Mike Johnson: Saving Face

By BRUCE LOWITT

At first it appeared as though Fox News was having some technical problems with its coverage of Rep. Mike Johnson’s update on the release of thousands of hours of security videos of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

His face was blurry.

“No, everything was fine. No problems,” Stephanie Freeman, Executive Director at Fox News Media, explained in a phone call. “We had to blur his face because we don’t want him to be retaliated against – and to be charged by the DOJ and to have other, you know, concerns and problems.”

Johnson, R-Instigator, admitted later that he had requested it in order to prevent members of the public from identifying “anyone who was in favor of the attempt to overthrow the government by keeping my good friend Donald Trump in power for another four years – or as many years as he wanted.”

Johnson acknowledged that the Department of Justice has all the same footage of the thousands of insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol, “but I wasn’t outside with them. Everyone knows I was in the building, trying to object to the count of Electoral College ballots and trying, frankly, to save Vice President Mike Pence’s ass by getting him to shut down the process.”

However, “the Man from Milquetoast,” as his colleagues in the House refer to him behind his back, was worried that when he was talking about the delay in releasing the video, “I was afraid that Hakeem Jeffries or Nancy Pelosi or Liz Cheney might be able to identify me after I was overlooked by law enforcement. I mean, respect my privacy, please.”