House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been all over the news lately, but I doubt it is the type of coverage he wants.
Unfortunately, this is the speaker's own doing.
Johnson has been whining in the media about working nonstop and not having any days off in two years, and social media is blowing up over the comments, and not in a good way.
During the government shutdown, Johnson refused to reopen the House until the government was funded.
This had Democrats furious because they had won a special election race, and since the House was not in session, that meant that the Rep.-elect would not be sworn in. As a result, the approval for an Epstein documents discharge petition was necessarily delayed.
Democrats then started to attack Johnson, claiming that he was taking a vacation while they were fighting for healthcare benefits for Americans.
Johnson responded, “We will come back, and get back to legislative session, as soon as the Senate Democrats turn the lights back on. That’s the fact. That’s where we are.”
About two weeks ago, Johnson continued to push back on the vacation allegations from Democrats, claiming that he was working nonstop.
He stated, “Just because we don’t have legislative voting days, it doesn’t mean Congress isn’t working. There’s this idea out there that Congress goes on vacation.”
Johnson continued, “Shannon, we haven’t -- I haven’t -- had a day off in two years. I mean, we work around the clock on these things. Our appropriators in particular, have been working very hard, and they’re ready to go.”
I understood his point, but it came off as a bit whiny to me, and you just cannot do that in leadership. When I was in the hotel industry, I would sometimes go more than a month without a day off, and I never said a peep, and I surely did not gripe, and that is what this sounded like to many people.
Johnson just did another interview, this time with Katie Miller on her podcast, and he brought this notion up again, saying he is in “survival” mode right now.
He stated, “I think literally 100,000 people have my cell phone number. The greatest challenge of my day is trying to keep up. Because I miss literally hundreds of calls and text messages in a day. The peril is, I don’t know how important it was, what I missed.”
The speaker continued, “I haven’t had a vacation day in two years. I haven’t been off in two years, literally. Last Christmas, I was taking calls from members with their drama. It takes everything out of whomever serves in the position -- and by extension, their family."
Not to sound harsh, but nobody really cares if he had time off. And again, I get his point, but this is landing very flat, and he is now getting torched on social media over his comments. You signed up for the job, and the GOP is supposed to be tough, so this is a really bad look for Johnson at a time when the Republicans cannot afford any more negative stories. Just suck it up, and stop giving Democrats and the media clickbait to use against us.
