Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has always been something of a corporate tool. Historically, he’s been willing to say just about anything the money people tell him to say, including claims that net neutrality consumer protections help pornography production at the expense of health care. Think about that. He really said that and pretended to mean it. He also has a history of saying the quiet thing out loud. Shortly after his strange attack on net neutrality protections, Johnson argued for paid internet “fast lanes,” the literal thing that conservatives and their telecom overlords were trying to pretend wouldn’t be a part of telecommunications’ business model if net neutrality protections were rolled back. He’s done all of this in just four years, while adhering to the racist voter suppression models that his own state’s political party has admitted are only pursued to disenfranchise Black and brown voters. That’s cravenly racist.
About one month after the Capitol building was beset upon, vandalized, and law enforcement members were hurt and died, Johnson told right-wing radio host Jay Weber that the insurgency “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me.” He went on to basically say that since the group hid their firearms outside of the Capitol building and didn’t walk in with muskets and bayonets, this couldn't be classed as an “armed insurrection.” He followed that up, while in the Senate, by promoting baseless conspiracy theories that MAGA, white supremacists, QAnon extremists, and right-wing militias were not involved in the Jan. 6 insurgency.
On Thursday, Johnson spoke with conservative radio host Joe Pags. Johnson, who has clearly embraced the depths of his dirtbagitude, decided to really elucidate what we all knew he meant when he said the insurrection wasn’t an insurrection.
Johnson first reexplained his alternate dimension take on Jan. 6, 2021, saying: “I’m also criticized because I’ve made the comment that on January 6, I never felt threatened, because I didn’t. And mainly because I knew that even though those thousands of people that are there marching to the Capitol were trying to pressure people like me to vote the way they want me to vote. I knew those are people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law, and so I wasn’t concerned.” Before we get to the racist double standard explanation that Johnson gives, let’s break this first part down.
Johnson was voting the way those people wanted him to vote. He wasn’t under any pressure to do anything. The die was cast for old Ronnie, who had weeks before given up even the semblance of integrity in fealty to Donald Trump and his dangerously fake election fraud claims. “These people” love this country? What are they loving about it, exactly? To be very clear, you don’t have to love much of anything about anything to be a citizen and have a vote and be afforded your civil rights. But it’s unclear what these MAGA faketriots “love,” about our country. I mean, I have some ideas and I’m sure you do too, but I’m not sure Johnson could tell you a single thing they love about our country besides the words “troops” and “flag” and “God,” or something.
Some of those “lovers of America” showing how much they “respect” law enforcement on Jan. 6, 2021.
But the killer here is this assertion that the people who threw fire extinguishers, who hit, punched, kicked, shoved, and bear-sprayed law enforcement, while also breaking into a federal building and numerous off-limit private spaces in that building, “truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law” is not simply laughable: It’s the opposite of true. This is not an opinion. You either “truly respect law enforcement” and therefore you listen to law enforcement when law enforcement is being reasonable, and you never, unless provoked or in fear for your own life, attack law enforcement personnel. Especially when there is an abundance of video evidence, physical evidence, and digital evidence illustrating exactly how many laws you did indeed break.
Here’s the second half of Johnson’s statement:
SEN. RON JOHNSON: Now, had the tables been turned, Joe, and this’ll get me in trouble—had the tables been turned, and President Trump won the election, and those were tens of thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters, I might have been a little concerned.
White folks who would “never do anything to break a law,” breaking a handful of laws just in this photo.
Let’s begin here. Donald Trump didn’t win the election. So that’s not a thing. Johnson’s entire racist argument here relies on the concept that it’s okay for U.S. officials like Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Talib, Chuck Schumer, and even Mike Pence to have been “concerned” that they might be hurt and/or murdered by a mob of mislead insurgents because … they represent the opposition to … Donald Trump. That’s not how a democracy is set up to work. The last time we decided on that, it was a bunch of southern barbarians who didn’t want to move into the future and end slavery.
Newspapers in Wisconsin have called on Johnson to resign for being part of a seditious cabal within the Senate along with Josh Hawley. Johnson has said that he’s considering retirement after 2022. In his decade in office, Johnson has already been called a racist. Actually, Johnson called himself out by mistake after Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia said the GOP’s opposition to President Obama and the Affordable Care Act were based on Obama being the “wrong color.” Johnson’s faux-emotional attempt to accuse Democratic officials of “using the race card” really reminded people how goddamn racist people like millionaire Johnson are. But, like fellow Daily Kos staff member Hunter wrote back in September, the entire Republican Party has been, and continues to remain, complicit in the racism and the conspiracy bullshit that people like Trump and Johnson and others have been vocalizing for years.
Here’s Johnson saying super racist, double-standard crap.
