House Speaker Mike Johnson started a furor he did not see coming ― and it’s all because of a single, itty-bitty word.
The Louisiana Republican was talking with reporters about a swastika recently found in the office of Rep. Dave Taylor (R-Ohio), an incident that came to light a day after Politico exposed racist and pro-Nazi text messages sent between Young Republicans.
Vice President JD Vance recently attempted to defend the racist texters as young boys being “edgy.”
However, Johnson on Thursday shared a reminder of “the principles of the Republican Party.” He said the GOP “[stands] for the founding principles of America,” which he claimed were “individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity – the things that lead to human flourishing.”
Johnson was on a roll until he made a truly head-shaking statement, one that rivals the time Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) unintentionally declared, “Let’s stop attacking pedophiles.”
Johnson said, “We have stood against that; we fought the Nazis.” Then he added, “We defended that evil ideology. We roundly condemn it, and anybody in any party who espouses it, we’re opposing that.”
Of course, Johnson’s gaffe raised eyebrows on social media.