Shortly after he was unexpectedly elected speaker of the House in October 2023, Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson appeared before the awards gala of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a far-right group, and revealed that God had spoken to him personally and called him to be prepared for a “Red Sea moment.”
Johnson said he understood that God would be choosing a new Moses to serve as the new speaker. Because he was an obscure functionary, the lawmaker assumed that he would be an Aaron, Moses’ brother and supporter. But over the course of three weeks, as candidate after candidate was vanquished by the sharply divided Republican caucus, God woke him up in the middle of the night and said, “Wait, wait, wait.” Finally, Johnson was told to “now step forward.”
“Me?” Johnson said. “I’m supposed to be Aaron.”
“No,” the Lord replied, “step forward.”
Johnson had presumably been anointed by the man upstairs to be an American Moses — and to lead us to the Promised Land. But two years later, you have to wonder if God has stopped by the speaker’s hideaway office in the Capitol to chat lately and, if so, whether he’s pleased with what his chosen one has done since he assumed the mantle of prophet.
Johnson had presumably been anointed by the man upstairs to be an American Moses — and to lead us to the Promised Land. But two years later, you have to wonder if God has stopped by the speaker’s hideaway office in the Capitol to chat lately and, if so, whether he’s pleased with what his chosen one has done since he assumed the mantle of prophet.
Johnson was little known to the public when he won the speakership after California Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s dramatic defenestration. The Louisiana Republican’s reputation in Washington, D.C., was that of a very pious, ultra conservative Christian culture warrior with an unusually bland personality and a raging ambition; few expected him to be anything more than a placeholder. Many predicted he wouldn’t last long. But for two years he’s managed to do the unthinkable — to keep his notoriously fractious caucus together, despite the razor-thin margins he’s been dealt. As most GOP speakers of the last couple of decades can attest, that is no mean feat.
But it may be about to change. As various factions within the Republican party have begun to chafe under President Donald Trump’s reckless agenda — and have started to consider a post-MAGA future — Johnson’s hold over his caucus may be slipping. On top of that, he has been caught in the cover-up of the worst sex scandal in American political history.
The power that Johnson wields over House Republicans has largely been due to the fact that he doesn’t really have any power at all. The president is the de facto speaker, just as he is the de facto majority leader in the Senate. Trump would rule Capitol Hill from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with an iron fist if he had to — but he doesn’t, since congressional Republicans have shown themselves to be all too happy to do exactly as he decrees.
As it happened, Johnson had proven himself to be a loyal Trumper long before he put in his bid for speaker. He vocally supported Trump during both of the president’s impeachments, and he provided legal arguments justifying Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Even though he was out of office, when Johnson’s name finally emerged among House Republicans as an option in October 2023, Trump posted on Truth Social, “My strong SUGGESTION is to go with the leading candidate, Mike Johnson, & GET IT DONE, FAST!” Johnson won the vote the next day.
One might think that Johnson’s loyalty to Trump, a notorious hypocrite who has mocked (and continues to manipulate) Christian evangelicals, would have cast some doubt on the sincerity of his call to be the new Moses. But Johnson, like so many other conservative Christians, is so consumed by his fear and loathing of America’s liberal culture that he gladly embraced the felonious libertine. The enemy of his enemy became his friend, and now Johnson is an eager accomplice to Trump’s agenda.
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Does he truly admire Trump though? Not likely, and not because he is affronted by his lies and criminal behavior. It’s because he’s a slick politician for whom all of this is in service to his ambition. Back when he was first elected to the speakership, David Kirkpatrick of the New Yorker interviewed Johnson and shared this anecdote, which illustrates how he operates:
I first met Johnson two years ago, in a small office in the Cannon House Office Building, to ask him about Trump’s claims that enormous fraud had robbed him of victory in 2020. “He believes that to his core today, you know,” Johnson told me then. He sounded sympathetic. But Johnson was also discreetly clarifying that he himself had never fallen for Trump’s outlandish claims.
As vice chair of the House Republican Conference, Johnson led the amicus brief signed by more than 100 House Republicans that sought to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. If he didn’t actually believe that Trump had won the election, our new Moses broke the ninth commandment about bearing false witness (along with several secular laws as well.)
Until now, all of this has worked out pretty well for Johnson. He proved to be a fast learner; he’s gotten especially good at evading tough questions about all the horrific policies Trump is enacting in his second term. “It’s not in my lane,” he has taken to saying, and “I haven’t seen that tweet.”
But his evasions are getting harder to maintain. By trying to excuse Republicans’ grotesque assaults on health care and suggesting they are actually trying to preserve it, Johnson is outright lying now. (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., publicly broke with him last week, complaining to CNN that the party is being “destroyed” on the issue.) But Johnson is really being tied up in knots for his stonewalling over the Jeffrey Epstein files.
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The speaker’s own caucus is starting to rebel over the fact that he adjourned the House during the ongoing federal government shutdown. He has declined to even call members back to vote on some stand-alone bills like pay for the troops and other essential workers. Democrats are furious that Johnson has refused to swear in Adelita Grijalva, the newly elected Democratic representative from Arizona who has pledged to provide the winning vote for the discharge petition to release the Epstein documents — even though he’s gone out of his way to do so for Republicans in similar circumstances.
Those two issues are tied together. Once he swears in Grijalva and calls the House into session, Johnson knows there will be enough votes to force the release of the Epstein files. It’s clear he is doing everything in his power to prevent that from happening for as long as possible.
Nothing exposes Johnson’s rank hypocrisy more than this one issue, and it’s destroying any shred of credibility he had left. According to a recent Marist Poll, 84% of Democrats, 67% of Republicans and 83% of independents want all of the files released.
You know the old saying: it’s not the crime, it’s the cover up — and Mike Johnson is right in the middle of it. What would Moses do?
