Any lingering doubts about the good faith, patriotism or even sanity of the current Speaker of the House of Representatives can be put to rest. Mike Johnson is every bit as horrifying a culture warrior as many of us suspected. The fact that the Democrats stepped in on two occasions to save his Speakership was not evidence that they’d noticed some mitigating factors to his religious zealotry–it was, as many said at the time, an effort to keep government functioning at even its current minimal level.
Johnson has repaid that effort with a move that is unbelievably destructive–a move that is likely to destroy America’s intelligence capacity and erase any lingering trust our allies place in the United States.
I’ll let the Washington Post explain.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday appointed Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.), two Trump loyalists who denied the results of the 2020 election, to the House Intelligence Committee, granting them oversight of the U.S. intelligence community and sensitive government material.
Seats on the committee are highly sought after in Congress and closely watched, as members have access to some of the nation’s most classified information and are charged with overseeing the spy agencies — including the intelligence gathering within the FBI — activities for which former president Donald Trump has routinely expressed disdain.
In case you’ve missed the “backstories” on these particular cult members, the Post has thoughtfully reminded readers.
First, Perry.
Perry, a hard-line Republican who previously served as the chair of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, played a key role in promoting false claims of election fraud and pushed the Trump White House and Justice Department to investigate baseless claims and prevent the transfer of power to President Biden. The FBI seized Perry’s cellphone records in 2022 as part of the criminal investigation into Trump’s efforts to subvert the election, and Perry sought to block what the federal investigators would be able to access on his phone. In December 2023, a federal judge ordered that Perry disclose nearly 1,700 records from his cellphone to the investigation being conducted by special counsel Jack Smith. Perry’s lawyer has said that U.S. officials never described Perry as a target of their ongoing investigation in their discussions with the congressman, and he has not been charged.
Then, Jackson.
Jackson, a retired U.S. Navy officer who joined Congress in 2021, served as the physician to Presidents Barack Obama and Trump. He was demoted in rank from retired rear admiral to captain in July 2022 following a damaging Pentagon inspector general’s report that substantiated allegations about his inappropriate behavior as a White House physician. Jackson has denied the report’s allegations and claimed they were politically motivated.
Johnson isn’t even trying to hide what he intended to accomplish by appointing extremist goofballs and devoted MAGA cult members to this extremely sensitive panel. The appointments came one day after he threatened a “three-pronged approach” to retribution for Trump’s trial loss, and outlined his plan for allowing the Republican majority to “target the Justice Department, New York and other jurisdictions for investigating Trump — using, among other things, House oversight powers.”
As one House member was quoted,
“Neither of these two gentlemen is qualified for the intelligence committee. Neither should ever be near the intelligence committee. And it’s going to make cooperation between our counterintelligence operations and the intelligence services and the Congress much more complicated.”
Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, who served on the House select committee that investigated the january 6th insurrection, called the appointments “insane.”
So here we are, incredible as it may seem.
A once-respectable center-right political party–a party that used to fly under a banner of patriotism and “law and order”– is willing to compromise the security of American citizens, tell our allies we’re unreliable, and signal to our enemies that we are no longer serious about defending our place in the global order, all to demonstrate its loyalty to a convicted felon who cares nothing about America, or about anything but himself and his need for vengeance.
I shudder to think of the damage these unqualified clowns can do between now and November–and even after, if Republicans continue to hold power in either house of Congress. Continued GOP control of either the House or Senate would take us further down the road to failed nationhood.
Even assuming we avoid the unthinkable disaster that would be a second Trump administration–continued “leadership” by members of this White Christian Nationalist cult would mean we can kiss goodby to the America most of us grew up in.
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