Donald Trump has earned a reputation as the nation’s most prominent and powerful election conspiracy theorist, but to the extent that there’s a competition for the silver medal in this ignominious category, House Speaker Mike Johnson is a clear contender.
Indeed, after Trump’s defeat in the 2020 race, it was the Louisiana Republican who took the lead on Capitol Hill, effectively becoming the White House’s congressional point man, doing his best to overturn the results and hand the outgoing president illegitimate power. Johnson even echoed a discredited conspiracy theory involving Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Dominion Voting Systems — nonsense that even many Trump acolytes didn’t feel comfortable repeating.
With this in mind, it wasn’t too surprising to see Congress’ top GOP lawmaker echo his party’s baseless conspiracy theories regarding California’s latest elections, though one word in his pitch was of particular interest.
Apparently comfortable speaking on behalf of the nation, Johnson told reporters on Monday afternoon that “everybody knows” that the process of counting votes in California “stinks to high heaven.”
Asked the obvious question about conspiracy theorists’ lack of evidence, the House speaker added, “Some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream that it’s impossible to prove, but I think everybody knows instinctively, something is wrong here.”
It was an implicit acknowledgment of an inconvenient truth: Johnson and his cohorts simply don’t have any evidence. The speaker and other Republican leaders don’t know if their baseless ideas are true, but they apparently want the public to know that their conspiracy theories feel true.
It’s the basis for a debate, not about election administration processes, but about vibes.
But Johnson’s use of the word “instinctively” stood out, in part because it was so foolish, and in part because of its familiarity.