Exclusive—Lee Rizzuto: MTG Put America First by Seeking to Oust Speaker Johnson

Last Wednesday, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (aka MTG) brought a vote to the floor of the U.S. House to remove Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). The vote failed, but it took the support of nearly the entire Democratic Caucus to reject the motion.

And why did the House Democrats come to the aid of a Republican speaker? To answer that, you just need to look at what has occurred since Mike Johnson became speaker just six months ago. Not long after the celebrations of Johnson’s appointment, signs quickly began to emerge that this Republican from Louisiana was no longer a staunch conservative.

The first significant test was the House vote on a stopgap funding bill, just three weeks after Johnson became speaker. When the vote was cast, 209 House Democrats and 127 House Republicans supported the bill, while 93 conservative Republicans opposed it because it failed to include spending cuts or policies to secure the U.S. border. Instead of using his majority to achieve some conservative wins for the American people, Speaker Johnson allowed the Democrats to achieve wins.

This may have been the first sign to many Republicans that the conservative they selected as speaker was delivering almost the identical Democrat-led vote as McCarthy had just one month prior to his removal.

Two months later on January 19, 2024, Johnson yet again pushed through another stopgap funding bill with the overwhelming support of House Democrats. The bill was opposed by half of House Republicans because, yet again, it contained nothing to fix the border crisis.

In March, during negotiations for the $1.2 trillion omnibus bill, conservative House Republicans pushed for spending cuts and the attachment of the border bill; but yet again, Johnson pushed through the bill only because of the overwhelming support of Democrats.

Just a month later, in April, Speaker Johnson agreed to extend the contentious FISA bill with again the overwhelming support of the Democrats. Sensible Republicans wanted the bill to contain a requirement that the government obtain a warrant before spying on American citizens, but Johnson pushed through the bill without this commonsense measure. Just a year prior, in 2023, Reuters reported a U.S. court’s finding that the FBI improperly used the FISA database 278,000 times.

The following week, and after two years of Congressional hearings and investigations, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tossed out the articles of impeachment for President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

So, how was this historical insult to the House of Representatives met? Just two weeks later, Johnson rewarded Schumer by supporting the Ukraine aid bill, which was re-packaged as a foreign aid bill, including Israel and Taiwan funding. Despite the fact that the U.S. debt is out-of-control and Taiwan is not currently in a war, Johnson and Schumer gave Taiwan over $8 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Instead of tying funding to the passage of H.R. 2, a bill that would finally close the southern border, Speaker Johnson chose to include $300 million in U.S. taxpayer funds for a Ukrainian drug program, while the U.S. has suffered over 400,000 fentanyl deaths since Joe Biden took office.

Speaker Johnson said the $95 billion bill, with no strings attached, was the “right thing to do,” and Biden summarily decided to withhold funding to Israel. Americans are struggling to buy groceries and gas, but Johnson believes that the right thing to do is fix these other countries and not ours. Once again, this bill did not include any measures to secure the U.S. borders.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was aware that the motion to vacate would not pass, but she chose to act in the interest of the American people to put America first.

Lee Rizzuto is the former U.S. Consul General of Bermuda and former vice president of the Conair Corporation.