Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in a new interview said he didn’t think the Jan. 6 Capitol riot seemed like “an armed insurrection” and praised former President Trump‘s Senate impeachment trial attorneys following his acquittal.
Johnson made the comments to 1130 WISN radio talk show host Jay Weber on Monday following his vote Saturday to acquit Trump. The comments he made in the episode were first reported by the Wisconsin State Journal.
“This will get me in trouble, but I don’t care,” Johnson said. He argued that “groups of agitators” are to blame for the Capitol riot and not “tens of thousands of Trump supporters.”
“The group of people that supported Trump, the hundreds of thousands of people who attended those Trump rallies, those are the people that love this country,” Johnson told Weber. “They never would have done what happened on Jan. 6. That is a group of people that love freedom; that’s a group of people we need to unify and keep on our side.”
He’s doing this to show that he’s on the Seditious Trump side of the GOP civil war:
Johnson’s comments bear some resemblance to what one of Trump’s lawyers said at the Senate impeachment trial last week. At one point, Bruce L. Castor Jr. said the word “insurrection” didn’t apply.
“Clearly, there was no insurrection,” Castor said. Such a thing “involves taking over a country, a shadow government, taking the TV stations over and having some plan on what you’re going to do when you finally take power,” he added. “Clearly, this is not that.”This was later contradicted by another member of Trump’s team, Michael van der Veen, who said: “The question before us is not whether there was a violent insurrection of the Capitol. On that point, everyone agrees.”Except clearly not everyone agrees. Fox News’s Tucker Carlson has been downplaying the severity of the riot since shortly after it occurred. A piece on Townhall.com has declared it wasn’t even a riot — just a “a few dudes dressed like Conan the Fauxbarian acting like fools and occasionally fighting with the cops.” Carlson and others have ridiculed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) for talking about how scared she was, with many of them butchering the details. Still others have compared the melee to racial justice protests this summer.
Johnson (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that McConnell’s position on Trump put the minority leader at odds with the bulk of his own party.“From my standpoint, Leader McConnell speaks for himself,” Johnson said in a Tuesday interview with The Ross Kaminsky Show. “In this case, I don’t believe he speaks for the conference, and I think he needs to be a little careful. You know when I speak, I do actually try and take in mind how it might reflect on the party.”
Johnson also said that he doesn’t believe McConnell’s comments are reflective of what “the vast majority of Republican senators” feel.
Of course McConnell’s speech was bull shit but he’s trying to do damage control to take back the Senate. Johnson is doing Moscow Mitch no favors. Democrats have been wasting no time trashing Johnson on this:
Ron Johnson is a traitor and everyone in Oshkosh and Northeast Wisconsin knows it.
This billboard isn’t going anywhere. It’ll be waiting for you when you get home. @SenRonJohnson: Resign now or I will defeat you in 2022.https://t.co/BTCJfF6aKh pic.twitter.com/uHEKpzORWn
— Thomas Nelson (@NelsonforWI) February 11, 2021
A candidate hoping to take Sen. Ron Johnson’s seat in the U.S. Senate is putting up a billboard in Johnson’s hometown calling for him to resign.
Democrat Thomas Nelson, who is currently the Outagamie County Executive, tweeted a picture of the billboard going up in Oshkosh Thursday.
The billboard highlights the letters “R,” “O” and “N” in the word “treason.”
Johnson has been targeted by Democrats for his continued support of former President Donald Trump.
Nelson is one of four people who have already filed declarations of candidacy for Johnson’s seat in 2022, along with Democrat Gillian Battino, M.D. of Wausau, Independent Bradford Spencer of Milwaukee and Independent Aaron Frank of Oregon. U.S. Representative Mark Pocan of Madison has already said he will not run for the Senate seat, choosing instead to focus on his growing seniority in the House Appropriations committee.
Let’s get ready to unseat this traitor. Click below to donate and get involved with these Wisconsin Democrats campaigns:
