The Devil’s Cheap Date

A Constitutional Postscript

Mike Johnson is a man of deep Christian conviction. He’ll tell you so himself. Seriously. He opens congressional sessions with prayer. He lectures about biblical foundations. He insists America’s crisis stems from abandoning God.

And when asked whether it’s wrong for the President to desecrate a murder victim—a man killed alongside his wife in their own home, their son now in custody—Johnson literally ran away from the question.

Not because he didn’t know the answer. He knows. We all know. A child knows.

He ran because answering honestly would cost him something, and Mike Johnson has already decided what he’s willing to pay to keep his gavel.

Manu Raju and Eric Michael Garcia caught Johnson between meetings. Simple question: “Do you condemn the President’s remarks about Rob Reiner?”

Johnson scurries across the floor, chased by the press.

“I don’t do ongoing commentary about everything that’s said by everybody in government every day.”

What a liar. Johnson does commentary constantly. On Democratic statements, on cultural issues, on policy disputes. What he means is: “I don’t criticize Trump, and I’m going to pretend that I am a very principled person that performs the appearance of integrity without doing anything of the sort.”

“We are trying to bring down healthcare costs for the American people.”

Ah yes, Speaker Johnson. You are currently assiduously tending to the urgent matter of delivering healthcare cost relief to the American people. This is why, instead of restoring the Affordable Care Act tax credits which you mercilessly gutted in your crowning achievement—the Big Beautiful Bill—so that you could convince yourself that you were engaging in “fiscal responsibility” in offsetting the roughly $4.5 trillion of future tax revenue you foreclosed, you offset about 7%—seven percent—of that imbalance by nuking the Obamacare tax credits.

This is his number one priority right now.

Not that he mentions any of this to Raju and Garcia. Not that he says, “Look, I know it seems bad, but we’re actually working on legislation to restore those credits we just eliminated.” Because of course he isn’t. The credits are gone. The “fiscal responsibility” theater got its applause. And now Johnson gets to claim he’s “working on healthcare costs” while the actual policy record shows him making healthcare more expensive for millions of Americans.

But here’s the beautiful thing about the healthcare deflection: it reveals Johnson doesn’t even believe his own excuses anymore. He’s not trying to convince the reporters. He’s not trying to convince the American people watching. He’s barely trying to convince himself. He’s just making mouth noises that sound vaguely responsible—”healthcare costs,” “important votes,” “what we’re focused on”—while walking away as fast as dignity permits.

This is accommodation in its final form. Not principled disagreement. Not strategic calculation. Not even effective rationalization. Pure evasion dressed up as governing.

“I gave commentary this morning, and you all heard it.”

This is the tell. He’d already been asked earlier. Already evaded once. And now he’s fleeing a second opportunity to do the bare minimum—to say that attacking a man whose throat was slit, whose wife died beside him, whose son is accused of the killings—that maybe, just maybe, that deserves something other than the President’s mockery.

And then Johnson literally walks away. Faster now. The healthcare costs line trailing behind him like a man who’s forgotten why he grabbed that particular excuse but knows he needs something, anything, to avoid saying what he cannot say.

The Gospel he claims to follow shows Jesus consistently defending the vulnerable, confronting the powerful, refusing to remain silent when witnessing injustice. “Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do unto me.” The prophetic tradition Johnson invokes is built on speaking truth to power, on maintaining human dignity even when costly.

And Johnson won’t even say it’s wrong to desecrate murder victims. Is that a tell?

Johnson talks about biblical foundations while abandoning the most basic biblical principle: that human beings have inherent dignity that must be defended, especially against those with power to violate it. He lectures about America abandoning God while demonstrating that he’s abandoned God the moment defending divine principles conflicts with maintaining his position. He prays before congressional sessions while refusing to say that mocking the dead is wrong.

But Johnson’s personal failure, pathetic as it is, matters less than what it reveals about institutional collapse.

He’s not just Mike Johnson, cowardly individual. He’s the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He has constitutional authority and responsibility. He’s supposed to be the institutional check on executive overreach, at least, in theory. I think that is what James Madison was going for, anyway.

The President desecrates a murder victim. The Speaker runs away from questions about it while claiming to work on healthcare costs he just increased. Conservative legal scholars remain silent about the authoritarianism they spent forty years constructing intellectual frameworks to enable. Republican members express private concern but take no action.

Mike Johnson sold his soul for a gavel. But the gavel grants no actual power—just the appearance of it, purchased through constant degradation, held at Trump’s pleasure, revocable at any moment on a whim.

He’s the devil’s cheap date. Gave everything. Got nothing. And will be discarded the moment he’s no longer useful.

But more than that: he’s the embodiment of what the unitary executive theory produces when you take it seriously. When you actually build the framework conservative legal scholars advocate. When you really do place presidential power beyond review.

You get presidents who act like nothing can constrain them. And congressional leaders who’ve forgotten they’re supposed to try.

History is not the past. It is the story we are writing right now.

And this chapter will record: Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, man of proclaimed Christian conviction, fled from reporters rather than say it was wrong for the President to desecrate a murder victim. He claimed to be focused on healthcare costs while his own legislation made healthcare more expensive. He invoked his responsibilities to the American people while abandoning the most basic responsibility—to maintain minimal standards of human decency from those in power.

The center holds not through Mike Johnson. It holds despite him.

Hold the wire, America.

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Go Deeper into the Circus

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