Years earlier than he performed a lead function in attempting to assist President Donald J. Trump keep in workplace after the 2020 election or defended him in two separate Senate impeachment trials, Speaker Mike Johnson bluntly asserted that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and may very well be a hazard as president.
“The factor about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the ethical heart we desperately want once more within the White Home,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a prolonged put up on Fb on Aug. 7, 2015, earlier than he was elected to Congress and a day after the primary Republican major debate of the marketing campaign cycle.
Challenged within the feedback by somebody defending Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson responded: “I’m afraid he would break extra issues than he fixes. He’s a scorching head by nature, and that may be a harmful trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”
Mr. Johnson, then a state lawmaker in Louisiana, additionally questioned what would occur if “he determined to bomb one other head of state merely disrespecting him? I’m solely midway kidding about this. I simply don’t assume he has the demeanor to be President.”
The feedback got here at a time when many Republicans who would later change into loyalists of Mr. Trump had been disparaging him and declaring him unfit to carry the nation’s highest workplace. Solely later did they fall in line and function the first-line defenders of his most excessive phrases and actions.
However Mr. Johnson’s anti-Trump screed has, till now, flown below the radar, in a big half as a result of Mr. Johnson himself did, too, earlier than his unlikely election as speaker final month put him second in line to the presidency.
Today, Mr. Johnson solely praises Mr. Trump and defends him in opposition to what he dismisses as politically motivated indictments and legal fees. Mr. Trump has lauded Mr. Johnson as somebody who has acted as a loyal soldier for the reason that starting of his political rise.
In a prolonged assertion to The New York Instances on Monday night time, Mr. Johnson mentioned his feedback had been made earlier than he personally knew Mr. Trump, and attributed them to the truth that “his type was very completely different than mine.”
He continued: “Throughout his 2016 marketing campaign, President Trump rapidly received me and tens of millions of my fellow Republicans over. After I obtained to know him personally shortly after we each arrived in Washington in 2017, I grew to understand the individual that he’s and the qualities about him that made him the extraordinary president that he was.”
Mr. Johnson, who campaigned for Mr. Trump in 2020 and has endorsed his 2024 bid, added: “Since we met, we’ve all the time had an excellent and pleasant relationship. The president and I take pleasure in working collectively, and I sit up for doing so once more when he returns to the White Home.”
A spokesman for Mr. Trump declined to touch upon the posts.
In 2015, Mr. Johnson, who would announce his first run for Congress the following yr, wrote that he was horrified as he watched Mr. Trump’s debate efficiency along with his spouse and youngsters.
“What bothered me most was watching the face of my distinctive 10 yr previous son, Jack, at one level when he regarded over at me with a kind of confused disappointment, because the chief of all polls boasted about calling a girl a ‘fats pig.’”
In probably the most well-known exchanges from that debate, Megyn Kelly, a moderator after which a Fox Information host, requested Mr. Trump about his historical past of referring to ladies as “fats pigs, canine, slobs and disgusting animals.”
“Solely Rosie O’Donnell,” Mr. Trump responded. He added that the nation’s drawback was political correctness, one thing he didn’t have time for.
Mr. Johnson was horrified.
“Are you able to think about the noble, selfless characters of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln or Reagan carrying on like Trump did final night time?” wrote Mr. Johnson, an evangelical Christian. He famous that voters wanted to demand a “a lot larger stage of advantage and decency” than what he had simply witnessed.
Throughout the Trump administration, Mr. Johnson loved a pleasant relationship with the president. In 2020, he accompanied him, together with different Home Republicans, to the school soccer nationwide championship recreation between Louisiana State College and Clemson.
After the election that yr, he performed a number one function in recruiting Home Republicans to signal a authorized transient, rooted in baseless claims of widespread election irregularities, supporting a lawsuit looking for to overturn the outcomes. On Nov. 8, 2020, Mr. Johnson was onstage at a northwest Louisiana church talking about Christianity in America when Mr. Trump known as him to debate authorized challenges to the election outcomes.
Lately, Mr. Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, has used a podcast he hosted along with his spouse to defend Mr. Trump in opposition to 4 completely different indictments and the legal fees in opposition to him.
“I feel each single one in all these bogus prosecutions is overtly weaponized political prosecutions of Donald Trump,” Mr. Johnson mentioned on one episode.
On one other, Mr. Johnson proclaimed, “Nobody did it higher within the White Home than President Trump.”
In final month’s speaker’s race, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Johnson, noting that he was somebody who had “supported me, in each thoughts and spirit, from the very starting of our GREAT 2016 Victory.”
Mr. Johnson is much from alone in having expressed deep considerations about Mr. Trump, solely to go on to later embrace him and his agenda.
In 2015, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina known as Mr. Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, spiritual bigot,” in addition to a “kook,” “loopy” and a person who was “unfit for workplace.” He went on to function Mr. Trump’s most loyal defender within the Senate.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the second-to-last man left standing within the 2016 Republican major race, known as Mr. Trump a “pathological liar” who was “totally amoral,” a “serial philanderer” and a “narcissist at a stage I don’t assume this nation’s ever seen.” Mr. Cruz has defined his choice to change into a loyal defender of Mr. Trump as one thing that was a “accountability” to his constituents.
Mick Mulvaney, the previous Republican congressman who went on to function the president’s appearing chief of workers, in 2016 known as his future boss a “horrible human being” who had made “disgusting and indefensible” feedback about ladies.
In contrast to the opposite lawmakers who fell in line, nonetheless, Mr. Johnson has pitched himself as somebody of deep spiritual convictions, whose worldview is pushed by his religion.