House Republicans have elected Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., as their new speaker. This has alarmed Democrats, who point out that Johnson was a key figure in the attempt to overturn the results of Trump’s 2020 election loss. Yet Johnson, himself an election denier, will soon preside over the House as it votes to accept or reject the results of the 2024 election.

Straight Arrow News contributor David Pakman sheds light on why the new speaker, a strong advocate for the MAGA movement, is so troubling. He also emphasizes the importance of voting as a crucial step that Americans can take to protect the nation.

Mike Johnson is — I hate to use the term because it’s so silly — he really is like an ultra-MAGA sort of guy. It’s a very long list of things. Mike Johnson wrote in favor of criminalizing gay sex in the past. He said that January 6 was a legitimate protest. He said that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. He actually participated in trying to figure out ways to stop Joe Biden from becoming president of the United States and try to overturn the results. He’s called Social Security a Ponzi scheme. He said COVID itself is a hoax and the vaccines are dangerous, that women have abortions after birth, and all these crazy different things. So this is a hardcore MAGA guy.

And the situation in which we now find ourselves is that the House of Representatives, either by design, or because they’ve been dragged kicking and screaming into it — Republicans in the House of Representatives have ultimately coalesced around an extreme MAGA candidate. MAGA still has control in the House of Representatives.

Now, you could say, a bunch of the Republicans who ultimately voted for Johnson don’t like Johnson, they’re not MAGA extremists. But they realized it’s been more than three weeks without a speaker, if we don’t get someone elected, the risk that a Democratic member of the House becomes speaker goes up, with Democrats continuing to be united behind Hakeem Jeffries, a good guy who I’ve interviewed on the program, and would be eminently competent in that role.

So certainly some of the Republicans who ultimately came around and voted for Johnson did it because they realized the risk of not doing it.