Dear Editor:
When I first read the headline of U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson’s article in the Feb. 6-7 edition of the Natchitoches Times, I thought Johnson must have decided to follow Senator John Kennedy’s example and become a self-styled country comedian, a la Jeff Foxworthy or Ron “Tater Tot” White. The headline—“If Democrats are going to preach unity, they need to practice it too”— really cracked me up at first. It was right up there with Kennedy’s “I’m not going to let Nancy Pelosi make me wear a COVID mask in the shower.”
But Johnson wasn’t joking. He meant for us to take his words seriously, despite their faux crocodile tears, wildly inappropriate self-righteousness, and outright falsehoods. Despite treating Democrats like dirt when his party controlled Congress, Johnson laments how mean Democrats in the House and Senate are treating the minority Trump Party there.
He blames Democrats for trying to do too much to help the American people recover from the impact of the greatest pandemic we’ve had in a century—one Trump and his enablers made exponentially worse with their constant lies about the virus. Johnson claims Democrats were “clearly using the pandemic as leverage to force unrelated policy priorities.” And what were those “unrelated policies? Helping out state governments whose budgets crashed because of COVID and raising the federal minimum wage to $15. Both those policies will put more cash into working peoples’ pockets to jumpstart the economy. But now all of a sudden Johnson’s concerned about deficit spending!
Give us a break, Mike. You voted to run up our national debt by $8 TRILLION during Trump’s term. That’s the worst four-year spree of writing hot checks in our nation’s history. And where did that money go? Certainly not to the working people in Johnson’s district— our district. Even more outrageously, Johnson tries to claim the Democrats’ pandemic package will “hand millionaires and billionaires a massive tax break.” Where did Johnson come up with that malarkey? Mike Johnson and his party are the ones who gave the rich the biggest tax cut in history a couple of years ago that did almost nothing for the non-rich. And even the pitance working families got lasted only two years.
Of course the Trump Party made the tax cuts for the rich permanent. But they won’t be “permanent” for long. But here’s the bottom line. Mike Johnson’s Trump Party tried to overthrow our democracy on Jan. 6. Mike Johnson signed onto a bogus lawsuit to try to stop the counting of the certified electoral ballots. He’s been a proud servant of Trump all the way. Johnson voted twice not to hold Trump accountable in the Impeachments, the second of which has now gone to the Senate, where the Trump Party will obviously violate their special oaths not to be partisan and let Trump off again.
Trump was clearly guilty of both sets of the Articles of Impeachment. Trump tried three times to ensure his continuation in power by illegal and even violent means. Mike Johnson supported Trump’s insurrectionist actions all the way until the bitter end for Trump and his disgraced party—and until the triumph of the Constitution and of democracy itself. And now Mike Johnson demands we Democrats “unify” with him and his party. But we Democrats, over 81 million strong, don’t negotiate with insurrectionists against America, Congressman. Rodney Allen Natchitoches
