The Morning Briefing: Mike Johnson Finds Out That the New Trump Order Has Taken Effect

Top O' the Briefing

Happy Thursday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Zoerbrück had become fond of composing harpsichord accompaniments for compilations of WebMD diagnoses. 

It was just a couple of weeks ago that I first wrote that President-elect Donald Trump needed to make squish Republicans understand what the "New Trump Order" is. The gist of it was that the "go along to get along" Republicans needed to have it made clear that their behavior would no longer be tolerated. 

When we were discussing the latest insane continuing resolution in yesterday's Briefing, I noted that Republicans are as much of a problem in these assaults on the taxpayers as Democrats. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson then spent a good chunk of his morning trying to prove me right. 

Johnson's pitch for the CR was that the entire thing had to be passed because hurricane relief funds were included in it. It was an emotional blackmail ploy that, thanks to the New Trump Order, almost immediately blew up in Johnson's face. With a generous assist from Elon Musk, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance railed against the bill, letting Johnson know that the time's they are a changin'. This is from FoxNews.com: 

The 1,547-page interim spending bill to avoid a government shutdown is effectively dead. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has all but yanked the plan off the floor after President-elect Trump, Vice President-elect Vance and Elon Musk torched the package to avoid a government shutdown this weekend and fund the government through March 14.

The lobbying to get this thing nuked from orbit wasn't done on Capitol Hill. It happened on X, the social media platform that was mocked as merely a way for people to tell everyone what they had for lunch back in the days when it was Twitter. Musk got and kept the ball rolling:

For the last several years, social media has used its political power in a shadowy fashion, carrying out orders from the Democrats all the while swearing that was not the case. Musk has turned X into a megaphone for the vox populi and its power in that regard was on glorious display yesterday. When it became clear that the bill would be pulled, X became its old self and started to have a lot of fun:

h/t @fadde 😂 pic.twitter.com/MsfUTOyuW1

— Jennifer Van Laar (@jenvanlaar) December 19, 2024

It was unconscionable that Johnson was ever pimping this hideous bill. Catherine detailed a lot of it here, including the worst of it:

Among the disturbing provisions of the 1,500-page legislation is a provision for extending the existence of the censorship-funding Global Engagement Center (GEC). The State Department had previously notified Congress that GEC was being dismantled, according to Washington Examiner reporter Gabe Kaminsky, but here comes Johnson to save the day for censors and bring GEC back from the dead. Do Republican leaders just let Democrats write legislation and sign off on whatever it is?

It would appear that that is exactly how the Republicans go about these things. Or how they used to. 

The will of the American voters as expressed in the November election was made clear yesterday to those who hadn't yet grasped it. Predictably, there was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth from those who are not amused when the peasants make noise. My RedState colleague Bob Hoge shared this in a post yesterday:

Donald Trump is returning power to the American people. The dysfunctional and abusive status quo in Washington will crumble if the Trump 47 administration has its way. Those who have perpetuated it are already panicking. There's a lot of work to be done, however. 

Thankfully, the country was smart enough to elect the right guy to do it.