Mike Johnson Goes Off Rails in Vile Gaslighting Display on Trump, ICE | The New Republic
PODCAST

Mike Johnson Goes Off Rails in Vile Gaslighting Display on Trump, ICE

As the House Speaker offers disgusting comments about ICE and Renee Good, a scholar of the religious right explains how it is that Evangelicals like him see no evil whatsoever in ICE’s violent attacks on Americans.

Mike Johnson smirks
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
House Speaker Mike Johnson in Washington, DC on January 13, 2026.

House Speaker Mike Johnson’s response to growing ICE violence is really something to behold. In one long, rambling answer, he blamed shooting victim Renee Good in every which way, absurdly claiming she’d been “taunting” ICE officers and “impeded” them, while insisting they’d been “very patient.” In another one, he played sleazy little games, claiming the violence represents the “tragic consequences” of ICE facing “too much resistance”again blaming the victims for violence against them, without a hint of concern about ICE’s conduct. We talked to Sarah Posner, author of several good books on the religious right, who is launching a new podcast next week called “Reign of Error.” We discuss Johnson’s strain of Christianity, how Trump and MAGA fuse religious and secular authoritarianism, and why some leading Evangelicals are now calling on people to praynot for the victims of Trump-MAGA violence, but rather for Kristi Noem and ICE. Listen to this episode here.