Ron Johnson’s “Embarrassingly Bad” March

(MADISON) — Ron Johnson has spent the month of March spouting racist bile, delaying — and rejecting — COVID relief for families, promoting hydroxychloroquine (instead of vaccines), and getting compared to Joe McCarthy by not one, but two, fellow Republicans in The New York Times.

Ben Wikler, Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said: “Beer. Cheese. The Badgers, the Packers, and the Bucks. There’s so much to love about our state. But Ron Johnson keeps getting national attention for Wisconsin for all the wrong reasons. Ron Johnson is embarrassingly bad at his job, and he’s clearly determined to make sure everyone knows it.”

Take a look at just a sampling of the coverage of Ron Johnson’s embarrassingly bad March:

NYT: Assaulting the Truth, Ron Johnson Helps Erode Confidence in Government, Trip Gabriel and Reid Epstein, 3/21/20

• Johnson has become the Republican Party’s foremost amplifier of conspiracy theories and disinformation now that Donald Trump himself is banned from social media and largely avoiding appearances on cable television. Mr. Johnson is an all-access purveyor of misinformation on serious issues such as the pandemic and the legitimacy of American democracy, as well as invoking the etymology of Greenland as a way to downplay the effects of climate change.

CNN: Analysis: Ron Johnson’s latest comments are just straight-out racist, Chris Cillizza, 3/15/21

• Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson is very good at one thing: Making comments that are, at best, ill-informed and at worst, racist and/or dangerous.

Rolling Stone: GOP Senator Proudly Voices Racism: If Trump’s Mob Were BLM Then I’d Be Concerned, Peter Wade, 3/13/21

• The senator continued to praise the insurrectionists, saying, “I knew those were people that love this country”

WISN: Sen. Ron Johnson says he will resist Democratic COVID-19 relief bill, 3/4/21

• As the U.S. Senate hammers out its version of the president’s COVID-19 relief package, Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said he will force the senate to read the entire bill aloud.

NYT: Jimmy Fallon: Ron Johnson Could Replace Ted Cruz as Most Hated Senator, 3/5/21

• The “Tonight Show” host joked that the Wisconsin Republican could be more detested for at least the 10 hours that Senate clerks read the 628-page stimulus bill aloud, as Johnson demanded.

Wisconsin State Journal: Sen. Ron Johnson pledges to set up roadblocks for $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, Riley Vetterkind, 3/5/21

• Johnson, R-Oshkosh, who has described the massive stimulus package as unnecessary, forced a full reading of the more than 600-page document, which began Thursday afternoon and was expected to last into the early hours Friday.

Washington Post: Opinion: Ron Johnson’s vile new defense of Trump makes his defeat more urgent, By Greg Sargent, 3/22/21

• Sen. Ron Johnson may be the single greatest purveyor of Trumpian disinformation in the U.S. Senate. That being the case, defeating the Wisconsin Republican in 2022 is already a highly pressing matter. But Johnson just offered a new defense of the former president’s incitement of the Capitol riot that makes ousting him even more imperative.

Washington Post: Ron Johnson’s misleading citation of data to back his ‘concern’ about BLM protesters, Glenn Kessler, 3/19/21

• If the senator had studied the data more closely, perhaps he would have been more concerned about the crowd that gathered at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Johnson earns Three Pinocchios.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ron Johnson says Capitol attackers ‘love this country’ but he would have felt unsafe if Black Lives Matter stormed building instead, Molly Beck, 3/12/21

• “What, white people love this country and Black people don’t? That’s exactly what he’s saying,” state Sen. LaTonya Johnson, a Democrat from Milwaukee who is Black, said.

AP: Critics call Sen. Ron Johnson’s insurrection comments racist, AP Milwaukee, 3/13/21

• Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson is being called racist for an interview in which the white Republican said he wasn’t worried about the predominantly white supporters of President Donald Trump during the deadly insurrection at the Capitol, but that he might have been if they had been Black Lives Matter protesters.

CNN: Ex-DC police chief says Ron Johnson is ‘part of the problem’ in nation’s racial tensions, Shawna Mizelle, 3/18/21

• “Sen. Johnson is clearly part of the problem,” Former DC Police Chief and CNN Law Enforcement Analyst Charles Ramsey told CNN’s Jim Sciutto and Poppy Harlow on “Newsroom.” “Those comments were racist. Now if you ask him, he’ll say, ‘Oh, no racial overtones at all.’ It’s ridiculous. He is part of the problem, and he is not alone.

And if all that wasn’t enough, Johnson decided to solidify his embarrassingly bad March this weekend at CPEC, a conservative conference in Wisconsin, where he again doubled-down on his lies about the January 6th attack, throwing in a new falsehood for good measure, claiming “There was much more violence on the House side. There was no violence on the Senate side, in terms of the chamber.”

CNN: Ron Johnson falsely claims there was ‘no violence’ on Senate side of US Capitol on January 6, Aaron Pellish, 3/20/21

• Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson falsely claimed there was no violence on the Senate side of the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection, the latest in his continued attempts to downplay the severity of the attack.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.