Opinion: Senator Ron Johnson calls editorial about him 'unhinged and uninformed.' The Editorial

[catbyte]

Senator Johnson objects to the Editorial Board's call for him to resign over his actions after the presidential election.

Editor's note: After the Editorial Board called on Sen. Ron Johnson to either resign or be expelled from office for his role in spreading disinformation about the presidential election, the senator asked for space to respond. We are providing him that courtesy today. We also are taking the rare step of footnoting Johnson's commentary to provide additional context so that readers have a fuller understanding of the senator's actions.

[Johnson's whining snipped]

Annotations

1. Sen. Ron Johnson took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. In our system, the states certify Electoral College votes and Congress acknowledges the victor. Senators and representatives cannot overturn the will of citizen voters by rejecting a state's electoral votes.

As for racism: Underlying the attack on the U.S. Capitol was a “tribal fury against people targeted as scapegoats,” we wrote, a fury President Donald Trump stoked repeatedly during his time in office. Johnson showed he was a willing accomplice in this shameful politics by repeatedly failing to adequately call out Trump’s appeals to the worst prejudices in people.

2. Although one senator, Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., challenged the results in Ohio after the 2004 presidential election, the situation was radically different from 2020. Boxer stood alone in the Senate that year, and fellow Democrats distanced themselves from her actions. She was not supported by the Democratic candidate for president, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts. In fact, Kerry followed normal protocol for U.S. presidential elections and called President George W. Bush to concede and congratulate him on Nov. 3, the morning after the votes were counted. Unlike Trump, Kerry never questioned the overall integrity of the election.

3. Johnson only voted against objections to Joe Biden's victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania after the deadly sacking of the U.S. Capitol had interrupted Congress' tallying of the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6. Up to the insurrection, Johnson had publicly stated he would vote in favor of challenges to the state-certified votes. Originally, those challenges were to include Wisconsin's tallies.

Worse, like Trump, Johnson spent weeks questioning the validity of the election without citing any evidence. That included holding a one-sided hearing that allowed Trump’s lawyers to once again air allegations of fraud that had already been rejected by dozens of courtrooms across America, including both Republican and Democratic judges and even federal judges appointed by Trump.

snip

https://www.jsonline.com/in-depth/news/solutions/2021/01/19/sen-ron-johnson-calls-editorial-unhinged-editorial-board-responds/4204754001/

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Ouch!

[abqtommy]

1. That's gotta hurt! Johnson is lucky he's only dealing with an editorial board and not, say, AOC!