House does not uphold homophobic book that he endorsed

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote the forward to a 2022 book loaded with debunked conspiracy theories and homophobic slurs. In his foreword to Scott McKay’s The Revivalist Manifesto, Johnson says the author “has managed here to convey well what millions of conscientious, freedom-loving Americans are sensing.”

Here are just a few of the things in the book that Johnson thinks millions of conscientious, freedom-loving Americans are sensing:

• The book insinuates that hacked emails from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chairman contained coded references to child sex trafficking, suggesting involvement in the Pizzagate scandal.
• It implies that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was blackmailed and connected to Jeffrey Epstein.
• It defends podcaster Joe Rogan against racism charges following his use of the N-word, for which Rogan later apologized.
• It uses derogatory language to describe Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, including calling him “openly, and obnoxiously, gay” and other homophobic terms.
• It propagates the debunked theory that the Democratic National Committee’s emails were leaked by a staffer named Seth Rich, not hacked.
• It denies the link between carbon dioxide and climate change, mocking the climate crisis as “hysteria.”
• It criticizes the late Senator John McCain, suggesting he used his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for political gain.

Johnson loved the book so much that “in 2022, he actively promoted the book on his public social media platforms and even dedicated an episode of his podcast he co-hosts with his wife to hosting McKay,” reports CNN. On the podcast, Johnson said,  “I obviously believe in the product, or I wouldn’t have written the foreword. So I uphold the work.”

Fast forward to 2023, and Johnson is singing a different tune. A spokesman for Johnson told CNN that Johnson didn’t know what he was endorsing. “The Speaker had never read the passages highlighted in the CNN story which he strongly disagrees with,” said the spokesperson. “He wrote the foreword as a favor to a friend, supportive of the general theme of the book but not as an endorsement of all the opinions expressed.”

In MAGA land,”I uphold this” means “I don’t uphold this.”