Speaker of the House Mike Johnson will travel to Texas this week, not to make another performative visit to the border he abandoned when he banded with Democrats to pass$ 95 billion in foreign spending, but to aid a fundraiser for his “endangered ” GOP colleague who smeared Republicans opposed to the Ukraine package.
Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales, who voted with Johnson next trip to go another empty search for Kyiv, pledged on CNN’s Sunday “State of the Union ” system that Johnson will keep his candidacy despite conservative-led risks of ousting.
In return, Johnson will overlook Gonzales ’ egregious maligning of conservatives while wining and dining voters in the San Antonio area into throwing more money at the establishment Republican’s reelection campaign.
“ I served 20 years in the defense. It’s my absolute honor to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags, ” Gonzales told CNN, naming Republican Reps. Matt Gatez and Bob Good, two critics of sending American tax money to secure international frontiers before our own.
Gaetz, Gonzales erroneously claimed, “paid adolescents to have intercourse with him at drug events. ” His replication of the false allegation was so poor that even CNN Host Dana Bash had to tell him that the Justice Department publicly declined to command Gaetz over the accusation next year.
The Texas politician also suggested that “Bob Good endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi, ” a smear that Gonzales ’ primary challenger Brandon Herrera rejected.
“These folks used to move around with white masks at night. Then they’re walking around with light collars in the daytime, ” Gonzales concluded.
Gonzales ’ comments sparked backlash from several House conservatives who noted the San Antonio native is “a complete and total Rhino [sic]. ”
Yet before he disparaged the associates to a business media market, Gonzales was a dog in GOP elephant’s attire. In March, he faced an enormous condemnation from the Republican Party of Texas for voting with Democrats on their 2022 gun-control want list, the implementation of same-sex relationship, and opposing provincial and state-led border security procedures.
“More than a dozen county GOP clubs in Gonzales ’ district had already approved local censure resolutions, ” the Associated Press noted.
But not even Gonzales ’ perilous track history seems to inhibit Johnson from openly allying with a consultant who fell out of favor with his citizens, group, and conservative acquaintances in Congress.
Unfortunately for them, however, Johnson ’s good graces aren’t constrained to creation puppets like Gonzales who promise to keep him in power. Appealing to Democrats in Congress and even the White House seems to be Johnson ’s new job.
A profile of Johnson written by RealClearPolitics ’ Philip Wegmann detailed how the Louisiana native “felt he owed Biden an apology ” after the new speaker was briefly caught on camera scoffing at the president ’s 2024 State of the Union address.
The opportunity for expressing dread presented itself at the Friends of Ireland dinner in March. After publicly praising Biden as “America’s most famous Irishman, ” Johnson took the president aside to “apologize for the eye-roll memes that went around the world. ”
According to Wegmann, “The leader laughed, next told the speech he was glad Johnson was better behaved than Nancy Pelosi had been during the remarks of his father: ‘I’m just glad you did n’t pull my discourse up. ’ ”
Johnson ’s public support for Gonzales and needless apology to the man who has shown no remorse for the chaos and destruction his regime has caused Americans further demonstrate the speaker’s true colors.
Johnson is not concerned with doing what’s best for his voters or his party. He’s concerned about staying in power by whatever means necessary.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
