Speaking with conservative commentator Eduardo Neret, formerly his producer, former Fox News Channel personality Tucker Carlson sounded off on Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA), who infuriated his conservative allies when he initially went along with a 1,547 page spending bill that handed Democrats most of what they wanted.
As background, Elon Musk and President Donald Trump were able to torpedo the massive spending package, slimming it down by around 1400 pages and mostly limiting it to emergency relief for communities impacted by hurricanes. As that was ostensibly the purpose of the bill in the first place, and it cut much pork out of the bill, Republicans saw it as a major victory.
Neret, in any case, commented on what Speaker Johnson had tried doing and how inauspicious the timing was, saying, “On the eve of Trump’s inauguration, right before Christmas, he tried … to shove through a 1,500 page spending bill that would have given Chuck Schumer all of the leverage with the debt ceiling going into next year.”
Neret continued, commenting on what the big issue was, which wasn’t so much any particular bit of spending but rather the fact that the betrayal was attempted in the first place. He asked, “I mean, there was a lot more than that in the bill, but, I mean, I guess the point is, like, what’s up with that?” Tucker, beginning his response, told him, “There’s something profoundly wrong.”
Continuing, Tucker noted that Speaker Johnson’s focus has apparently been Ukraine, saying, “I don’t understand it exactly, but I watched him make the number one priority of his Speakership funding Ukraine without any audit at all, at a time when the U.S. border was open, the United States itself was being invaded, and his priority was protecting the borders of a country whose language he doesn’t speak, he knows nothing about; it’s not America.”
He added that Ukraine is “not the only country that he’s — whose interest he’s put above ours.” Describing the decision to put Ukraine’s interests ahead of America’s as “treason,” Tucker then said, “And so, you know, I don’t overstate it. I think that’s a — it’s a kind of treason, yeah, and it’s very common in Washington.”
Further, Tucker said that now it is impossible to have any degree of confidence in Speaker Johnson, given that once the speaker had betrayed his party in such a big way it is near-impossible to trust him again. Making that point, Tucker said, “He’s not the only one, but I, you know, once you see that, then you lose all faith in a man.”
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Tucker also noted that though it was annoying that the attempt to ram the spending through happened at all, it was most welcome that Elon had managed to stop it. He said, “I wasn’t shocked by what happened, but I was very pleased to see Elon Musk just, just basically stop it singlehandedly, which is amazing.”
Watch Tucker comment on the matter here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video