2024-04-16 19:49:26
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala (ODS) will meet the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson on Tuesday as part of his trip to Washington. One of the most influential Republicans currently presides over the lower house of Congress since last fall and has been blocking aid to Ukraine for several months. Johnson is under the control of the radical part of the party, which threatens to impeach him if the aid is approved.
Last week, British Foreign Minister David Cameron wanted to meet with Johnson to convince him of the necessary support for Ukraine. But the American politician did not come to the meeting and instead met with the representative of the extreme right wing of his party, Marjorie Taylor Green.
“This is not a Republican president that we have now, but a Democratic one,” the politician said at the beginning of the month, and subsequently threatened Johnson that if he votes on the next package of aid to Ukraine in the House, the Republicans will remove him from office. Johnson now has to balance between what is needed for the running of the country and what his party wants from him, American media note.
On Tuesday, Czech Prime Minister Fiala will talk with Johnson about monetary aid for Kyiv in the amount of 61 billion dollars (about 1.4 trillion crowns). The day before, US President Joe Biden received the domestic prime minister at the White House, and both agreed on the need for continued support for Ukraine, which has been facing Russian aggression for over two years.
Against abortion and LGBT
Johnson is the least experienced Speaker of the US House in more than 140 years and was only the fourth choice after congressmen impeached his predecessor Kevin McCarthy.
The politician from Louisiana was first elected to Congress in 2016. As a child, he wanted to become a firefighter, just like his father, but his parents did not allow him. When he was 12, his father nearly burned to death while fighting a fire, reports Politico.
That’s why Mike Johnson started to become a politician. He studied law and worked, among other things, for the anti-LGBTQ+ conservative organization Defending Freedom. In 2015, he was elected to the national congress for the first time, where, for example, he defended the Louisiana ban on same-sex marriage or very strict anti-abortion laws.
He himself is a deeply religious evangelical, and in 1999 he and his wife entered into a so-called contract marriage, which exists only in a few American states and makes divorce significantly more difficult. “My wife and I come from traditional Christian families,” he explained his decision. “My own parents are divorced. As anyone who has been through this knows, it was a traumatic thing for our whole family,” he said. He and his wife raise four children.
During his political career, he introduced laws supporting religious freedom and is very popular among groups of strongly religious Americans. He rejected the legalization of marijuana even for medicinal purposes and he does not recognize climate change. He repeatedly received large sums of money from the oil industry for his campaign.
Trump’s man
Although at the beginning of his career in Congress he opposed then-President Donald Trump, for example, in an attempt to limit federal health care, he soon supported him. For example, when Trump banned citizens of some Muslim countries from entering the US.
Subsequently, he reached Trump’s closest circle of loyalists and regularly traveled with him in the presidential special Air Force One. “It’s surreal. If I call him, he answers within hours,” he once told a reporter from his hometown of Shreveport.
Johnson also played a key role in Trump’s bid to overturn the outcome of the last presidential election in 2020, The New York Times reports. When Texas filed a lawsuit with the U.S. Supreme Court asking the justices to overturn valid electoral votes from Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona, Johnson organized a memo in support of Trump.
He got 125 Republican colleagues from the House of Representatives to sign. He persuaded them despite being told by a Republican lawyer that the document was unconstitutional. Unsurprisingly, Johnson was one of 147 Republicans who voted against certifying the election results.
“I’m a lawyer. I don’t deal with conspiracy theories. I want to deal with facts and the truth,” he claimed at the time, stressing that electoral fraud must be investigated because a large part of the country doubts the real result. Many vote-rigging disputes have ended up in the courts, but no fraud has ever been confirmed.
Aid to Ukraine
In addition to his conservative views, Johnson, like other Trump loyalists, believes that the United States should cut aid to Ukraine. That is why he blocked the vote on the last package until now. If congressmen were to vote on it, they would probably approve it.
Johnson is now facing enormous pressure from Democrats and some Republicans to vote on another aid package for the embattled country. The proposal has already passed the Senate, but Johnson does not like it and, according to earlier statements, he wanted to prepare his own proposal. It is not yet clear what it should look like.
When asked if he was considering former President Trump’s idea to turn aid to Ukraine into a loan, he said on Sunday that it was a possibility. He added that confiscating the assets of the “corrupt Russian oligarchy” to help finance Ukraine is also among the ideas on which, according to him, there could be consensus among congressmen.
On Monday, he announced that the House will finally discuss the original proposal this week, but will approve the release of money for aid to Ukraine and Israel as separate laws, although it was originally one. Lawmakers could probably vote on them on Friday evening then.
Video: “Absolutely over-the-top.” The reporter described the exceptional dimension of Fial’s trip to the USA (15/04/2024)
Spotlight News – Jan Horák | Video: Martin Krepindl