Leaving Trump Behind

The Speaker is putting Ukraine aid to a vote on Saturday. I think this betrays Trump's extraordinary weakness.

Speaker Mike Johnson(LA04) announced a plan to bring bills to the floor of the House this coming Saturday, to provide aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, along with a convoluted porky bill that combines renewing and extending Lend-lease to Ukraine, and banning Tiktok. Each of these proposed bills are worth a lengthy discussion, but I want to talk about the announcement itself.

Johnson has been under enormous pressure from within his own House party caucus, and reportedly from the former President himself, to keep any such bill off the floor, as the GOP wants to take as hostages the people of Ukraine to pass Mexican border security legislation.

Except no they don't, because a bipartisan Senate coalition created and passed a bill to provide aid to Ukraine, and allocate billions to beef up Mexican border security and hire more judges to mitigate the humanitarian crisis there. And Johnson refused to take it up, reportedly because he was instructed not to by the former President, who thought he could use the border issue as a cudgel to use in his Presidential campaign against Joe Biden. Because the GOP has always benefited more from complaining about the border than from fixing it.

Speaking of the former President, Johnson had a one-on-one private meeting with him at his nursing home in Palm Beach, this past Friday. At its conclusion, Trump and Johnson addressed the press, with Trump saying he stands by Johnson as speaker. This is what I find especially interesting about this whole situation. "We’re getting along very well with the speaker — and I get along very well with Marjorie," Trump said, referring to Marjorie Taylor Greene(GA14), who's made it known in no uncertain terms that she would move to confiscate Johnson's gavel if he brought Ukraine aid to the floor for a vote.

But now, Johnson has announced he will do exactly that. Within a week of receiving public praise from Trump, who in the same breath claimed he has a good relationship with MTG. There is something major going on behind the scenes in the Republican Party right now. Let's dive into it a bit.

I think the meeting at Mar-a-Lago went poorly for Trump. Also, I believe that Trump came out of it defeated by Johnson. If the outcome had been amicable, or to Trump's advantage, then Trump would be calling for Johnson's head right now, for making his announcement. Instead, he was asked by the press for a reaction on Tuesday after sitting in a courtroom all day in Manhattan, and his response was, simply, "Well, we'll see what happens with that." Under normal circumstances, if Trump believes he's been wronged, he doesn't hesitate to throw stones.

I think Johnson told Trump his plans, refused to kiss the ring, and told Trump something that's kept him quiet. Passing Ukraine aid would devastate an entire pillar of Trump's campaign, and would cede it to Joe Biden. Further, it makes Trump look even weaker if mild-mannered whipping-boy Mike Johnson acts with impunity as Speaker, in defiance to Trump, Greene, and the far-right Freedom Caucus.

Based on these events, I think the following things are happening.

1) Johnson has made a deal with House Democratic leadership, or with enough democrats to get a good enough nose count to know he would survive a motion to vacate. What concessions he may have agreed to, to reach this deal, may or may not ever be known. It seems to me though that putting the aforementioned foreign aid bills on the floor would probably be part of that.

2) Trump is much weaker than he and his media allies let on. His cognitive abilities have been in open decline in recent months, and he has basically nothing to campaign on other than in-house conspiracy theories, score-settling, and the evangelical goals of Project 2025.

3) Trump's weakness is viewed as enough of a liability now that the GOP's leaders and well-placed officials are working to position themselves for a post-Trump world, and the historically enormous power-vacuum the party will have after Trump loses again, exits public life, and his supporters meld backward into the hedge like Homer Simpson.

4) The Kremlin is extremely weak as well. Two years of unsuccessful war have exhausted their supplies of personnel and materiel. Ukraine is starved of resources, and yet the orcs still make only marginal gains where they do gain. I think they are out of gas, and so is their servant Trump. Their proxies in Tehran are militarily greater than they are, now. Even so, the biggest attack by Iran against any Western country in history was defeated utterly on Saturday, with only a single human injury. When Ukraine gets an infusion of money, supplies, and materiel, I think things will start happening quickly in the Donbas, and it will not go well for Putin.

5) Johnson knew most if not all of this, going into his meeting with Trump, and dominated Trump as a result.

6) The Freedom Caucus will cease to be a significant political force by this time next month, because I think one of the concessions Johnson will make it to raise the threshold for a motion to vacate from a single member to a much more realistic number that better reflects the intention of the Chamber at large. If/when that happens, the Freedom Caucus and other far-right members will lose the leverage they have against their party today.

This was a lot to read, and I hope you made it all the way here, because I think we have seen signs that the events I've been anticipating for quite a while are starting to come to fruition.