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 last weekend to pass another blank check for Kyiv, pledged on CNN’s Sunday “State of the Union” program that Johnson will keep his speakership despite conservative-led threats 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 military. 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 opponents of sending American tax dollars to secure overseas borders before our own.
Gaetz, Gonzales falsely claimed, “paid minors to have sex with him at drug parties.” His amplification of the fallacious allegation was so bad that even CNN Host Dana Bash had to remind him that the Justice Department officially declined to charge Gaetz over the accusation last 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 people used to walk around with white hoods at night. Now they’re walking around with white hoods 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].”
Even before he disparaged the representatives to a corporate media audience, Gonzales was a wolf in GOP elephant’s clothing. In March, he faced an overwhelming censure from the Republican Party of Texas for voting with Democrats on their 2022 gun-control wish list, the codification of same-sex marriage, and opposing federal and state-led border security measures.
“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 record seems to deter Johnson from openly allying with a representative who fell out of favor with his voters, party, and conservative colleagues in Congress.
Unfortunately for them, however, Johnson’s good graces aren’t limited to establishment pawns 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 gig.
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 regret presented itself at the Friends of Ireland luncheon 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 president laughed, then told the speaker he was glad Johnson was better behaved than Nancy Pelosi had been during the speeches of his predecessor: ‘I’m just grateful you didn’t rip my speech 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.
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