Mike Johnson pulls a fast one on Ukraine past a distracted Donald Trump

The House speaker finally got fed up with Republican shenanigans — but he may still end up like Kevin McCarthy

From Heather Digby Parton on Salon:

The Republican Party has been in such a state of pandemonium for so long that it's hard to imagine what new turns it can take and yet from week to week, it always does. The 2020 election tantrum and insurrection was certainly the pinnacle of Trumpish anarchy, still Republicans in the House of Representatives have been working hard to emulate their Dear Leader ever since they won the majority in 2022. It's a bad idea to make sweeping statements about them finally jumping the shark since they always manage to outdo themselves but this week is certainly one for the books — if only because the stakes are so very high and they have sunk so very low.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, House Speaker Mike Johnson was caught in a trap between his fellow right-wing zealots, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who have appropriated Donald Trump's hostility to Ukraine, and the rest of his caucus which is more reluctant to see the world blow up. The events in the Middle East last weekend were a sober reminder that the United States' role in global security isn't the best issue to use as leverage for parochial electoral advantage. It can get real very quickly.

Johnson had indicated that he planned to bring four separate votes to the floor: aid packages for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and a bill to require Russian assets to be confiscated for Ukraine along with a ban on TikTok unless it is sold to a different entity, among other things. This caused a huge uproar among the MAGA fanatics who were distraught that they didn't get their way. (They claimed they wanted funding for a massive border crackdown but everyone knows that Trump ordered that nothing should be done so he could use it as an election issue.) It was unclear if Johnson's deals would ever make it to the floor and looming over all of this is the fact that Greene has been holding the threat of deposing Johnson over his head for weeks.

So that's where we stood on Wednesday morning and it didn't look very promising. Then suddenly, out of the blue, Mike Johnson had what he would no doubt call a "come to Jesus" moment and he went before the microphones that afternoon to declare that he didn't care if his fellow Republicans threw him out of the speaker's office, he was going to do the right thing. Johnson gave a stirring speech about how he believes the intelligence he's seen and warned of the danger of allowing Ukraine to fall.

Read the full article by Digby here:
https://www.salon.com/2024/04/19/mike-johnson-pulls-a-fast-one-on-ukraine-past-a-distracted-donald/