Yes, It's Okay for the Pro-Ukraine Crowd to Criticize Mike Johnson

He did the right thing by pushing Ukraine aid through the House, but that shouldn't give him a pass on everything else.

On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson showed up at Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in New York. Along with a few other Republican politicians, he took the day off from his congressional work to get on camera at the courthouse and express solidarity with the former president.

Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, whose book “Oath and Honor” details Johnson’s “stop the steal” efforts to help Trump stay in office after he lost the 2020 election, weighed in on the Speaker’s latest display of support:

Cheney’s comment upset Republican political commentator (and former Bush White House colleague), Marc Thiessen. Thiessen was a reliable Trump defender throughout much of Trump’s presidency, but he has been much more critical of the former president in the years since. Yet, he rushed to defend Johnson’s gesture, and took a hard shot at Cheney that was so ridiculous in nature that I half thought his Twitter/X account had been hacked:

As I recently wrote, Johnson deserves credit for finally coming around on Ukraine, and supporting U.S. aid for the country in its fight against Russia. The process took months longer than it should have, delayed by Johnson’s fear of the anti-Ukraine wing of his party. Military analysts believe that because of that delay, Putin was able to gain leverage in the war and launch a new offensive against Ukraine. But late is better than never. Johnson eventually stood up and got the legislation passed. Thiessen and I agree that was a good thing.

Where Thiessen went off the rails was his slam of Cheney for ‘blowing up’ her political career, by losing her seat in the House, and thus no longer being able to use her congressional vote to help pass that aid for Ukraine.

Let’s examine that logic for a minute.

Thiessen knows as well as anyone exactly why Cheney is no longer a congresswoman. She lost her House seat, in the next Republican primary, because she did what very few of her Republican colleagues had the courage to do after January 6, 2021. She put the country and the Constitution before the guy who had just tried to overturn U.S. democracy, caused a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol through two months of lies, and refused — for hours — to lift a finger to stop the violence that was being carried out in his name.

Some would call that patriotism. And by some, I’m including Thiessen himself. He certainly recognized it as such at the time, supported Cheney’s efforts, and repeatedly condemned those in the Republican party who punished her over them.

As Thiessen knows, the only way Cheney would have been reelected, in the deep-red Trump-loving state of Wyoming, is if she had instead done what the vast majority of her Republican colleagues did: agree in private that what Trump did was horrific and disqualifying for future office, but in public go along with Trump’s "stop the steal" lies, excuse or deny his efforts to overturn the election, and likewise let him off the hook for January 6 and the denial of our country’s peaceful transfer for of power.

That’s exactly what Johnson did, and now that’s what Thiessen is suggesting Cheney should have done as well… in the interest of Ukraine aid… three years later.

Thiessen went after former Congressman Adam Kinzinger with the same line of attack:

It is entirely absurd to state as a matter of fact — as Thiessen did — that if everyone had followed Cheney’s “model,” Putin would be marching on Kyiv right now. That argument doesn’t make a lick of sense.

If everyone had done what Cheney did, Trump's political career would have ended three years ago. His impeachment would have resulted in a conviction that would have barred him from ever holding public office again. Without that weight hanging over the heads of Republican leaders, the GOP would have gone through a period of healing and reassessment that assuredly wouldn’t have led to the level of anti-Ukraine sentiment we currently see within the party. That sentiment, after all, is at least in part derived from Trump’s longtime man-crush on Vladmir Putin.

In other words, without Trump in the picture, Ukraine aid very likely wouldn’t have been held up — by Johnson or anyone else — in the first place. It would have passed quickly and easily. The Republican party would also assuredly hold many more congressional seats than it currently does (including a Senate majority), that would have prevented people like J.D. Vance and Marjorie Taylor Greene (who likely wouldn’t even be in Congress if not for Trump) from ever throwing a wrench into the works.

Frankly, I think Thiessen knows all of this… which makes his brass-knuckled defense of Johnson, on a matter that had nothing to do with Ukraine, even weirder.

It is entirely reasonable for someone to praise a political leader when they make the correct choice (even if took a while), and criticize them when they sycophantically beclown themself for the sake of power. One might even call that accountability.

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