Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson is now being praised by Politico and The New York Times for betraying Republican voters and collaborating with Democrats to approve a foreign aid package last week that will allocate tens of billions more taxpayer dollars to Ukraine.
If you remember, this is something Johnson repeatedly promised he would not do until Democrats agreed to secure the southern border. He stated this repeatedly over and over, both before and after he became speaker.
So what explains Johnson’s change of position? According to a complimentary article in Politico, it was “serious briefings” he received after assuming the role of speaker. “It was the intelligence, it was the Europe generals who are in charge of the freedom of the world and of course it was the developments as well, everything has escalated,” he told the outlet.
Johnson gave a similar line to the Times: “I really do believe the intel. I think that Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed. I think he might go to the Baltics next. I think he might have a showdown with Poland or one of our NATO allies.” He said the same thing to CNN’s Jake Tapper last week, that he wants to make sure Putin “doesn’t march through Europe.” (Notice now that Johnson has helped pass the Democrats’ agenda, he’s become a darling of the corporate press, complete with an in-depth puff profile just published in The Atlantic.)
Never mind that the Putin-will-march-through-Europe line was hard to believe when it was trotted out over two years ago. Today it’s preposterous and indefensible — and no one really believes it. Events on the ground have demonstrated pretty conclusively that Moscow cannot even secure all the territory it claims to have annexed in eastern Ukraine, let alone march on Poland or other NATO members.
So what exactly did Johnson find out in these classified briefings? How did he go into a SCIF (a secure facility used for classified briefings) with one set of priorities and come out with a completely different one? Did he learn that Ukraine was running out of weapons? We’ve all known that for some time now (the Pentagon said exactly that in January). Did he learn that military recruitment in Ukraine was collapsing? That’s been widely reported for months. You don’t need a SCIF or a sit-down with the CIA to know any of that. You just need to follow the news.
Maybe, then, it was something worse, that Moscow is planning to use a nuclear weapon of some kind. If, as Politico put it, “It only took a higher level of intelligence briefings, granted to congressional leaders, for him to pick up that old Cold War hymnal,” then Johnson should come out and explain as much to the American people. We’re all adults, we can handle it, and we deserve to know where our billions are going and why.
That’s the crux of it. If what Johnson learned in his intelligence briefings was so dire, so terrifying, that he went from opposing $300 million for Ukraine in September to happily giving $61 billion for the country last week, then he needs to come out and explain himself. Because that’s a hell of a 180 to pull on an issue that has deeply divided the Republican Party (a majority of Johnson’s own conference voted against his foreign aid package).
Suppose Johnson did discover something in the SCIF, some new intelligence about a catastrophic threat that changed his entire perspective on the war and inspired him to reject his previous views on America’s role. In that case, the appropriate response would have been to promptly address the border so Congress could deal with this new threat, as he had promised his constituents he would.
However, Johnson took no action regarding the border. He simply acted as if he had never made those promises and continued to pursue Ukraine funding, forfeiting whatever leverage he had with Democrats to help secure the border.
It’s actually even worse than that. He not only failed to fulfill his repeated promises to secure the border before providing further aid to Ukraine, but his foreign aid package will exacerbate the border crisis.Included in the bill was approximately $4 billion for “migration and refugee assistance,” which is given to NGOs operating along the border and tasked with providing funds and travel assistance to illegal immigrants who have been released from federal custody. In essence, Johnson is not just neglecting the border crisis, but actively funding it.
Through this action, Johnson has effectively given Democrats exactly what they wanted on Ukraine and the border, while offering Republican voters nothing except a figurative insult, especially since Johnson refuses to acknowledge that he’s changed his stance and broken his promise.
It’s much more likely that the idea of classified intel briefings influencing Johnson’s view is simply a ridiculous story fabricated by the permanent bureaucracy in D.C. and dutifully presented by the regime press to justify Johnson’s deceit and portray him as a serious statesman.
However, the simplest explanation for Johnson’s deceit is not some secret briefing that’s so terrifying no one can know about it, but that Johnson is a weak and easily manipulated figure in Washington who was completely unprepared, as speaker, to advocate for Republican voters and serve their interests.
