Mike Johnson lied to House republicans about having a secret deal with John Thune to amend the Epstein bill

[bigtree]

...and got hung out to dry for it by Thune who looks like he didn't actually give a shit about what Johnson had been babbling to him about - if they ever spoke about anything the Speaker claimed they had.

___“I talked with the speaker a bit, and we’ve been in consultation obviously with the White House on this for some time,” Thune told reporters. “The conclusion was when it came out of the House 427-1 that, you know, it was going to pass in the Senate.”

“I talked to John Thune over the weekend. I just texted him. We’re going to get together. We’ll talk about this,” Johnson told reporters as he left the floor. “There’s an easy way to amend the legislation to make sure that we don’t do permanent damage to the justice system. And I’m going to insist upon that.”

Thune said Senate Republican lawyers examined the legislation and determined it could go forward without being amended.

“Our lawyers obviously had looked closely at some of the issues and had concluded that the bill I think was, you know, sufficient to accomplish what needed to be done here, and that is to get the information out there as quickly as possible,” Thune said.

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/11/18/congress/johnson-thune-epstein-files-gop-00658475

____Prior to the House vote, the speaker said he had spoken with Senate Majority Leader John Thune and he expected senators to amend the bill if it got to the upper chamber.

“I'm very confident that when this moves forward in process, if and when it is processed in the Senate — which is no certainty, that that will be — that they will take the time methodically to do what we have not been allowed to do in the House,” Johnson said. “Amend this discharge petition and to make sure these protections are there.”

But after the House held the vote, Thune poured cold water on that idea.

“When a bill passes the House 427 to one and the president said he'll sign it into law, I'm not sure that there's going to be a need for an amendment or desire for an amendment process,” Thune told The Independent.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/mike-johnson-is-furious-at-the-senate-for-approving-the-epstein-bill/ar-AA1QKmCm

___MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell was among those criticizing Johnson’s tactics, saying that he was left “pathetically humiliated” by the Senate.

He added later on his Tuesday night show, “Every member of Congress who didn’t know it already knows now that Mike Johnson has no idea what he’s talking about when he tells them what’s going to happen.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mike-johnson-fumes-as-epstein-files-saga-blows-up-in-his-face/


...on the face of this it looks like Mike Johnson was dominated by Thune and Senate republicans who didn't waste a minute wallowing in the self-destructive politics which the House Speaker led his republican members to engage in over the summer and into the fall.

Thune knew Chuck Schumer was going to ask for unanimous consent because the Senate Dem leader said he would on the Senate floor two hours prior.

On second look, it appears Johnson was rolled over by all but one of his party who have to be asking themselves what the fuck they were actually trying to accomplish by letting themselves get talked into going on vacation for over a month.

They allowed themselves to be placed in a convoluted political position to just surrender, anyway, in the end. That can't be what they were sold at the beginning.

Anyone can see they could have passed this 50 days ago and been done with it. Hell, if they had threatened instead of humoring a dementia-ridden megalomaniac trying to protect his OWN hide (again), they could have avoided this altogether. it's not as if any of this benefits them in any way.

They just have to be wondering what the fuck they're actually doing with their power tonight, having just decided to use it to do what they thought best, and not just bending to their president like cultists.

It's just like that with cult members. One day, if they;re lucky, they allow themselves to question what they're doing listening to some weirdo, and gain back control of their lives by the simple act of exercising control over their own actions, recognizing their own power.

I mean, the Trump muckery is effectively muddling and dragging on the fuckery that's the republican agenda from beginning to the end of their maga manifesto. It's been a thing of beauty to behold the Democratic leadership play out Mike Johnson's utterly doomed defense of Trump as if he actually had the votes to block the thing.

And what a hoot for Trump to change horses right before the vote as someone informed Mike Johnson that the game was over and he'd been cuckolded by the president he's been politically fellating to fill out the imaginary walls of a speakership invented out of House republicans' inability to lead themselves.

What is a Mike Johnson tonight? He's the leader of a party that just overwhelmingly threw their own president under the bus, ostensibly telling him to clean up his own mess. It's going to be hard for them to just go back to pretending that the rest of the president's bullshit is any less self-serving or any less their problem than protecting, promoting, or defending him on anything else they disagree with.

It's going to be hard for them to just slip back into fueling the chaos to run distractions and diversions for Trump. It has to feel good to vote their own interests.

Liberating, even.

[Lovie777]

1. And the GQP are slightly upset?.........................

that's laughable. GQP are liars and make up shit 24/7.

[bigtree]

2. they have their own nefarious interests

...none of them actually served by following this president down.

Watch out for a burst of productive assholery that is the republican agenda, breaking away from the weird political structure of letting the president be the speaker of their house and the majority leader of their senate that's resulted in them stalling out their own budget bill that they were weirdly convinced they could advance on their own votes by listening to an unpopular president lame ducking a child sex scandal.

Watch them discover governing, which is much more of a challenge for Democrats than just throwing popcorn and peanuts at this clown show in a circus that came to town.