Does anybody beside me think it's extra-creepy when Speaker of the House Mike Johnson shows up at a serial adulterer's hush money trial? The head maker of laws showed up to question our system of laws.
That's probably not a good sign.
If anyone finds themselves surprised high ranking Republicans would stand against the American legal system they've been asleep. Since Nixon resigned in 1974, the party has worked on the edge or outside the legal system to take the country apart piece by piece.
One hundred and thirty eight members of the Reagan administration were indicted or convicted of illegal activities while serving. That is still the all time record for law breaking within a presidential administration.
That administration stretched laws to break unions, to politicize the public airwaves, to allow foreign ownership of American media, and to wipe out the family farms. It was the Reagan administration who put a tax on social security to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy.
The party has led the bankrupting of America through tax cuts on the rich and corporations. They've overseen the creation of the largest wealth gap in over 100 years. They made laws that see hedge-fund billionaires paying lower tax rates than teachers.
It was the Republican leadership who put the United States into two overseas conflicts with no definition of victory or an exit strategy. It was that leadership who rationalized torture and war crimes against civilians in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Let's not forget its Republican actions that have made the American medical care system the most expensive in the world by paving the way for a profit based system. They have fought universal provider programs and actively kept health insurance out of people's hands in several extremist states.
Thanks to Republican meddling in healthcare, the life expectancy of most Americans has decreased in the last twenty years. I say most, because it hasn't decreased amongst the top 15% in wealth.
It was the Republican party who stole a Supreme Court appointment from a twice popularly elected president and reversed their logic to award an extra one to a guy who lost the popular vote and had been impeached.
It is the Republican party who has packed the courts with extremist judges who, in the last 20 years, have thrown out campaign finance rules and opened elections to purchase by the highest bidder, including foreign ones. Who has reversed decades of voting rights protections for all Americans. Who has taken away a woman's right to control her own medical decisions and threatened further erosion of rights of the individual.
Today the party is a criminal enterprise beholden to a lifelong conman who is the first president in our history to deny the outcome of an election. He does this with no evidence of voting irregularities in an election certified in every precinct across the nation.
He does this with indictments for crimes against the nation, crimes against his family, and crimes against the taxpayer playing out in various jurisdictions across the country. He incited violence against the capital and still his toadies in congress grovel before him like a modern day Caligula.
Creepy doesn't begin to describe it.