April 21, 2024 (EIRNS)—After refusing to allow a vote on the $95 billion supplemental budget package for war funding for months, House Speaker Mike Johnson broke the appropriation bill which passed the Senate, into four bills, which were passed within three days after he announced the switch. This change had been mooted due to opposition of hard-core Trump Republicans to funding the proxy war in Ukraine, to pass the Ukraine bill in spite of significant GOP opposition, while allowing those Republicans who are strong supporters of Israel’s genocide in Gaza to vote for it. All four bills were passed on April 17 by relatively large majorities, with Johnson given credit by Democrats, who pledged to support him if angry MAGA Congressmen proceeded with plans to remove him.
Johnson, who told Trump supporters that he would stop the legislation when he was running for Speaker, has always been for the unipolar order’s wars. However, in order to become Speaker, he pledged to work with Trump supporters to kill the funding for Ukraine. As the desperation of the war-hawks grew, as they saw the imminent collapse of Ukraine coming without more funds, the pressure on Johnson increased, and Johnson quietly met with Democrats to figure out how to pass the bill.
In addition to those meetings, he went to visit Trump in Mar-a-Lago, Florida on April 12. Following that meeting, he said Trump agreed with the plan to break the package up, including Johnson’s willingness to make part of the funding a “loan,” to be paid off in the not-specified future. This had originally been proposed by Trump, making clear that his opposition to funding the Ukraine proxy war was not absolute. When he was asked, after Johnson said Trump backed his plan to split the package into four parts, if he agreed, Trump said only that he thinks Johnson is a “good guy.”
The day after the Trump-Johnson meeting, Johnson met with Rev. John Hagee, the chairman of Christians United for Israel. Hagee is fervently committed to funding Israel, stating that he believes that we are approaching the “end times,” and that Christian support for Israel is part of God’s plan. He interprets Ezekiel 36-38 as a road map to the return of Jesus, which would be preceded by the return of the Jews of the world to Israel—at which point all but 144,000 of them will be slaughtered in the Apocalypse, which will be the point at which the Messiah will return. Hagee’s meeting with Johnson was preceded by a rally attended by 250 evangelicals who flew in from around the country. The rally was addressed by Hagee, who urged them to hit Congress “like a bulldozer,” so that we may “bless Israel.” They then lobbied Congress, demanding passage of Johnson’s version of the Biden supplemental defense bill.
Did this delusion Biblical prophecy win over the Republicans who, in the votes, joined with Biden Democrats to vote overwhelmingly for the bills? Maybe not! A podcaster who is allied with the “MAGA movement” said that he was told the Trump strategy was to “step aside” and let Johnson’s bills pass. There were three reasons given for this:
