Ron Johnson Got Laughed at for Saying He Was 'Set Up' By the FBI

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below."

Ron Johnson is not the brightest bulb in the congressional chandelier, which he announced way back in his first run for Senate while declaring that the Affordable Care Act threatened "our last shred of freedom." He spent the pandemic saying some godawful stupid shit, peddling Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine while blindly questioning the efficacy of masks and vaccines. "All these athletes are dropping dead on the field" after taking the vax, he warned, because you can just say anything now. He even backed gargling mouthwash to ward off the novel coronavirus, forcing Listerine to intervene. In more conventional political stupidity, he's also backed breaking the nation's promises to its seniors that they can depend on Medicare and Social Security.

And last May, Johnson had this to say: "Regarding reports that I received an FBI briefing warning me that I was a target of Russian disinformation, I can confirm I received such a briefing in August of 2020," he told the Washington Post. He added that the briefers didn't provide him with specific evidence of this, so he dismissed the "defensive briefing" as a scheme orchestrated by Democrats and the media. (In entirely unrelated news, Johnson returned from a trip with a Republican delegation to Moscow for the Fourth of July in 2018 to say the impact of Russia's election meddling had been overblown and Congress should reevaluate the sanctions it levied in response. His colleagues on that trip did not share this sentiment, and it was Johnson's comments that got a re-airing on Russian state media.)

Anyway, Johnson is running for re-election at the moment, and in a debate Thursday night, his Democratic opponent Mandela Barnes brought up that FBI briefing. Johnson's response was...something.

Not a good sign when the audience is cackling at you. If you're going to allege a conspiracy against you, it helps not to sound like some guy on a street corner. (By the way, there's no indication that Johnson thought he was working in Russia's interests or did so on purpose. See also.) But again we get this fascinating view of the FBI from Republican officeholders: that the famously liberal Bureau, led by a director appointed by Trump, was out to frame Republicans as Russian agents. Or maybe these G-men went rogue, in Johnson's estimation, because they just hate Trump and love Joe Biden so much? It's strange to hear in a week where we learned that, according to one Bureau employee's warning to senior leadership, "there is, at best, a sizeable percentage of the employee population that felt sympathetic to the group that stormed the Capitol."

Remember that stuff about our last shred of freedom? Ten years on from Johnson's comments, Obamacare is still around—and quite popular—and we still seem to have a democratic republic. That's no thanks to Johnson, of course, who peddled the lie that the election was stolen. He also suggested in the lead-up to January 6 that he would challenge the certification, though he ultimately did not vote for the challenges after a bloodthirsty mob stormed the Capitol. Growth!

But Johnson's involvement in this whole disaster allegedly ran deeper. In June, Politico reported that "a top aide to Sen. Ron Johnson attempted to arrange a handoff of false, pro-Trump electors from the senator to Mike Pence just minutes before the then-vice president began to count electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021." In text messages it obtained, the January 6 Committee discovered that Johnson aide Sean Riley told the senator's legislative director, Chris Hodgon, that Johnson wanted to hand Pence some fake electors for both Michigan and Wisconsin.

Sure, fine, let's have this guy in the Senate. He's up in the polls—but then again, so are Republicans on the question of "who has a clear plan for solving the country's problems." And the party doesn't have a policy platform! Here's a policy for you: Johnson successfully fought to make the 2017 Trump tax cuts more of a handout to the rich and subsequently admitted that he and his donors benefitted. (He gloated that critics on that had "class envy," the kind of dickishness that led to his final response in the debate last night.) His philosophy is to cut Medicare and Social Security to offset tax cuts for himself and his friends, but somehow it doesn't seem to matter. Six more years!

You Might Also Like

• The 40 Best Hoodies to Wear Anywhere and Everywhere

• The Dirty Martini Deserves Legend Status

• This Eli Manning Sketch Is the Best Thing You'll See All Week