Johnson Has Endorsed Trump. He Said in 2015 Trump Might Be ‘Dangerous.’ (original) (raw)
Politics|Johnson Said in 2015 Trump Was Unfit and Could Be ‘Dangerous’ as President
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/us/politics/mike-johnson-donald-trump.html
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Johnson Said in 2015 Trump Was Unfit and Could Be ‘Dangerous’ as President
Speaker Mike Johnson, then a Republican state lawmaker, posted on social media that Donald J. Trump lacked the character and morality to be president and could be vindictive.
“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House,” Mike Johnson wrote in 2015.Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Nov. 14, 2023
Years before he played a lead role in trying to help President Donald J. Trump stay in office after the 2020 election or defended him in two separate Senate impeachment trials, Speaker Mike Johnson bluntly asserted that Mr. Trump was unfit to serve and could be a danger as president.
“The thing about Donald Trump is that he lacks the character and the moral center we desperately need again in the White House,” Mr. Johnson wrote in a lengthy post on Facebook on Aug. 7, 2015, before he was elected to Congress and a day after the first Republican primary debate of the campaign cycle.
Challenged in the comments by someone defending Mr. Trump, Mr. Johnson responded: “I am afraid he would break more things than he fixes. He is a hot head by nature, and that is a dangerous trait to have in a Commander in Chief.”
Mr. Johnson, then a state lawmaker in Louisiana, also questioned what would happen if “he decided to bomb another head of state merely disrespecting him.”
“I am only halfway kidding about this,” he wrote. “I just don’t think he has the demeanor to be President.”
The comments came at a time when many Republicans who would later become loyalists of Mr. Trump were disparaging him and declaring him unfit to hold the nation’s highest office. Only later did they fall in line and serve as the first-line defenders of his most extreme words and actions.
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