Navalny was willing to take on Vladimir Putin and risk his life. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is so afraid of losing his speakership that he caves to Marjorie Taylor Greene
Upon the news of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, House Speaker Mike Johnson denounced Vladimir Putin.
“As Congress debates the best path forward to support Ukraine, the United States and our partners must be using every means available to cut off Putin’s ability to fund his unprovoked war in Ukraine and aggression against the Baltic states,” he said in a statement.
Of course, Johnson’s words would hold much more weight if he had actually put through the aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan that the Senate passed on the floor of the House of Representatives. Indeed, as the Senate labored late into the night on Monday and into the wee hours of Tuesday to pass that aid bill, Johnson summarily killed the bill because it did not address immigration at the US-Mexico border.
This came after Johnson and the rest of House Republican leadership blew up a bipartisan agreement that would have included aggressive restrictions to immigration in exchange for aid to Israel and Ukraine. Johnson, like most of the Republican Party, did so in the service of Donald Trump after he came out in opposition to the deal — despite the fact it would give him sweeping authority to deport migrants if he became president again.
I’d say his killing the border deal that his own party wanted because Trump said so showed that.
Its a time-tested tactic among Republicans. Keep demanding the incrementally more-extreme thing while Dems are in office and never compromising until the last minute. Then campaigning on the delay as proof that Big Government Doesn’t Work. Get all your media allies to run endless horror stories of migrant serial killers and liberal arts college kids doing transgenderism with your tax dollars to wipe your base up into a Satanic Panic.
If you scream loud enough and long enough, eventually you can convince all those mushy centrist libs that something has to be done. And you can ride in on a big red wave to run government for the next 2-6 years.