Devout Christian Mike Johnson shows up to hush money trial to defend a guy accused of cheating on his wife with a porn star

House Speaker Mike Johnson describes himself as a Christian before anything else. He has said his “faith informs everything I do.” He has told people curious about his views to “pick up a Bible.” His wife reportedly runs a counseling service whose operating agreement, which he himself notarized, states, “We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery…is sinful and offensive to God.” He has said he and his son use a software program called Covenant Eyes to ensure neither is looking at porn.

Given all this, you may think that Johnson would not be comfortable showing up to a criminal trial to defend a guy who allegedly had an affair with an adult film star (according to the adult film star anyway, though Trump denies it), paid her to stay quiet about the alleged affair, and then was accused of covering up said payment. But you would think wrong!

On Tuesday, Johnson attended Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan, where—prior to the proceedings getting underway—the congressional leader nodded approvingly at Trump from behind a metal barrier, like a groupie at his favorite band’s concert.

PanArab,

He is a grifter. He is not truly devout, he doesn’t follow the Bible despite claiming that he does.

GeekyOnion,

My first thought when looking at the headline was, “Devout should be in quotation marks.”

0000011110110111i,

He is a devout Christian. People should stop mistaking “devout” for “pious”, and “Cristian” for “humane”.

31337, (edited )

I believe he’s a devout Christo-fascist. I think only a special kind of devout Christian could come up with the porn accountability scheme with his son. He’s a “lying for the lord” kind of person.

Lucidlethargy,

If Trump weren’t such an existential threat to our country, I’d be enjoying all his republican friends debasing themselves publicly in very humiliating situations.

Sam_Bass,

The christianity he is involved in is a corrupted version of cherrypickers so he is self agrandised and will argue his version is the only one that counts.

Suavevillain,
@Suavevillain@lemmy.world avatar

Average modern Christian behavior at this point.

madcaesar,

tHoSe aRe nOt rEaL cHrIsTiAnS!!

rasmus,

Well mainly normal for the us in Sweden the church is almost more progressiv than the Democrats

Carlo,

Not a super high bar, tbf. Y’all’s overton window is considerably to the left of ours. Your point is solid, though, I think, in that cultural identity is a much better predictor of personal politics than religion.

RagingRobot,

I don’t think that’s the kind of friend Jesus would choose

Boddhisatva,

Accused of cheating on his wife…? Seriously? This is the best they could come up with? How about:

“Devout Christian Mike Johnson Shows Up to Hush Money Trial to Defend the Poster Child for the Seven Deadly Sins”

  • Lust: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait,” Trump said. “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
  • Gluttony: Trump’s favorite McDonald’s order: two Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fishes, and a large chocolate milkshake.
  • Greed: Do we really need examples?
  • Sloth: Trump ascribes to what has been described as the “battery” theory of, um, life force. Evan Osnos, in a profile of Trump in the New Yorker a few years back, described it thusly: “Other than golf, he considers exercise misguided, arguing that a person, like a battery, is born with a finite amount of energy.”
  • Wrath: “Lyin’ Cassidy said that I threw my lunch at the wall,” Trump wrote on his social network, Truth Social. “I actually threw it at Rudy Giuliani, and he ducked.”
  • Envy: We have a new ailment that has come onto the political scene and that is presidential jealousy. I don’t ever remember a current president taking constant and ongoing digs at a former president. Now, I can say that I have seen it. Almost since day one, Donald Trump has made disparaging and disrespectful remarks about Barack Obama.
  • Pride: Do we need examples? The man puts his name in gold letters on everything he touches.
shimdidly,

What are you gonna do when you go to heaven and see Donald Trump there?

krashmo,

Immediately test my ability to kill myself again

loudWaterEnjoyer,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

You die and respawn on the same spot

zalgotext,

That sounds like hell

loudWaterEnjoyer,
@loudWaterEnjoyer@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

There is no hell, only heaven “where Jesus died for your sins” or something like that

chiliedogg,

Feel pretty sure that I was right that a loving God wouldn’t sentence anyone to eternal torture and damnation.

AeonFelis,

There is a world of difference between “he didn’t do it” and “so what if he did it?” and opened the link aiming to figure out which of these two kinds of defenses Johnson was trying to make - but his approach was not even relevant enough to the actual issue for that distinction to be meaningful.

Snapz,

I wonder if the porn monitoring app he shares with his son gave a little beep today?

hanrahan,
@hanrahan@slrpnk.net avatar

I can see you haven’t met many christians if you think this is hypocritical behavior.

Ghandi ? I like your Christ, you Christians are so unlike him.

hessenjunge,

Even if it is typical it is still hypocritical.

platypus_plumba,

Yeha but you know Republicans will just look the other way when confronted with such arguments.

hessenjunge,

It’s still important to call out the hypocrisy, even if it is their normal modus operandi. Ad nauseatum.

Liars and conmen need to be exposed again and again until the most misinformed and thickest victim finally gets it.

Trump has proven that this will take until the end of time but it is still worth it. If you save one victim per bunch of Trumpists it’s worth it.

nucleative,

The bible is not univocal. So saying “pick up a bible” to understand his views perhaps includes killing those who wear mixed fabrics and giving women instructions for abortions. Maybe it also includes killing his firstborn son whenever the voices say he should. Or maybe he doesn’t think those parts mean what they say, but other parts do?

Diplomjodler3,

Correct. If you actually read the bible you know that all these people are just making it up as they go along. You will find some quote that supports whatever you’re trying to say and you’ll find some quotes for the opposite too.

vonbaronhans,

Don’t think I’ve seen “univocal” before. Interesting.

Huckledebuck,

Yay, new word!

My reaction was that i wasn’t reading it right. Thanks to both of you!

psycho_driver,

There’s no “accused of”.

z3rOR0ne,
@z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml avatar

Ah yes, Mike Johnson and Donald Trump. Pinnacles of American virtue, as evidenced by Americans electing them into office. Indeed, all of our politicians are examples of the best America has to offer.

Cincinnatus,

Yeah, accused by a porn star trying to extort money from someone and was also ordered to pay Trump 500k for defamation. Left wing propaganda

marx2k,

This is what going down with the ship looks like

norbert,
norbert avatar

Source?

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

You’re close… Stormy Daniels, through disgraced former lawyer Michael Avenetti (hey, remember him???), sued Trump for defamation, not the other way around.

When that case failed, she was on the hook for Trump’s legal fees, not for any defamation on her part.

$300,000, not $500,000, later reduced to $120,000.

npr.org/…/trump-stormy-daniels-defamation-lawsuit

Cincinnatus,

NPR isn’t a very good source for news. They even recently had 25 year veteran reporter blow the whistle on them about how they’ve been reporting news since around 2015-16. They’re completely one-sided similar to MSDNC, Rawstory, etc. Anytime a news organization doesn’t allow healthy debate, I’ve quit using them as they’re no more than propaganda now

Allero, (edited )

One should note that American Left is literally only left by weird American standards.

Literally everyone outside Land of the free will tell you Dems are moderate rights, and the truth is super far from “between Dems and Reps”.

America hasn’t seen a healthy political debate since the Red Scare. With the real left eradicated and members of any left organizations, let alone past or current member of the communist parties, becoming essentially enemies of the state, politicians felt comfortable instating that Dems are “actually left”, so as to gradually put real left to serve a slightly leftier flavor of capitalists.

And as such, you don’t see the actual unbiased debate you expect. You see two kinds of right-wingers debating how right America should go.

Real “unbiased” center, by international standards, is more left than Democrats, even. It’s around Bernie Sanders.

And the left is about dismantling capitalism and building a real socialist state. Like, USSR socialist, not Sweden “socialist”.

Cincinnatus,

We just gotta agree to disagree on the comment about two right wingers debating how right America should go and that the left is eradicated. I see people all the time wanting to bring down capitalism in favor of guaranteed healthcare and income, etc.

Allero,

Universal healthcare doesn’t “bring down capitalism” and doesn’t mean socialism. It’s just a norm of civilized capitalist world, one of the achievements of the working class that became entrenched in policies. Same for guaranteed income. All good policies, but can absolutely exist in a non-socialist world.

Socialism is characterized by common ownership of the means of production, i.e. all the big businesses go away and the control of industries is public, either through government or worker’s cooperatives.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans offer anything close.

(Socialist political groups can advocate for things such as universal healthcare/UBI/etc, but their endgoal has to be the eradication of private property)

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

NPR is one of the pre-eminent sources of US news, reliable and fact checked. If you’re blind to that there is absolutely no hope for you.

mediabiasfactcheck.com/npr/

“Overall, we rate NPR (National Public Radio) Left-Center Biased based on story selection that leans slightly left and High for factual reporting due to thorough sourcing and accurate news reporting. (5/18/2016) Updated (M. Huitsing 06/30/2023)”

Cincinnatus,

Maybe it was at one time, but that changed. This is a reporter that’s been there 25 years, and was ultimately let go for speaking out about it. Just like some of the other media outlets, they did anything they could to help stop Trump from getting elected and boost Bidens chance by burying the Hunter Biden laptop story before the election. www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/…/ar-BB1lpy5Y

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Again, that doesn’t change the basic factual nature of NPR.

You can argue bias all you want, but the basic facts are the basic facts and NPR gets it right.

Cincinnatus,

www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/…/ar-BB1lpy5Y

jordanlund,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Doesn’t change the basic facts of the matter:

  1. Trump did NOT sue Daniels for defamation, it was the other way around.
  2. The amount charged was for legal fees, not damages.
  3. The amount wasn’t 500,000, it was 300,000, then reduced to 120,000.

Factually, you got all three points wrong, NPR got it right.

Facts are facts.

Garbanzo,

If that’s true then why is he on trial for paying her off with misappropriated funds?

Cincinnatus, (edited )

He’s not. He’s on trial for labeling the payments to his lawyer a “legal expense” and Braggs trying to say he should’ve used campaign money instead of personal money and if he would’ve done that, they would’ve charged him for campaign finance violation. That’s why almost everyone knows it’s a sham trial. The FEC already declined to prosecute the case as well as Braggs office. The only reason they brought the case all these years later was to keep him off the campain trail. Why do you think they brought every case they could against him during campaign season? Someone’s got to be pretty naive and gullible to believe this isn’t political.

Garbanzo,

So the thing is I went ahead and took a look at the indictment and didn’t need to spend more than two minutes reading it to find that you’re wrong

Cincinnatus,

Okay…how so?

blazera,
@blazera@lemmy.world avatar

Theres not a single teaching of christ amongst conservative politics.

ElcaineVolta,
ElcaineVolta avatar

according to the bible, the character jesus said that he was here to bring a sword and turn families against each other, so fits right in from what I can see.

not_that_guy05,

When people start realizing that hypocrisy is nothing to the Alt-right, they will understand how Nazis came to power in Germany.

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