The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editorial board breaks down exactly why it believes Sen. Ron Johnson is “the worst Wisconsin political representative since the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy.” Editorial: Election deceiver, science fabulist, billionaire benefactor. After 12 years, it’s time to term-limit Sen. Ron Johnson:
He’s an election [denier] who recklessly promoted lies about the 2020 presidential race long after it was clear Donald Trump lost.
He’s a science fabulist who suggested, without evidence, that the COVID-19 vaccines could make the pandemic worse and who repeatedly touted unproven remedies for the disease — from Ivermectin to mouthwash.
He’s tried to rewrite the sordid history of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, claiming the attackers were “people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break the law.”
He suggested the government should rewrite the rules for the two government programs seniors rely on most — Medicare and Social Security — making them subject to annual political fights in Congress rather than mandatory payments as promised.
For years, Ron Johnson has demonstrated that he should be retired to his family’s seaside Florida home — and not representing Wisconsin in the U.S. Senate. Voters should send him packing this November.
Here are eight reasons:
He wants to upend Medicare and Social Security
Johnson said recently that Medicare and Social Security should be subject to annual budget deliberations, which would be a drastic change for a pair of essential social insurance programs and could put them at risk.
Americans pay into both programs and qualify for benefits when they reach retirement age. They are set up like insurance plans and offer a guaranteed benefit. That’s why they are treated by the government as mandatory spending. Treating them as “discretionary spending” would subject them to annual partisan squabbles and could put the guarantees promised to seniors at risk.
Though there are legitimate concerns about future funding of both programs, neither is in imminent danger. Medicare is funded through 2028 and Social Security through 2035, according to government projections. In the past, Congress has been willing to work out solutions rather than continually blast campaign rhetoric. It has resolved funding problems without resorting to drastic steps.
His office was involved in Trump’s ‘fake elector’ scheme
Johnson’s office was involved in an attempt to pass a document regarding “Wisconsin electors” to then Vice President Mike Pence just minutes before Congress was to ceremonially certify the election on Jan. 6. Johnson’s explanations for what happened — and for what he and his staff knew — don’t add up.
Trump and his lawyers were pushing a wild scheme to replace authentic electors — the people selected based on citizens’ votes — with sycophants who would flip the results in battleground states to Trump. That corrupt plan could have erased the choice made by voters and potentially handed the presidency to Trump if enough swing states flipped. Trump lost the popular vote by 7 million votes nationwide and in the Electoral College 306-232. The Trump scheme was treasonous.
He refused to tell the truth about the 2020 presidential election
Johnson spent weeks questioning the validity of the election despite evidence showing conclusively that Joe Biden had won the presidency. He held a one-sided hearing allowing Trump’s lawyers to air allegations of fraud that had already been rejected by dozens of courtrooms across America, including both Republican and Democratic judges and even federal judges appointed by Trump.
Johnson’s role in amplifying lies about the election — including his threat to challenge the ceremonial counting of electoral votes in Congress — encouraged Trump supporters to believe the result could be overturned and contributed to the tragedy at the Capitol.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Johnson did not vote against objections to Joe Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania after the deadly sacking of the U.S. Capitol interrupted Congress’ tallying of Electoral College votes. Up until the insurrection, Johnson publicly stated he intended to vote in favor of challenges to state-certified votes.
Johnson knew better.
About two weeks after the election, he acknowledged that Joe Biden had won the election, according to the former Brown County Republican chairman. And in August of 2021, Johnson was recorded saying that Trump lost Wisconsin simply because he underperformed other Republicans on the same ballots in the same election. “He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got, and that’s why he lost,” Johnson said.
Now Johnson refuses to say whether he would accept the outcome of the November election once the results are certified, the Wisconsin State Journal reports.
We cannot elect people to office who do not honor the results of elections and still expect to hold onto our democratic republic. It’s that simple. Even citizens who don’t like his opponent should withhold their vote for Johnson on this point alone — to ensure our government derives its power from the consent of the governed.
To ensure, as Republican President Abraham Lincoln put it, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
He repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the attack on the U.S. Capitol
Johnson claimed the rampage “didn’t seem like an armed insurrection.” This was despite the fact that five people died, rioters called for the deaths of Vice President Mike Pence and leaders of Congress, weapons were found on attackers and stashed nearby, and organized white nationalists led violent charges against Capitol Police and forced their way into the building, using flagpoles, bear spray, fire extinguishers and other blunt objects as weapons.
Johnson later said those who attacked the Capitol, “were people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement [Police union says 140 officers injured in Capitol riot], would never do anything to break the law.” If that wasn’t bad enough, he added this racist remark: If the protesters had been “Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters,” he said. “I might have been a little concerned.”
Note: Here are your law abiding MAGA/QAnon domestic terrorist insurrectionists for you. Department of Justice 21 Month Update on the Jan. 6 Attack on the Capitol – Over 880 Defendants Have Been Arrested and Over 412 Individuals Have Pled Guilty.
With a wink and a nod, Johnson was voicing support for the white supremacists who led the attack on the Capitol.
It’s worth noting: One of the people at the scene that day, a top lieutenant to the Proud Boys chairman, pleaded guilty last week to seditious conspiracy in connection with the riot at the Capitol. [Several of the Oath Keepers are currently on trial for seditious conspiracy.]
He made sure his ultra-wealthy donors got a giant tax break
Johnson forced changes to the 2017 Republican tax overhaul that benefitted some of the nation’s wealthiest people, including himself and his own donors. [Quid pro quo public corruption.]
In 2021, ProPublica revealed how Wisconsin’s Republican senator ensured donors got a massive tax break in a bill the party claimed was a “middle-class tax cut.” Thanks to Johnson’s last-minute threat to vote against the legislation, a huge portion of its billions in savings ended up going to just 82 of America’s wealthiest families.
Three of the senator’s top donors — billionaires Diane Hendricks and Dick and Liz Uihlein — were on the short list of those who gained the most. ProPublica reported that the tax break Johnson muscled through “could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.”
And now, as Johnson comes under criticism during his reelection campaign for leveraging a tax break for the uber-wealthy who need it least, he accuses his critics of “class envy.”
Hendricks and the Uihleins continue to invest in Johnson, funding attack ads against his challenger, Democrat Mandela Barnes.
He has displayed a stunning lack of interest in creating jobs in the state he represents
After Oshkosh Corp. said in June it intended to make vehicles for the U.S. Postal Service at a new facility in Spartanburg, S.C., U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and others stepped in to try to bring those 1,000 jobs to Wisconsin.
“It’s not like we don’t have enough jobs here in Wisconsin,” Johnson said. He said the company was best suited to decide where to locate the jobs.
“I wouldn’t insert myself to demand that anything be manufactured here using federal funds in Wisconsin,” Johnson said.
He was a super spreader of disinformation during the pandemic
Johnson used his perch as a U.S. Senate committee chair to promote the use of Ivermectin as a coronavirus therapy even though the manufacturer itself said there was no evidence it worked. He touted the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment though studies found it wasn’t effective.
Johnson questioned the need for masks — and later questioned the safety of COVID vaccines themselves and declined to be vaccinated, even though all the evidence has shown masks help slow the spread of disease and that the vaccines are safe and effective.
Johnson asserted that gargling with mouthwash can kill the virus that causes COVID-19, an outlandish claim the makers of Listerine and medical experts quickly debunked.
Johnson claimed “athletes are dropping dead on the field” after receiving the COVID-19 vaccination, an utter fabrication.
And he falsely claimed that unvaccinated people around the world were being put into “internment camps,” earning him a “Pants on Fire” rating from PolitiFact.
He’s a climate change denier
From his first run for office in 2010, Johnson has thought that he knew better than the vast majority of scientists who study climate change.
During a meeting with this editorial board that year, Johnson claimed the impact of humans on the climate hadn’t been proven. It was “far more likely,” he said then, that “it was sunspot activity or something just in the geologic eons of time where we have changes in the climate.”
And last year, he told a Republican group, “I don’t know about you guys, but I think climate change is — as Lord Monckton said — bullshit.”
In fact, more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans burning fossil fuels and increasing the amount of carbon and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, according to a 2021 survey of 88,125 climate-related studies.
It should come as no surprise that Johnson has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from people employed by or associated with the fossil fuel industry.
The bottom line
You’ll notice Johnson is not touting a long record of accomplishments in his ads for re-election. Instead, he and his supporters have attacked his opponent — a Black man — as “different” and “dangerous.” [Racist dog whistle.]
So, what has Johnson delivered for Wisconsin after 12 years in the Senate (the equivalent of three presidential terms)?
Earlier this year, he touted two accomplishments:
• The Trump tax cut that he, in fact, blocked until it was amended to deliver enormous new breaks for his top donors and 80 other ultrawealthy American households.
• A 2018 “Right-to-Try bill” that allows terminally ill patients to try experimental treatments not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In fact, Ron Johnson is the worst Wisconsin political representative since the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Johnson in the past promised to serve no more than two terms. Voters should hold him to that pledge in November.
I can’t believe that the editors left out reason number nine, he is a useful idiot for Vadimir Putin. Bruce Murphy at Urban Milwaukee reported in 2021, Ron Johnson Looks Like Russian Tool:
The news last week, first reported by the Washington Post, that the FBI gave Wisconsin’s Republican U.S. Senator a “defensive briefing” about Russia, warning that the country was peddling false information, was just the latest in a curious history. Going back years, Ron Johnson has been deaf to information showing Russia was working to undermine the United States.
[As] for Putin and Russian using cyber hacking to interfere with America’s elections, he declared, “I take it very seriously. As chair of European Subcommittee on Foreign Relations, we’ve held a number of hearings on Russia’s disinformation campaign and how they are trying to de-stabilize certainly Eastern European countries, but just their destabilization efforts around the world.”
Johnson sponsored resolutions calling for a full investigation into the murder of a Russian political opposition leader and for an investigation of Russia’s attacks on the Ukraine.
But despite these statements, there was already evidence Johnson was going soft on Russia. In September 2016, as chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Johnson was one of the top 12 congressional leaders who attended a meeting where they were informed by intelligence leaders of Russia’s cyberhacking of the 2016 election.
Johnson had an opportunity to be a patriot and condemn the fact that Russia was engaged in this attack on American democracy. Instead he went along with Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell in keeping the whole thing quiet, issuing no statement and not one word on this.
Meanwhile Johnson engaged in a pattern of misinformation on the subject. In January 2017, after the CIA publicly released a report concluding that Russia meddled in the presidential election to help Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Johnson issued a statement saying he would “would need more definitive information before drawing further conclusions.” Johnson did not reveal that he had been informed back in September this was happening.
Johnson went on to complain that the CIA refused to brief him on Russian hacking, saying “I have not seen the evidence that it actually was Russia,” while failing to note the CIA report’s echoed the briefing he’d received from other intelligence leaders in September.
It’s worth noting that Wisconsin was among the states targeted by Russia’s disinformation campaign, which included efforts to discourage Black voters to vote in 2016, which may have helped Johnson as well as Trump in that election.
By 2018 Johnson had begun to part with other Republicans on Russia. He went on a trip to Russia with other Republican senators who came back condemning Russia’s interference with the 2016 election. But Johnson seemed somewhat swayed the denials of interference by Russian officials, and declared that Congress went too far in punishing Russia and “we’ve blown it way out of proportion” (stating, “We need to take a look at sanctions—are they actually changing Russia’s behavior?”)
In 2019, Johnson met with Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat who was promoting claims that it was the Ukraine and not Russia that interfered with the 2026 election. Telizhenko told The Washington Post last year that “he cooperated extensively with an investigation” by Johnson.
That investigation, done by the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee in 2020, and overseen by Johnson, was heavily influenced by information from Telizhenko. “Chairman Johnson… cited Mr. Telizhenko 42 times in the letters sent as part of this investigation, and ignored repeated warnings to not give credibility to disinformation,” noted Oregon’s Democratic U.S. Senator Ron Wyden in a statement that later condemned the committee’s report.
Among those warnings was one that came privately from the FBI, which met with Johnson a month before his committee report was released in September of 2020. “Regarding reports that I received an FBI briefing warning me that I was a target of Russian disinformation, I can confirm I received such a briefing in August of 2020,” Johnson said in a statement to The Washington Post.
But Johnson said it was a “generalized warning” that lacked “specific information” and “I suspected that the briefing was being given to be used at some future date for the purpose that it is now being used: to offer the biased media an opportunity to falsely accuse me of being a tool of Russia despite warnings.”
Johnson is basically accusing the FBI of operating as an arm of the Democratic Party and seeking to embarrass him. In fact, it would appear they were trying to help him avoid getting embarrassed by disinformation.
Instead Johnson went ahead and released his report claiming nefarious connections between Ukraine and Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and pushing the narrative that it was Ukraine and not Russian interfering with America’s election. The report was widely condemned by the press as a “hatchet job” and a “rehashing of unproven allegations” and condemned by Republican Senator Mitt Romney as “a political exercise.”
And four months later the U.S. Treasure Department, then still under President Trump, announced it had “sanctioned a group of Russia-linked Ukrainians for trying to influence the 2020 election by attempting to smear President Trump’s Democratic rival, Joe Biden,” as the Washington Post reported. Among the seven sanctioned was Telizhenko.
Telizhenko and the other six Ukrainians “have made repeated public statements advancing malicious narratives that U.S. Government officials have engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.
“Telizhenko sparked U.S. officials’ concern in early 2019 when he began promoting pro-Russian, anti-Biden narratives by sharing information with GOP lawmakers,” the story noted.
But Johnson fell for Telizhenko’s malicious narratives and amplified them in his Senate committee report, even after the FBI warned him it was disinformation. As Wyden put it, “By imposing sanctions on Telizhenko, the Trump administration confirms that Senate Republicans’ year-long investigation [led by Johnson] was based on Russian disinformation.”
So yes, Johnson does look like a Russian tool, which is exactly what the FBI warned him.
And how coud they forget, One of the President’s Men: Ron Johnson’s Key Role in Donald Trump’s Extortion Scheme (excerpt):
[D]uring the first impeachment hearings, Sen. Johnson [emerged] as a central figure in several crucial moments of the scandal.
Johnson, at Trump’s behest, traveled to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration earlier this year and afterwards urged Trump to grant Zelensky a White House meeting. Both Ambassadors Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker subsequently stated that Trump shot the meeting down and instructed them to talk to the President’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
In the run-up to another trip to the Ukraine, Johnson spoke to Sondland, who later said of the meeting: “I shared concerns of the potential quid pro quo regarding the security aid with Senator Ron Johnson.”
Again, Johnson did nothing. And when Johnson brought up the “quid pro quo issue” during a phone call with Trump—arguably the least credible person on Earth—the President denied it and Johnson kept mum.
Johnson then traveled to Ukraine and later proclaimed that “at no time during this meeting—or any other meeting on this trip—was there any mention by Zelensky or any Ukrainian that they were feeling pressure to do anything in return for the military aid.”
On Monday, Johnson attacked Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman as he was set to testify, suggesting in a letter that the National Security Council adviser was motivated to fabricate allegations against Trump because he “fits the profile” of a never Trumper.
In fact, it is Johnson’s whose credibility is in tatters.
Johnson was present at a meeting during which the President directed Sondland and others to “talk to Rudy” Giuliani about getting the Ukrainians to make a politically damning declaration that they were investigating the former Vice President, and 2020 presidential candidate, Joe Biden for corruption.
But Johnson, alone among the participants in this meeting, implausibly claims no memory of Gulliani’s name even being mentioned. “It is entirely possible he did,” Johnson allowed, “but because I do not work for the President, if made, the comment simply did not register with me.”
But here’s the biggest head scratcher: Johnson claims he was fully assuaged of any quid pro quo concerns when he talked to Trump on August 31. Yet, Trump explicitly told Johnson that he could not tell the Ukrainians that the hold on the aid money had been lifted during his September 5 meeting with Zelensky.
[T]his is no small revelation. It is a case of the chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs essentially telling Zelensky that he needed to do something to put Ukraine in a better light in Trump’s eyes.
[On] September 7, the White House became aware of the whistleblower complaint, and quickly adopted the “no quid pro quo!” mantra. Soon after, the hold on the military aid was released.
[President Zelensky’s] CNN interview never took place.
Johnson not only was aware of the extortion, but actively participated in it by personally applying pressure on Zelensky with his own “difficult time” language.
[I]magine if, as chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Johnson had confronted Trump, saying that the President had no right to hold up aid that was desperately needed by Ukraine and already authorized by Congress.
The President would likely have been forced to back down.
Instead, Johnson acted as an accomplice to Trump in the commission of his crimes.
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