Transcript: Mike Johnson’s Gaslighting on ICE Takes Truly Vile Turn

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 15 episode of The
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Folks, it’s getting worse. A young protester was left permanently blind after a Homeland Security agent fired at him at close range in Santa Ana, according to his family. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller made it 100 percent clear that ICE agents are wholly unaccountable to the law. House Speaker Mike Johnson just demonstrated that he feels no pressure to place any limits on ICE in the least and blamed Renee Good for her death in Minneapolis in a shockingly callous way. And on top of all that, some influential voices on the Religious Right are saying that it’s time to pray not for the victims, but for Kristi Noem and ICE. We think that last one is important. There’s simply no moral voice out there that is capable of reaching people like Trump, Johnson, and Kristi Noem. How is that possible and what does it mean? Our go-to person on these kinds of questions is Sarah Posner, who’s written several very good books on the Religious Right. Posner is launching a new podcast, Reign of Error, so we’re talking to her about all this today. Sarah, so good to have you on.

Sarah Posner: Thanks for having me, Greg.

Sargent: So we’ve just learned that the Justice Department sees no basis for an investigation into the killing of Renee Goode in Minneapolis. Let’s start with an exchange that Mike Johnson had with reporters in which he was asked to defend the administration’s labeling of her as a domestic terrorist.

Mike Johnson (voiceover): What I saw, the angle that I saw, was that this woman was taunting ICE officers. She was impeding law enforcement; she was violating a number of laws in doing so. They were very patient and asked her multiple times to remove her vehicle and stop impeding their operation, and she refused. Her partner, whoever that was, was taunting the officer. It was a… it was a crazy set of circumstances. And from the angle I saw—this is my view; I’m not the investigator and I’m not the judge and jury—but I’ll tell you what I saw is that the vehicle… she revved, she hit the accelerator and hit the ICE officer, and he reacted in a split second.

Sargent: So that’s just crazy. In every way, he’s blaming the victim. Sarah, what do you make of that?

Posner: Well, to him, somebody on the left—or somebody that he perceives to be on the left—is the enemy of ICE, is the enemy of law enforcement. So that person can never be in the right; that person can never be innocent. That person can’t exercise her First Amendment rights. So to him, she’s not a citizen concerned about her neighbors. To him, she is a leftist who is out to harm and impede law enforcement.

Sargent: I mean, that’s just stunning, Sarah. This is a guy who’s supposed to be a moral leader of sorts, and he can’t bring himself to say that this is really a horrible thing that requires reform in any sense.

Posner: For Johnson, he represents only Republicans. In his mind, he doesn’t represent all American people. He thinks that he is on a mission from God to carry out a biblical or a Christian kind of government. And in his mind, that kind of government, you know, does not represent the ideals of, you know, helping your neighbor, welcoming the stranger—things that many people would think are biblical values.

But for him, the biblical values are a strong, powerful, militarized government that lays down the law and protects America from what he sees as America’s enemies: the left. I want to get into that big stuff a little later. I want to listen to a little bit more from Mike Johnson first. Listen to this.

Reporter (voiceoer): Mr. Speaker, lot of Democrats are saying that they want to add rioters or oversight to ICE funding in the Homeland Security bill. What are your thoughts about doing that?

Mike Johnson (voiceover): I think there’s a lot of Democrats playing games right now with national security and with law enforcement, and I think it’s dangerous. ICE is doing what ICE is designed to do. By its very name, it’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are enforcing federal law. They’re going and getting dangerous criminals, sometimes in sanctuary cities where they get too much resistance. We’ve seen the tragic consequences and effects of that. So I don’t think we need to be cutting funding right now. I think the American people want the law to be enforced. And I think we need to let law enforcement do its job.

Sargent: Now, this is really wretched. He’s very subtle about it, but note how he slips in this idea that the problem is too much resistance to ICE and that we’ve seen the consequences and effects of that. Again, blaming the victims of ICE violence for that violence; zero indication that Republicans have even the slightest bit of a problem with what ICE is doing. What do you think of that?

Posner: Well, they would like Americans to believe that the violence that we’re seeing on the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere is caused by protesters, is caused by neighbors with whistles—not caused by the ICE agents themselves or the Customs and Border Protection agents, right?

And so to him, he would like America to believe that, yes, there are riots in the street. He used that word: riots. And to him, by definition, those are not caused by ICE, because ICE is carrying out a mission from God to defend America from an invasion of illegal immigrants—from the left who would harbor those illegal immigrants. That’s the kind of narrative that he’s trying to draw here.

So he would never even conceive of reining in ICE, of putting restrictions on what they can do with their weapons or in terms of detaining people. To him, they are carrying out a government and a God-given mission to protect America.

Sargent: Absolutely. And note how Mike Johnson also says that the American people want the law to be enforced and to let law enforcement do its job. Now, we’re seeing polls showing broad disapproval of ICE right now. And I think what most people are getting very clearly is that this is not really law enforcement any longer in any recognizable sense. You’ve been watching the videos. Is that law enforcement?

Posner: No, absolutely not. It’s like a death squad. I mean, you watched the video of the shooting of Renee Good, and it’s absolutely horrifying. Mike Johnson claims he watched the video too, and that what he saw was that she was impeding law enforcement and that she was violating a number of laws. That’s what he said. He said that.

What laws was she violating, right? She turned the car around when confronted by the ICE agent. She was not impeding him.

The idea that they’re carrying out a legitimate law enforcement mission is ridiculous because they’re arresting people who are U.S. citizens, they’re detaining people who are legally here, they’re racially profiling people based on their skin color or what language they’re speaking or even where they happen to be. And so, this is not law enforcement. This is state police trying to ethnically cleanse America.

Sargent: I think there’s no doubt about it. The Los Angeles Times is reporting on this other example, which is just horrific. This kid, a 21-year-old, Caden Rumler, underwent six hours of surgery, and doctors found plastic, glass, and metal embedded in his eyes and around his face, according to the L.A. Times.

This is after he was shot by a non-lethal round at close range. This is a kid, right? And there’s just no way that kid posed any kind of serious threat. I think, Sarah, I think a lot of non-religious people have trouble understanding how anyone who professes to be a Christian could defend this kind of thing. So maybe you can explain how Mike Johnson views all of it and where he’s coming from.

Posner: Well, for Johnson, one of the few legitimate activities of government is law enforcement. And in particular, law enforcement that’s out to defend and protect his vision of what America should be: a country of compliant, white, Christian people who do not question authority. And so that’s why, for him, he picks up on this propaganda that ICE is actually carrying out law enforcement operations against illegal immigrants, right?

I mean, there is a procedure for deporting people who are undocumented. Obama did it and Biden did it. It’s the law, right? There is not a legal procedure for these heavily armed, masked, no-identification thugs to run around neighborhoods and terrorize preschools and Halloween parades and everything else, disrupting people’s lives like that.

If you have somebody who has a documented reason to be deported, there’s a process for doing that. That process does not include basically turning our cities into war zones.

Sargent: You would think not. And you’ve been looking at what some evangelicals are saying, and they’re telling their followers to pray for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE. Can you walk us through what you’re hearing and what it means?

Posner: Franklin Graham, who of course is well known for being the son of the iconic evangelist Billy Graham. And Jack Hibbs, who is a California pastor who is possibly best known for being close to Charlie Kirk. Graham went on the Christian Broadcasting Network and talked about how he and Hibbs had a conversation about how today at noon—at noon, whatever time zone you’re in, noon for you—was a day that you should pray. And you should pray because there’s a lot of chaos going on in the world right now.

I don’t think that anyone would disagree that there’s a lot of chaos going on in the world right now. Much of it is being inflicted by Donald Trump and his administration, right? But to them it’s more like, Well, it’s just a sign of the times. Maybe all this chaos is happening because we’re getting closer to the End Times. That makes it even more important for you to pray right now.

And you’re supposed to pray for leaders in authority. This is a big thing with them: that you’re supposed to pray for leaders. So pray for President Trump, pray for Kristi Noem—who is a “great lady who loves God.” Franklin Graham said that on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

So to them, it fits right in with this idea that ICE and the Trump administration are protecting the real America from enemies, foreign and domestic. And that you need to pray for them because they’re doing a really tough job right now. That prayers mean something. They mean something to God. They mean something to the people that you’re praying for.

But it’s really a way of mobilizing followers around this idea that these people need to be prayed for because they’re under threat, and they need to be prayed for because they’re doing the right thing.

Sargent: Yeah, and I want to bring in something Stephen Miller said, because I think there’s an interesting through line between what Mike Johnson is saying and what Miller says here. Listen to this from Miller.

Stephen Miller (voiceover): To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties and anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. You have immunity to perform your duties and no one, no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties. And the Department of Justice has made clear that if officials cross that line into obstruction, into criminal conspiracy against the United States or against ICE officers, then they will face justice.

Sargent: It’s really interesting to me how they’re really sort of saying the same thing, right? Mike Johnson is essentially saying: We will not hold ICE officers accountable. And this is a Christian authoritarian vision, right?

And with Miller, it’s just sheer authoritarianism, but there is a through line there, right? Can you talk about Christian authoritarianism and how there’s, like, a religious authoritarian and a secular authoritarian side to Trumpism?

Posner: Right. Well, I mean, Trump got elected—especially the first time, but also the second time—appealing to a coalition of voters that included straight-up white supremacists and racists and nativists and white evangelicals, many of whom believe the same things. But on the surface, their branding was more about faith and religious freedom and family and opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights and things like that.

But at the heart of it is this idea that there is authority, and then there are the people who are governed by the people in authority, and that it is your duty as an American, as a Christian, to be obedient to that authority. Now, recall that it works one way. It only works that way when a Republican, a white Christian, is in authority, right?

Because you can’t look at the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol five years ago and think that those people were obeying authority, right? They would say they were obeying a higher authority. They were on a godly mission to save America from the left. So this entire notion is created around the idea that the left—or anyone perceived to be on the left—are enemies of the true America.

So whether you see it from the perspective of Stephen Miller, who’s just a nativist racist, or you see it from the perspective of Mike Johnson, who contends that he is carrying out this divine mission to submit to God’s authority and restore America as a Christian nation it really has the same effect: that these ICE agents are untouchable.

And that if you are perceived in any way to be challenging them, that you deserve what you get.

Sargent: You know, if you think about Minneapolis, which is really Ground Zero for the Trump/Stephen Miller/Mike Johnson war on the America of the 21st century, right? You can really kind of see the way they think of Minneapolis as something that needs this kind of violent cleansing, right? That’s what I think is going through their heads, right?

Minneapolis is a den of iniquity—you know, protesters, a lot of gay people, a lot of Somali immigrants who are committing “fraud,” right? They are carrying out a Christian authoritarian cleansing. Isn’t that really the way to think about it?

Posner: Absolutely. And do not forget that Trump probably maintains a grievance against Tim Walz for calling him and his supporters ‘weird,’ right? I mean, I think that that is also part of it.

He still has a grievance against Walz. He has a grievance against Ilhan Omar, right? And so the idea that he could attack this particular city that’s governed by his former adversary, and is in the district of his sworn enemy, Ilhan Omar and that he can portray the reason for it as being, Well, these Somali immigrants are looting America.

He has actually used that word, looting, and that word has got to be deliberate, because looting is a word—it’s kind of a trigger word for conservatives about what protesters do when there are quote-unquote “riots” in a city, right? And so all of this is, like, very much tied together in the idea that Trump is protecting America from illegal immigrants.

And not only are these people, he claims, here illegally, but they’re doing illegal things. They’re looting from America with this alleged fraud, right? And they’re not white. And so this just has the perfect stew for Trump to tap into a variety of these grievances that exist in his base.

Sargent: Yeah. So where does this end? Diverse, secular America—the one that exists in the actual Minneapolis, not the one that’s depicted on Fox News, not the fantasy version—that version of America is bigger than theirs. Is it not? Does that matter? How do we assert that vision of America?

I feel like Democrats maybe could be essentially asserting that that America is our America as well, in a way that they aren’t. Just to close this out: What should we all be saying along these lines to respond to people like Mike Johnson who recognize no moral authority that I can see?

Posner: Well, as you know, polls show that even though Republicans—a majority of Republicans—still support what Trump is doing and what ICE is doing, a majority of Americans overall do not. A majority of Democrats, a majority of independents, and very notably, he’s massively underwater with Generation Z. So the future of this country is not armed thugs roving the streets of our cities and terrorizing people and shooting them in the face. That’s not the future that anybody wants, right?

Mike Johnson can gaslight us all he wants that Renee Good was doing something wrong. But we’ve all seen the video. We’ve all seen what ICE is doing. And how many people really want to live like that?

I mean, maybe Republicans think this kind of operation will never come to their city because Trump is only punishing blue cities. But, you know, there are a lot of Republicans out there who have friends and relatives who live in blue cities. Is that, like, what you want it to be like for them? Or when you go visit them? And I think that this is just un-American because it’s just inhuman, right? So it’s not just un-American. It’s horrific. And it’s not what Americans want.

And I think that rather than tiptoeing around ICE funding, or QR codes to identify ICE officers, Democrats really need to focus on taking the bully pulpit and saying: This is not America. This is not the America Americans want. We are a people who live peacefully with our neighbors, even if they’re different from us. And that’s who we are.

Sargent: Sarah Posner, that was beautifully said. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to check out Sarah’s new podcast. It launches on January 22nd, and it’s called Reign of Error. I’ll be listening. Sarah, good to talk to you as always.

Posner: Thanks, Greg.