essay for The Shreveport Times, Johnson argued:All of us should acknowledge the real emotion and strife of the homosexual lifestyle and should certainly treat all people with dignity, love and respect. But our government can never provide its stamp of approval or special legal sanction for behavior patterns that are proven to be destructive to individuals, to families and to society at large. Your race, creed and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do.“We must always remember,” Johnson concluded, “that it is not bigotry to make moral distinctions.”A year earlier, Johnson wrote, in another opinion essay:The state and its citizens have a compelling interest in preserving the integrity of the marital union by making opposite sex marriage the exclusive form of family relationship endorsed by government. Loss of this status will de-emphasize the importance of traditional marriage to society, weaken it, and place our entire democratic system in jeopardy by eroding its foundation.It would be difficult to overestimate the dangers Johnson foresaw. “Society,” he wrote,cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet. If everyone does what is right in his own eyes, chaos and sexual anarchy will result. And make no mistake, the extremists who seek to redefine marriage also want to deny you the right to object to immoral behavior. Our precious religious freedom hangs in the balance.In an Oct. 26 interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News after he was elected to the leadership post, Johnson described his faith in the Bible as his exclusive guide in life:What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview. That’s what I believe.On Oct. 27, my Times colleagues Annie Karni, Ruth Graham and Steve Eder reported on a 2006 essay that Johnson posted on Townhall, a right-wing website.In it, they wrote, “Johnson railed against ‘the earnest advocates of atheism and sexual perversion’. He also decried ‘This sprawling alliance of anti-God enthusiasts’ that ‘has proven frighteningly efficient at remaking America in their own brutal, dehumanizing image.’”“In the space of a few decades,” Johnson added, “they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, objectify children into sexual objects, criminalize Christianity in the popular culture, and promote guilt and self-doubt as the foremost qualities of our national character.”In lectures, Karni, Graham and Eder wrote, “Johnson has lamented that ‘There’s no transcendent principles anymore. There’s no eternal judge. There’s no absolute standards of right and wrong. All this is exactly the opposite of the way we were founded as a country.’”David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, reported in an Oct. 28 article that in a series of seminars Johnson and his wife, Kelly, a Christian counselor, conducted — “Answers for Our Times” — the couple addressed such questions as:What is happening in America and how do we fix it? Can our heritage as a Christian Nation be preserved? How should Christians respond to the changing culture? What does the Bible say about today’s problems and issues?In May 2019, Johnson described the goal of the seminars to the Louisiana Baptist Message: “Our nation is entering one of the most challenging seasons in its history, and there is an urgent need for God’s people to be armed and ready with the truth.”For Johnson, the obligation “to be armed and ready with the truth” led him to become a leader of the election denial movement. In December 2020 he recruited 125 fellow House Republicans to sign on to his lawsuit seeking to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn the election results.He told his colleagues that “the initiative had been personally blessed by Mr. Trump, and that the former president was ‘anxiously awaiting’ to see who in Congress would defend him,” The Times reported.In the Supreme Court brief that Johnson filed on Dec. 10, 2020, he argued that the election hadbeen riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities. National polls indicate a large percentage of Americans now have serious doubts about not just the outcome of the presidential contest, but also the future reliability of our election system itself. Amici respectfully aver it is the solemn duty of this Court to provide an objective review of these anomalies and to determine for the people if indeed the Constitution has been followed and the rule of law maintained.On Dec. 11, in a brief unsigned order, the Supreme Court dismissed the suit, but Johnson won recognition from his fellow Republicans in the House for his fealty to Trump.Asked shortly after he was elected speaker whether he continued to believe that the 2020 election was stolen, Johnson told a Washington Post reporter: “We’re not talking about any issues today,” adding only, “My position is very well known.”In theory, at least, it is difficult to understand how Johnson can justify his support for Trump, whom Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and a contributing writer for Times Opinion, described this way in The Atlantic in 2020:A man whose lifestyle is more closely aligned with hedonism than with Christianity, Trump clearly sees white evangelicals as a means to an end, people to be used, suckers to be played. He had absolutely no interest in evangelicals before his entry into politics and he will have absolutely no interest in them after his exit. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a person who has less affinity for authentic Christianity — for the teachings of Jesus, from the Sermon on the Mount to the parable of the good Samaritan — than Donald Trump.Johnson’s ascent to the top job in the House also raises a larger, more encompassing question: Will voters care in 2024 (and beyond) that one of America’s two major political parties has been taken over by an alliance of MAGA forces and their white evangelical allies, who have clearly indicated their willingness to abandon democratic norms — that is, democracy itself — in the pursuit of power?Polling suggests that this is a far from settled question.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More