Early last week, when Republican Rep. Jim Jordan was still a viable candidate for House speaker, Rachel Maddow told viewers about a concern that had gone largely overlooked. While there’d been considerable focus on the far-right Ohioan’s record related to the 2020 election, Rachel raised a related point about the 2024 election.
“If he does become speaker, I’ve got to say it feels like it becomes basically an open question as to whether a House of Representatives under Jim Jordan’s leadership would ever certify the election results of an election in which Donald Trump ran,” she said.
This was, to be sure, a scary scenario: Imagine if Trump is the GOP nominee again, he loses again, and he rejects the results as illegitimate again. Then imagine, as part of this same hypothetical, Jordan is leading the House of Representatives — and he’s eager to do Trump’s bidding.
We now know, of course, that this concern has dissipated, and Jordan is no longer in contention for the gavel. But it’s also true that when it comes to election denialism, new House Speaker Mike Johnson’s radical record has brought the identical questions about 2024 to the fore.
Johnson went further — and did more — than nearly any other congressional Republican to keep Donald Trump in power after his 2020 defeat. With this in mind, The Washington Post reported that the Louisiana congressman’s ascension is “prompting fresh attention to how Johnson could use his new job to influence the outcome of the next presidential election, should he still be speaker in January 2025.”
[E]xperts said Johnson’s more palatable disposition shouldn’t disguise his willingness to meddle in the outcome of elections. … Democracy advocates and constitutional scholars are particularly concerned about what he could do in 2024, when Trump may once again be the Republican nominee for president.
Genevieve Nadeau, a lawyer with Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan advocacy group for fair elections, told the Post, “Having somebody who took those steps in such a position of leadership going into yet another presidential election with quite likely the same people on the ballot is actually very troubling.”
To be sure, the details of the calendar are relevant. If Democrats succeed in taking back the House majority in the 2024 cycle, for example, Johnson’s radicalism on accepting election results would be irrelevant — because Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York would almost certainly hold the speaker’s gavel when it came time to certify the presidential race on Jan. 6, 2025. But if American voters keep Republicans in the majority, Johnson is still in control of the chamber after the 2024 elections, and Trump loses again, how confident can the public be that the GOP leader would honor the electorate’s wishes? It’s worth emphasizing that Congress, late last year, overhauled the Electoral Count Act in such a way as to strengthen the system against future attacks. This would, among other things, limit the options of a House speaker hellbent on mischief. But as Reuters reported, this hasn’t eliminated the uncomfortable questions. Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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