New House Speaker Mike Johnson Dubbed ‘Jim Jordan With a Jacket and a Smile’ by MSNBC

MSNBC reporter Ali Vitali dubbed Mike Johnson “Jim Jordan with a jacket and a smile” after the ultraconservative Louisiana Republican was elected Speaker of the House on Wednesday.

In a segment you can watch above, host Nicole Wallace showed a clip of Johnson’s press conference in which a reporter was booed down by his supporters for stating, “You helped lead the efforts to overturn the 2020 election.”

Wallace stated, “The man they’ve pegged to be their leader was a critical architect of the legal and policy pieces that made up the coup plot. Johnson was the leader of the brief filed in support of a December 2020 lawsuit by Texas that sought to throw out the election results in four key swing states and other states. The New York Times once called him ‘the most important architect of the Electoral College objections.”

“[Former GOP strategist] Stuart Stevens said what I was also told by some folks who were starting to parse through the Mike Johnson record, which is he’s Jim Jordan with a jacket and a smile,” Vitali said.

“This is someone who, maybe without the publicity and fanfare, is certainly working in lockstep on the same ideological and ethos ideas that people like Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise have been talking about over the course of the last several years. He just hasn’t been doing it as often on Fox News, but this is who they ended up with,” Vitali continued.

Vitali noted that Johnson also refused to answer her own questions, which she “shouted quite loudly” about whether he believed Biden was legitimately elected.

“January 6 and 2020 looms so large over this building every single day, and now you have someone in the presidential line of succession” who helped fuel the conspiracy theory that Biden “stole” the 2020 election, she said.

“His views on abortion are way outside the mainstream of Republican political thought, on the other side of voters in Kansas and Ohio and other very, very red parts of the country,” Vitali continued, arguing that Johnson’s stance on foreign policy is also farther right than most Republicans.

“He’s third in line for the presidency and he doesn’t believe the current president is legally elected. … That’s kind of difficult to wrap your mind around,” she said.

Jordan was also in the running for the speakership, but dropped out after three failed attempts. Johnson was the fourth and final candidate. He succeeds Kevin McCarthy, who was removed from the position three weeks ago.

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