Top Republican Has Turned on Donald Trump

Donald Trump speaks at Discovery World. Photo Taken Oct. 1, 2024 by Graham Kilmer.

R.J. Johnson has been involved in politics for 27 years and has been a key figure in Republican politics. He served as Midwest regional political director for the Republican National Committee, executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party, political director of the Republican Party of Florida and general consultant for three successful Scott Walker campaigns for governor. He also helped run the presidential campaign of Steve Forbes and several U.S. Senate and congressional campaigns.

And he is now a fervent opponent of Donald Trump, whose Substack columns have called for principled opposition to the president. His latest column condemns the pre-dawn raid on the home of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. As he writes:

“Omar was eight years old when her family fled Somalia’s civil war. She spent four years in a refugee camp in Kenya before arriving in the United States at about 12.

“At 17, she became an American citizen through her father’s naturalization.

“Seventeen.

“Now, more than a quarter-century later, federal agents have searched her home as part of an investigation reportedly involving immigration paperwork completed by her late father when she was a child.

“What evidence did investigators expect to find inside Omar’s home that could not be obtained from the government’s own immigration records? Why not seek additional documents through her attorney or a subpoena?…

“President Trump has made no secret of his hostility toward Ilhan Omar. He has publicly accused her of criminal conduct, suggested she belongs in jail, and called for her to be sent back to Somalia….

“Vice President JD Vance publicly announced that her immigration history would be investigated. Other senior administration officials discussed the possibility of deporting her…

“But suspicion is not proof. Repeating an accusation for ten years doesn’t make it true. And the government’s power to investigate is not a license to intimidate.”

Two factors suggest this raid may be about intimidation. The Department of Justice violated a long-followed policy of not doing any activity that might help or hurt a candidate within 60 days of an election. And the raid on Omar was first reported by Fox News, suggesting the Trump administration may have shared the story with a network likely to cover it in a way the reinforces that goal.

This is not the first time Johnson has condemned Trump and his administration for their attacks on “his political opponents — the people who vote differently, think differently, or dare to stand against him.” A year ago, he wrote a column on LinkedIn condemning defense secretary Pete Hegseth for telling America’s generals “that their hands should no longer be tied — that they should ‘hunt and kill’ the ‘enemies of our country,’ free from the ‘stupid rules of engagement’ that have long restrained them.”

“The administration has already dispatched troops to American cities — Portland, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Memphis — often over the objections of local leaders. These deployments test the very legal walls separating domestic policing from military power,” Johnson wrote.

“There’s something deeper happening too — the deliberate stirring of fear. When leaders label dissent as disloyalty, when they call protest an invasion, they invite citizens to see one another not as neighbors but as threats. Fear is the oldest and most efficient tool of tyranny. It numbs judgment. It silences conscience. It makes cruelty seem like common sense.”

Johnson compared the raid on Omar to the pre-dawn raid on his own home about a decade ago by state enforcement officers as part of the John Doe probe of alleged illegal funding activities by the campaign of Gov. Walker. He concedes that the parallel may not be exact but argues the principle is the same:

“The Fourth Amendment does not distinguish between Republicans and Democrats. The presumption of innocence does not depend on whether someone shares our political beliefs. And the government does not acquire greater moral authority simply because its target is unpopular.”

Not many Democrats in Wisconsin will agree with Johnson’s comparison to the John Doe probe. But his goal is to convince Republicans that the Trump administration’s targeting of people the president doesn’t like is an abuse of government power. And few Republicans seem willing to publicly condemn it.

U.S. House members of both parties once jealously guarded their power, whatever the party affiliation of the president. A federal raid on a U.S. congresswoman with no proof presented of wrongdoing would have once outraged leaders of both parties. But so far, not one Republican has joined House Democratic leaders, who condemned the action as “deeply disturbing” and a “rogue abuse of power” just weeks ahead of November’s midterm elections.

And where are the Republicans in Wisconsin taking a principled stand against Trump? There have been a few: former state Sen. Dale Schultz, former Congressman Reid Ribble, PR operative Craig Peterson and conservative writers Charlie Sykes and James Wigderson come to mind. No doubt there are Wisconsin Republican officials who have privately expressed misgivings but have never gone on record.

Now that Trump’s disapproval rating has hit 60% in Wisconsin, some Republicans are trying to distance themselves from him, but that’s about political survival, not standing up for principles.

Which is what makes Johnson’s stand, and his columns on Substack, so impressive and important. He knows what fear there is of Trump and the power the president cruelly uses, and dares to condemn it.

“This moment calls for courage — the kind that lives in people who take oaths seriously,” he has written. “Congress must find its backbone again. The courts must remember their independence. And our military must be respected for what it has always been — a force meant to protect us from threats abroad, not to be turned inward against the people it serves.

“We still have time to remember who we are. But not much.”