Those of us who find car keys in the dryer and lost TV remotes in the microwave have no room to criticize House Speaker Mike Johnson’s amnesia, though I might have if I could ever budge that laundry basket of mismatched socks.
As someone who forgets deadlines for a living, I confess that I was initially envious. How does Johnson do it? How does he remember to not know so very much?
Dinner with the president and his crypto BFFs? “I don’t know anything about the dinner.” Presidential crypto grift? Same. Quatar jet? Shutdown layoffs? GOP police funding cuts? Whatever it was Eric Trump said this week?
Critics will look at Johnson’s see-nothing, say-nothing about everything and declare it proof that he is not, in fact, the speaker of the most powerful delegation since the Roman Senate, but just one more smooth-brained Lump o’ Trump.
But we come not to bury Johnson under a hill of ridiculously easy political potshots. No, we come to diagnose him.
His strain of D.C. amnesia involves both blinding blindness (“I’ve never seen the evidence on Epstein”) and a Groundhog Day variant: Johnson said he could not immediately speak to the issue of one Donald J. Trump dropping a $230 million bill on taxpayers because of hurt feelings.
Trying to get details, said Johnson. Twenty-four hours later: Trying to get details, said Johnson.
This is likely work induced, judging by how Johnson explains away his big brain burps on the Argentine billion-dollar bailout (“I’ve been really busy, as you have probably noticed”); the Epstein birthday card (“Been a little busy”); the Corey Mills restraining order (“Busy”); or a GOP Congressman putting his mistress on federal payroll (“Very busy”).
Listen closely — Johnson can’t, he’s busy — and you can practically hear his little gray cells winking out of existence from all the toiling and the trouble.
This is on us. Every itty bitty cannister of tear gas thrown at Chicago trick-or-treaters, every single Venezuelan blown out of the water because The War Secretary needs to prove something to someone about his something, and what do we the people want, every single time?
We want someone to say they know about it.
It’s a lot, people. It’s a lot.
Or — and bear with me here — it’s a century old American conspiracy secretly nurtured by anti-immigrant anti-Democrats who have time traveled back to earth via space laser.
What? You think Fox News should have all the fun?
In the 1850s, America’s Know-Nothing Party didn’t like China, didn’t like immigrants, and didn’t like anybody knowing what they were up to, which is why the party faithful were under strict orders to say “I know nothing” to any and all inquiries.
This made it hard to organize meetings. Or dinner. But they still managed to Rumpelstiltskin-rage their way into hearts and minds by jumping up and down and yelling that immigrants were sneaking into the country and becoming U.S. citizens just so that they could vote.
I do not make these things up.
In between fomenting hatred, entrepreneurial Know-Nothings made a pretty penny selling candy, tea and toothpicks labeled Know-Nothing. They might have nudged the Democratic Party off the board entirely, which, given the state of Dems in 1850? Meh.
Know-Nothings finally hated each other into oblivion.
But just like a long-dormant virus, Know-Nothingism has wormed its way into the heart of President Patient Zero. He’s been superspreading ever since, most recently in Japan, shambling sideways with a concerned hand gently tugging his elbow to keep the leaning and confused leader of the free world from faceplanting into smartly assembled trombone players.
There’s probably an MRI for that kind of thing. There may have already been an MRI for that kind of thing, but who would know?
Not Mike Johnson.
