Fraud and Waste Mike Johnson

Appearing on Sunday's Meet the Press, House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked about imprisoned sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, accomplice of the late Jeffrey Epstein. Of course, he did a tough on law and order bit, remarking

If you're asking my opinion, I think 20 years was a pittance. I think she should have a life sentence at least. I mean, think of all these unspeakable crimes. And as you noted earlier, probably 1,000 victims. I mean, you know, this is, it's hard to put into words how evil this was. And that she orchestrated it and was a big part of it, at least under the criminal sanction, I think is an unforgivable thing.

Of course, he also left himself maximum flexibility on the issue, having stated a moment earlier "Well, I mean, obviously that's a decision of the President. He said he had not adequately considered that.  I won't get in front of him. That's not my lane." After host Kristen Welker followed up, Johnson added "so again, not my decision...."

Look for the Speaker to be upfront defending the President when Trump ultimately extends a measure of leniency to Maxwell because Johnson is so far up Donald Trump's rear end that.... (You finish the punch line.)

Still, the Epstein saga is a scandal not for the House of Representatives but for the White House and the Justice Department, who are working a strategy to pin any blame for the crimes of Epstein's best friend not on that best friend but on Democrats. However, the House leader does bear considerable responsibility for the disastrous impact the Administration's recently enacted megabill will have on the American people.

 

WELKER: Why would Josh Hawley introduce a bill to roll back cuts in Medicaid if there are not cuts in Medicaid? He says the people in his state are going to suffer

MIKE JOHNSON: I will tell you that the one big beautiful bill safeguards the program pic.twitter.com/ikT8XeVxB4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 27, 2025

Welker led off with

Two more critical topics to get to with you, Mr. Speaker. Let's talk about what has been called the Big Beautiful Bill. In June, you told me the bill would not cut Medicaid. But two Republican senators ultimately voted against it because of what they thought were cuts to Medicaid. And Senator Josh Hawley is already out proposing legislation to actually roll back some of the Medicaid cuts that he just voted for. Did the Medicaid cuts go too far, Mr. Speaker?

Oh, dear Lord. Why must the mainstream media, most of whose members (Welker among them) left-of-center, consistently adopt Republican messaging? Call it President Trump's, or the Administration's, or the Republican megabill of tax-and-spending bill. "Big Beautiful Bill" is obviously Trump's branding, an effort to manipulate the media, which was eager to accommodate him.

Johnson replied

The bill does not cut Medicaid. The One Big Beautiful Bill does not cut Medicaid. What it does is strengthen the program. And we talked about this, Kristen, is that the problem is there's a high degree of fraud, waste and abuse in that program. I'm talking about 10s of billions of dollars every year. What we did is we went in to go in and fix that.

He followed with fourteen sentences, none of which answered the question. But when in doubt, simply say "fraud, waste, and abuse," even though fraudsters would be prosecuted and abuse can mean anything in the world, though its most direct and accurate application is to violence against a member of a family and/or household, as in domestic abuse.

In early July, NPR reviewed the likely impact of the cuts Johnson says will "strengthen the program" and explained

The deepest cuts to health care spending come from a proposed Medicaid work requirement, which is expected to end coverage for millions of enrollees who do not meet new employment or reporting standards.

In 40 states and Washington, D.C., all of which have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, some Medicaid enrollees will have to regularly file paperwork proving that they are working, volunteering, or attending school at least 80 hours a month, or that they qualify for an exemption, such as caring for a young child. The new requirement will start as early as January 2027.

The bill's requirement doesn't apply to people in the 10 largely GOP-led states that have not expanded Medicaid to nondisabled adults.

Health researchers say the policy will have little impact on employment. Most working-age Medicaid enrollees who don't receive disability benefits already work or are looking for work, or are unable to do so because they have a disability, attend school, or care for a family member, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

State experiments with work requirements have been plagued with administrative issues, such as eligible enrollees' losing coverage over paperwork problems, and budget overruns. Georgia's work requirement, which officially launched in July 2023, has cost more than $90 million, with only $26 million of that spent on health benefits, according to the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization.

 "The hidden costs are astronomical," said Chima Ndumele, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health.

Briefly: Onerous reporting requirements will result in many millions of Americans losing their health coverage, in a country in which "(54%) of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level."

Additionally, "belt-tightening that targets states could translate into fewer health services, medical professionals, and even hospitals, especially in rural communities." As in will translate. And Affordable Care Act

marketplace policyholders will be required to update their income, immigration status, and other information each year, rather than be allowed to automatically reenroll — something more than 10 million people did this year. They'll also have less time to enroll; the bill shortens the annual open enrollment period by about a month.

That is to "strengthen the program" in a country in which a majority of Americans read no better than does an 11-year old.

Co-pays will increase for many Medicaid enrollees in states which have expanded Medicaid, thus discouraging individuals from seeking primary care. More people will get sick, then get help only when their situation is dire, boosting overall health care costs. 

Welker then asked

Josh Hawley says he is worried about cuts to payments and Medicaid reimbursements. Why would he be introducing a bill to roll back cuts to Medicaid if there were no cuts to Medicaid? He says the people in his state are going to suffer.

And Johnson responded

I haven't talked to my friend Josh Hawley about his legalization. I'm not sure what that's directed to. But I will tell you that the One Big Beautiful Bill safeguards the program. It strengthens it.

The Speaker responded with seven more sentences in which the question was not answered. However, the accurate answer would be: as he opined in The New York Times, "slashing health insurance for the working poor" would be "both morally wrong and politically suicidal."  That was in May, a few week before Hawley voted for the bill 

The "strengthens the program" or "safeguard the program," applied to Medicaid, is a chapter in the old GOP playbook. It is a variation- a slight variation- of the argument Republicans have invoked against Medicare and Social Security in which they promise to "preserve and protect" what they term "entitlement programs," i.e., Social Security and Medicare.

Mike Johnson once defended President Trump by rationalizing "Yeah, he may be breaking the rules but he's doing it where I can see it. So who cares?" That may be naivete about someone who is involved in a herculean effort to hide the report detailing his sexual and economic involvement with arguably the most prolific pedophiles ever. Or it may reflect on the Speaker's disdain for rules when it suits him. He's not the very worst thing the modern Republican Party is giving the country but he deserves (dis)honorable mention.

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Not Presently

He is, he does, and he's wrong on both counts.

Josh Hawley: “Some will say now that I am calling America a Christian Nation. So I am. And some will say that I am advocating Christian Nationalism. And so I do."
pic.twitter.com/d25AzXSTkf

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) December 18, 2024

In some narrow sense, the USA is a Christian nation.  The PRRI survey of "The American Religious Landscape in 2020" indicates that slightly less than 70% of the public identifies with a religion that is generally considered "Christian": Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon).

That number is well below that of several generations ago and obscures a significant shift in religious practice. In March of 2021, Gallup reported

Americans' membership in houses of worship continued to decline last year, dropping below 50% for the first time in Gallup's eight-decade trend. In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999…..

The decline in church membership is primarily a function of the increasing number of Americans who express no religious preference. Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years.

On September 4, Senator Hawley spoke before the National Conservatism Conference, outlining "The Christian Nationalism We Need," focusing on family and faith.  There was emphasis on "work, home, and God," as if Christians held a monopoly on these values.

Of course, there was no talk of the underpinnings of the Chritian faith, nor a call to Americans to return to church, or to prayer, or to reading the word of God. That would have required too much persuasion by the Senator in a country which has increasingly turned away from religion- and from God, notwithstanding Hawley's embrace of the "In God We Trust" motto. Generating misconception is the Missouri senator's specialty.

It was not a religious speech nor a Christian speech but a political one in which Hawley attempted to entangle God with country, which neither honors America as a land of religious mosaic nor glorifies the Almighty. Josh Hawley calls America a "Christian nation" and advocates Christian nationalism, doing his small part ultimately to undermine both God and nation.  

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Patsies

This is how you do it.

Or rather, this is how it should be done.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd

Austin was diagnosed with prostate cancer early in December and had surgery on Dec. 22. On Jan. 1, he was taken by ambulance to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after experiencing extreme pain due to complications from the surgery and was admitted to the intensive care unit.

He transferred decision-making authorities to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, but did not tell her why. And he did not tell Biden and other top officials about his diagnosis, his surgery or hospitalization until several days after was was in the ICU.

Having returned to his office in the Pentagon on Monday, three days later Austin stated at a news conference

I want to be crystal clear. We did not handle this right. And I did not handle this right.  I should have also told my team and the American public, and I take full responsibility. I apologize to my teammates and to the American people.

Austin may have added "I apologize" only because reporters and others don't understand that uttering the word "apologize" does not constitute an apology. Moreover, "take full responsibility" is utterly meaningless in a world in which "take responsibility" substitutes seamlessly for "don't blame me."

By contrast was an "apology" issued by the head of Facebook/Meta, who appeared Friday with representatives of social media companies Discord, TikTok, Facebook, and Snap at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing pithily titled "Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis."  Mark Zuckerberg was asked by arguably the Senate's leading grandstanders, Josh Hawley of Missouri, "would you like to apologize to them," referring to the families present there who have had a loved one committed suicide or been exploited by social media.  The mainstream media was conned.

CNN: Zuckerberg also stood up and apologized to families of children harmed by social media who attended the hearing, saying, 'I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer.'”

The Washington Post: Zuckerberg responded to the onslaught of grief by rising from his chair in an extraordinary moment to apologize after pressure from Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to admit Meta’s wrongdoing.

NBC News: "Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized Wednesday."

AP News: "Zuckerberg has accumulated a long history of public apologies."

CNN: "Zuckerberg also stood up and apologized to families of children harmed by social media who attended the hearing, saying..."

The Hill: "Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned his back to senators during a Wednesday hearing to stand and apologize to parents of children who have died or were seriously harmed after suffering abuse through social media."

CNBC: One expert considered Zuckerberg’s testimony “powerful' "especially when he turned to apologize directly to families who blamed the toxicity of social media for the loss of a loved one."

Al Jazeera: "This apology adds to a long list of apologies Zuckerberg has issued since he launched Facebook in 2004 when he was 19 years old."

Reuters: "Meta CEO Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday apologized to families at a U.S. Senate hearing about the impact that social media has on children."

PBS: "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg began a two-day congressional inquisition Tuesday with a public apology for a privacy scandal that has roiled the social media giant he founded more than a decade ago,"

Kansas City Star: "Zuckerberg then stood up, turned to an audience holding up pictures of their loved ones, and apologized."

Also, The Guardian:

Zuckerberg said that he was "sorry for everything you have all been through." He did not admit what that was; did not indicate that Facebook/Meta was responsible for whatever it was; did not concede that he or his platform had made any mistake. This was not Zuckerberg's first rodeo, 

That is not an apology. (If an apology had been issued, Meta's attorneys would have been apoplectic.) I, too, am sorry for the parents' loss, just as we all are sorry when a tidal wave, earthquake, or other act of God takes the lives of human beings. Probably, too, is Zuckerberg sorrow for all those casualties. He didn't apologize for those events, either, nor should he have.

When news media get played for suckers and mistake the ordinary for the extraordinary, they fail to recognize the remarkable, even extraordinary, when they encounter it.  "I did not handle this right.  I should have also..." is a way of assuming responsibility and admitting wrongdoing, which is all too uncommon.

 

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Not The First Time

It didn't start yesterday.

George Will is accurate and being celebrated on left Twitter after noting "on Wednesday, the members of the Hawley-Cruz cohort will violate the oath of office in which they swore to defend the Constitution from enemies “foreign and domestic.” They are its most dangerous domestic enemies." And you can't beat (emphasis Will's) "Hawley — has there ever been such a high ratio of ambition to accomplishment?"  (Hawley is right about $2,000 stimulus checks but the push by him and Sanders hasn't succeeded.)

Nonetheless, Will is trying to blow smoke up our posteriors when he advances the notion that there are three discrete parties in politics:

America’s three-party system — Democrats, Hawley-Cruz Republicans, and McConnell-Sasse Republicans — will continue to take shape on Wednesday. Watch how many of these Republican senators who might be seeking reelection in 2022 have the spine to side with the adults against Hawley-Cruz et al. and the Grassy Knollers among their constituents: John Boozman, Richard Burr, Mike Crapo, Charles E. Grassley, John Hoeven, Mike Lee, Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Rob Portman, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Richard C. Shelby, John Thune, Todd C. Young.

Today, they are assuring what was already assured, that Joe Biden will be inaugurated President on January 21, 2021. However, each one has sided with the authoritarian on nearly every vote in this regime. All of them delivered a stunning rebuke to the rule of law and American democracy when they ignored the overwhelming evidence against President Trump in order to vote not guilty at his impeachment trial.

During the impeachment hearing early this year, House impeachment manager Adam Schiff warned 

Can we be confident that he will not continue to try to cheat in [this] very election? Can we be confident that Americans and not foreign powers will get to decide, and that the president will shun any further foreign interference in our Democratic affairs? The short, plain, sad, incontestable answer is no, you can't. You can't trust this president to do the right thing. Not for one minute, not for one election, not for the sake of our country. You just can't. He will not change and you know it.

What are the odds if left in office that he will continue trying to cheat? I will tell you: 100 percent. A man without character or ethical compass will never find his way.

After the President was impeached, all 15 of those GOP senators, though (or maybe because) aware that Trump would cheat, then not go quietly if defeated for re-election, voted for acquittal.

This isn't the GOP's first rigging rodeo. CNN political analyst Julian Zelizer recalls

On November 21, the Florida Supreme Court authorized manual recounts in four counties and set a November 26th deadline. The next day, the Miami-Dade County canvassing board decided to focus solely on the contested ballots in order to meet the deadline. To hunker down and avoid the media frenzy that had descended on Miami, the officials decided to move to a smaller room on the 19th floor so they could be closer to the ballot-scanning machine, according to an account in Salon.

But Republican operatives, congressional staffers and lawyers had organized a group of protesters to fly to Florida, and the mob of "50-year-old white lawyers with cell phones and Hermes ties," as described by the Wall Street Journal, gathered in the high-rise building where the recount was taking place.

When New York Congressman John Sweeney, who was working for the Bush campaign, learned that the recount had been moved to another room, he ordered, the troops to "shut it down."

The protesters yelled and screamed, accusing the canvassers of trying to steal the election. The chants became fiercer and the demonstration increasingly raucous as they directly confronted the county officials. "Stop the count. Stop the fraud," they chanted.

Miami-Dade Democratic County Chairman Joe Geller bore the brunt of the protesters' ire. When someone handed him a sample ballot to test one of the voting machines, the protesters surrounded him and demand that he desist, accusing him of stealing ballots.

"This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me. At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death," he recalled. The police escorted Geller so that he could safely leave the building. Republican organizers denied that the situation ever became violent.

The strategy worked. Hours after the riot, the board decided to shut down its operations and the manual recount in Miami came to an end. (David Leahy, one member of the canvassing board, told the New York Times, "This was perceived as not being an open and fair process. That weighed heavy on our minds." But days later he denied the protests played a role in ending the manual recount.) The Supreme Court later handed the victory to George W. Bush, and a number of the participants in the Brooks Brothers Riot went on to serve in the administration and work in conservative politics.

Nor did the lying about the election process begin in 2020 as

“This one guy was tripping me and pushing me and kicking me,” recalled Geller, who is now a state legislator. “At one point, I thought if they knocked me over, I could have literally got stomped to death.”

Brad Blakeman, a Bush campaign operative who proudly admits to coordinating what he prefers to call the “Brooks Brothers Rebellion,” denies that things got violent.

“That’s all bulls---,” he told The Post. “There was no violence. There was no threatening behavior.”

Although senators Hawley and Cruz are straight-up authoritarians, their GOP colleagues chose to condone the President's crimes when they had the chance to shut them down.  Assaulting democracy is how Donald Trump rolls. But it's also how the Republican Party rolls.

 

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