Johnson emerges as vocal Trump defender
President Donald Trump’s efforts to get Ukraine and China to investigate his opponent Joe Biden have left many Republicans in Congress holding their tongues, loath to criticize Trump yet unwilling to leap to his defense either.
But one of the most striking exceptions has been Senate Republican Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Rather than duck the furor, Johnson has plunged into an explosive debate and become a lightning rod himself in the unfolding impeachment fight.
In his clash with “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd on NBC Sunday and in a series of interviews and appearances over the past two weeks, Johnson has vocally taken Trump’s side, accused the news media of “horrible bias,” attacked Trump’s investigators and sought to portray the president as a victim of dirty tricks rather than a perpetrator.
“I think personally the greatest threat to our democracy right now is literally this effort to sabotage a new president. It’s relentless. They’ve never given up,” Johnson said in an interview with WISN-AM (1130) talk radio host Jay Weber in Wisconsin on Monday, blaming “leftwing media,” Democrats and “corruption at the highest levels.”
As for Trump’s own actions, critics are putting the “worst possible construction” on them, the two-term senator told the Journal Sentinel last week.
“I understand why it’s easy to impugn all kinds of horrible motives to (Trump),” he said. “I’m not.”
Johnson’s combative appearance on “Meet the Press” further thrust the senator into the spotlight, an interruption-filled confrontation in which Todd tried to get Johnson to talk about Trump’s conduct, Johnson argued that Trump was set up and victimized by Democrats, the FBI and CIA, and Todd cut the senator off, accusing him of pushing “Fox News ... propaganda stuff.”
“I was really invited on to be the punching bag, and that’s the bottom line,” Johnson said afterward.
Championed on conservative talk shows
Conservative talk show hosts celebrated Johnson for pushing back against an anti-Trump media narrative and refusing to be cornered into criticizing the president. Democrats accused him of trying to curry favor with Trump by touting debunked “dark web” conspiracy theories.
“Sen. Ron Johnson called out F. Chuck Todd and the intelligence community for bias and for colluding with Democrats to start the Russia hoax. So, here’s a Republican senator we don’t have to worry about being purloined by Adam Schiff and the Democrats,” Rush Limbaugh declared. Schiff is the California Democrat leading the House investigation of Trump.
“I commend you for the way you handled this,” Weber told Johnson. “This is the reason why many conservatives wonder why Republicans even go on these TV shows.”
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Johnson’s appearance a “sniveling, Quisling-like performance.” Former Obama adviser David Axelrod dismissed it as “paroxysms of right-wing conspiracy favorites — a veritable greatest hits reel.”
House Democrat Mark Pocan of Wisconsin called it “an adventure in bizarro-land,” saying on MSNBC that, “a few days back, I thought (Johnson) was going to maybe be the one Republican who actually put his country before his party … instead he drank the MAGA red KoolAid.”
Senate Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who traveled with Johnson to Ukraine, called Johnson a “good friend” but said his “Meet the Press” interview was “just a giant green light to the president of the United States to continue to solicit foreign interference in U.S. elections.”
Johnson has emerged as one of Trump’s most vocal defenders among Senate Republicans, a few of whom (including Utah’s Mitt Romney) have condemned Trump’s conduct, but many of whom have stayed on the sidelines of the debate and said as little as possible.
A behind-the-scenes witness
Johnson’s place in this political storm goes beyond his outspokenness. As a senator closely involved in Ukraine issues, he has emerged as a witness to behind-the-scenes events in the controversy that prompted the House impeachment inquiry. Those include his own conversations with Trump about Ukraine, his trips to that country and his interactions with Ukraine President Vladimir Zelensky.
That “first-hand knowledge” is one reason he has done so many interviews about the issue, Johnson says.
The senator has cited his inside knowledge in defending Trump against charges the president offered Ukraine a “quid pro quo” (the release of U.S. military aid) in exchange for conducting foreign investigations into Democrats.
But Johnson also added fuel to the scandal when he revealed hearing of just such a “quid pro quo” on Ukraine aid from a U.S. diplomat.
Johnson told the Wall Street Journal last week that he was alarmed enough to question Trump about the matter directly. The senator said Trump flatly denied the notion that U.S. aid to Ukraine was being tied to that country’s pursuing political investigations sought by Trump.
“I would consider that exculpatory,” Johnson told radio host Weber.
Johnson told the Journal Sentinel he asked Trump before a visit to Ukraine if he could tell Zelensky the U.S. aid to his country was on its way. Trump refused. (Johnson supported the aid, but said he thought Trump’s reasons for delaying it were aboveboard)
Throughout the controversy, Johnson has sympathetically portrayed Trump as an unfairly maligned leader trying to get to the bottom of “rumors” and suspicions of Democratic mischief against him.
“Who set him up?” Johnson asked on “Meet the Press.”
And he has expressed little discomfort with the president’s public and private appeals to Ukraine and China to investigate potential Democratic challenger Biden and his son, Hunter — the conduct at the heart of the impeachment fight.
When the substance of Trump’s phone call with the leader of Ukraine was made public, Johnson was asked in an interview if he finds it troubling to have a president asking a foreign power to investigate a domestic political opponent.
Johnson responded: “Almost everyone who is saying that is just troubled that Donald Trump is president.”
The senator was asked a similar question last week after Trump said publicly, “China should start an investigation into the Bidens.”
Johnson said, “The president can speak for himself.”
When Weber asked Johnson Monday whether Trump “is going too far here,” Johnson said, “There are plenty of things the president says and does (that) I’d prefer he not do … partly because I’m always called upon to defend or denounce it.”
But Johnson deflected the question, saying the bigger issue to him was the effort to undermine Trump, saying Democrats “have crippled this president’s ability to effectively govern.”
As he did on “Meet the Press,” Johnson accused the media of ignoring or trying to shut down what he said were legitimate questions about whether Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the roots of a grand “collusion hoax” designed to delegitimize the president.
“I’m being called a conspiracy theorist,” Johnson complained to Todd, insisting that “something pretty fishy happened during the 2016 campaign and in the transition, the early — the early part of the Trump presidency, and we still don’t know” what.
Asked last week how he would approach a Senate trial of Trump if he were impeached by the House, Johnson said, “I will listen to the case very respectfully. I will not prejudge anything.”