"I mean, like, what I think probably happened on January 6th where they withheld the police presence? If something happens, well, this will sink Trump forever."

"I mean, Pelosi, her people knew about this. They knew about possible plans to breach the Capitol. And according to J. Michael Waller, there was not one law enforcement officer present on the west side of the Capitol. How can that possibly be? But of course, the Senate Committee, they didn't investigate that. The House January 6th committee obviously didn't investigate that. I mean, those were also just whitewashes, committees designed to not get to the truth, but to cover up what probably happened. Okay. To get Trump. So I completely understand the suspicion that's out there. It's legitimate suspicion, and that's why this has to be fully investigated. I'm not going to rest until we uncover things. "

Said Senator Ron Johnson (text and audio at Real Clear Politics), asked about the assassination attempt.

"And let's face it, I uncovered an awful lot. I know firsthand how corrupt the FBI's investigation was. I've been a target of their corruption - the recipient of unsolicited briefings where they talked about being a target of Russian disinformation to try and obviously sabotage the revelation of the Hunter Biden laptop. But it kind of worked because we didn't take possession that when it was first offered to us. We went to the FBI to find out what they knew about it. They wouldn't tell us for weeks until the computer shop guy turned it over to Rudy Giuliani's attorney. The rest is history. So, no, these guys know what they're doing. They pre-sabotaged the Hunter Biden laptop. They completely, it was a complete corruption of the Russian collusion hoax. And by the way, has the Washington Post, have these guys given back the Pulitzer Prizes they earned or won for a complete false story, the narrative they promoted that put America in political turmoil, that it's still present to this day. I mean, where's the mea culpas in the media? You'll never get it. Because they're active advocates for the left themselves. That's the problem. Trump is not up against Kamala Harris. He's up against the leftist media."

On the occasion of Nikki Haley's calling Vivek Ramaswamy "scum," I look into the history of "scum" in my archive.

1. October 23, 2019 — blogged here — Trump called his antagonists "human scum":

The Never Trumper Republicans, though on respirators with not many left, are in certain ways worse and more dangerous for our Country than the Do Nothing Democrats. Watch out for them, they are human scum!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2019

2. On October 24, 2019, I wrote "Troubled by Trump's use of the phrase 'human scum,' I decided to trace its usage, over the years..." This post traces the use of the phrase "human scum" in the NYT archive, beginning in 1897. I note: "The epithet rarely appeared until 2003, when it began coming up repeatedly in statements from the North Korean government. The first person called 'human scum' by the North Koreans was John Bolton."

2. In December 2017, according to The Daily Beast, Facebook was banning women who call men "scum" (because it, supposedly, "classifies white men as a protected group"). I wrote: "I don't support what Facebook is doing, but I do think the use of the word 'scum' warrants a historical note on 'SCUM' — The Society for Cutting Up Men. The author of 'The SCUM Manifesto,' Valerie Solanas, wasn't joking....'The Manifesto argues that SCUM [a revolutionary vanguard of women] should employ sabotage and direct action tactics... "If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade."'" Solanas became famous for shooting Andy Warhol.

3. On December 11, 2020, I blogged about a Wisconsin State Journal headline "Sen. Ron Johnson called 'delusional scum' for considering challenge to election." I asked "why is the fact that somebody hurled one particular epithet the subject of a headline? If the insult-hurler isn't important enough to name in the headline, why put one nasty insult in a headline?"

4. Back in January 2015, I blogged the immortal words of John McCain: "Get outta here you lowlife scum!"

5. On May 24, 2022, I happened to revisit Hunter S. Thompson’s 1994 obituary of Richard Nixon. Thompson wrote: "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. … You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful."

"The people on the Republican side are highly concerned about what’s happening in this country and realize how important this Wisconsin U.S. Senate race is."

"I would hope that they would have those conversations and decide amongst themselves. Instead of having a nasty primary, let’s back one of us and move forward."

Said Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, quoted in "Republicans look to fill a glaring hole in their Senate recruitment map/Wisconsin is one of the closest states in the country, but the GOP hasn't yet landed its candidate to face Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin" (NBC News).

[Possible candidate Scott] Mayer echoes Johnson’s thinking. “We really don’t want a bloody primary,” he told NBC News. “But it’s a free country,” he added....

Ron Johnson said that word that can get you in so much trouble: "purity."

I'm reading a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article that begins: "U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson has one main concern when it comes to the merger of the PGA Tour and the Saudi-backed LIV Golf series: maintaining what he calls the 'purity' of golf."

What? Is that racist?! That's the static I had in my head as I read through many paragraphs before I could see the actual quote that contained that word, "purity":

"In summer 2020, leftists used bricks, water bottles, flagpoles, fireworks, Molotov cocktails, anything but a gun as a weapon to destroy cities but the media didn’t cover them as ‘violent’ or ‘armed.’"

"When protesters during January 6 used a flagpole, all of a sudden the types of objects they’d been using all summer were now considered part of an ‘armed’ insurrection. He is in no way condoning this action. He’s commenting on the hypocrisy of the situation."

Said a spokesperson for Ron Johnson, quoted in "Ron Johnson again says Jan. 6 was not an ‘armed insurrection,’ adds ‘protesters did teach us’ how to use flagpoles as weapons" (CNN).

That was a clarication of something Johnson said in a Rotary Club Q&A yesterday:

“To call what happened on Jan. 6 an ‘armed insurrection,” I just think is inaccurate,” Sen. Ron Johnson says at Milwaukee Rotary Club just now.

Johnson argued few weapons were confiscated but protesters “did teach us how you can use a flag pole” pic.twitter.com/28E3W7G3eg

— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) October 4, 2022

"We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools. Now we’re teaching wokeness, we’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT..."

"... telling some children they’re not equal to others, and they’re the cause of other people’s problems. I think CRT has been going on under the radar for quite some time as well. Wokeness has been. Liberal indoctrination has been. This is a much larger issue than what a simple new gun law is gonna – it’s not gonna solve it. It’s not gonna solve it."

Said Ron Johnson, quoted by Chris Cillizza, in "This Republican senator thinks ‘wokeness’ is the cause of mass shootings" (CNN).

I don't like the headline, because Johnson didn't say "wokeness is the cause of mass shootings." He said there's a failure to teach "values." Values have been supplanted by these other things. The word "values" is vague, but I think it at least conveys the desire to accentuate the positive. A problem with teaching the lessons of CRT is that you're inculcating children with negativity: It's a bad old world, kids — hatred larded into everything. That might explain why some of them hit the chaos of adolescence and veer into nihilism.

But Cillizza might not have written the headline. He riffs a few lines. Let's read:

"Wisconsin liberals on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Republican Sen. Ron Johnson and two other GOP congressmen are insurrectionists in violation of the U.S. Constitution..."

"... for their words and actions in support of Donald Trump leading up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The lawsuit, alleging a violation of the 'Disqualification Clause' of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, says Johnson, R-Oshkosh, and U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany, R-Minocqua, and Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, conspired to undermine President Joe Biden's victory and sow public distrust of the outcome."

Madison.com reports.

This loathsome lawsuit has no chance of success, other than as a stunt that will appeal to partisans.

What controversial issue is uniting right-wing Ron Johnson and left-wing Tammy Baldwin?

Ending the protection of wolves.

The bill comes after a federal judge in California last month ordered protections be restored for wolves across most of the U.S. after the Trump administration removed them from the endangered species list. Re-listing wolves on the list effectively banned any wolf hunting or trapping seasons and prohibited farmers and ranchers from killing wolves preying on livestock.

ADDED: "We have doomed the wolf not for what it is but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be: the mythologized epitome of a savage, ruthless killer—which is, in reality, not more than the reflected image of ourselves. We have made it the scapewolf for our own sins."

“President Reagan warned that freedom is fragile, always one generation away from extinction.”

"As I have told crowds since my first Tea Party speeches in 2010: This is a fight for freedom. This is not someone else’s fight, this is our fight, and it’s a fight we absolutely must win. I believe America is in peril. Much as I’d like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don’t feel I should. Countless people have encouraged me to run, saying they rely on me to be their voice, to speak plain and obvious truths other elected leaders shirk from expressing—truths the elite in government, mainstream media and Big Tech don’t want you to hear.... We face powerful forces that desire even more power and control over our lives. Their path, paved with false hope and greater dependency, always leads to tyranny."

Writes Ron Johnson in "Why I’m Seeking a Third Senate Term/I’d like to retire, but I think the country is in too much peril" (in The Wall Street Journal).

"U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson recently said 'there’s nothing obviously skewed about the results' of the 2020 presidential election..."

"... even as Wisconsin Republican lawmakers this week authorized the expansion of an investigation into the election. Johnson told a liberal activist posing as a conservative that former President Donald Trump lost the election in Wisconsin because he didn’t do as well as other Wisconsin Republicans on the ballot in November.... 'There’s nothing obviously skewed about the results,' Johnson told the woman. 'There isn’t. Collectively, Republicans got 1.661 million votes, 51,000 votes more than Trump got. Trump lost by 20,000. If Trump got all the Republicans, if all the Republicans voted for Trump the way they voted for the Assembly candidates… he would have won. He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got. And that’s why he lost.'... But.... Johnson also told Windsor that he supports the Wisconsin GOP election investigation and audit, but said investigations should focus on the vote totals produced by the voter machines rather than the integrity of the voter machines themselves. 'The last thing I’d really focus on would be the machines, because we have paper ballots, we have the machine logs, we’ve got the machine totals, we should be focusing on that,' Johnson said."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

It's on video:

EXCLUSIVE: Sen Ron Johnson blames Trump for losing Wisconsin in 2020 and tells me “there’s nothing obviously skewed about the results.” pic.twitter.com/OeRkVkkVAN

— Lauren Windsor (@lawindsor) August 31, 2021

"I want to make sure that this U.S. Senate seat is retained in Republican hands.You see what the media’s doing to me. I may not be the best candidate."

"I wouldn’t run if I don’t think I could win, if I don’t think I was the best person to be able to win.... This is an incredibly frustrating place here... Having come from the private sector, running a successful business. Being able to accomplish things. When you just see the dysfunction that is Washington, D.C., it can be pretty frustrating.... I feel really bad that I’ve been here now probably 11 years and we’ve doubled the debt.... Obamacare’s still in place, and we’ve doubled the debt. I don’t feel like my time here has been particularly successful."

Said Ron Johnson, quoted in "US Sen. Ron Johnson: 'I may not be the best candidate' for 2022" (Wisconsin State Journal).

"Even though he has not yet announced that he is running, and I certainly hope he does, I am giving my Complete and Total Endorsement to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin."

"He is brave, he is bold, he loves our Country, our Military, and our Vets. He will protect our Second Amendment, and everything else we stand for. It is the kind of courage we need in the U.S. Senate. He has no idea how popular he is. Run, Ron, Run!" 

Said Donald Trump, the former President of the United States, quoted in Politico. 

Wisconsin is one of Democrats best pickup opportunities on the Senate map after President Joe Biden carried it in November. But Johnson won an upset victory in 2016 for a second term despite being considered a longshot in his rematch against former Sen. Russ Feingold. In a twist, some Democrats are hoping he runs again after Johnson has aligned himself with Trump and made headlines for controversial statements about the election and the insurrection at the Capitol. 

Who might the Democrats run in Wisconsin? That's the question I was trying to answer when I dug up this Trump article. Ah, here:

Several Democrats are already in the race, including Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson and Milwaukee Bucks Executive Alex Lasry. State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes are also seen as potential candidates.

(If you'd like to comment, email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email and with the use of your first name only.)

"This didn’t seem like an armed insurrection to me. I mean 'armed,' when you hear 'armed,' don’t you think of firearms?"

"Here’s the questions I would have liked to ask. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I’m only aware of one and I’ll defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot. It was a tragedy, OK? But I think there was only one." 

Said Senator Ron Johnson on the radio yesterday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

"The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some.... The congressional power to reject electors is reserved for the most extreme and unusual circumstances."

"These are far from it.... President Trump’s lawyers made their case before scores of courts; in every instance, they failed.... My fellow Senator Ted Cruz and the co-signers of his statement argue that rejection of electors or an election audit directed by Congress would restore trust in the election. Nonsense. This argument ignores the widely perceived reality that Congress is an overwhelmingly partisan body; the American people wisely place greater trust in the federal courts where judges serve for life. Members of Congress who would substitute their own partisan judgement for that of the courts do not enhance public trust, they imperil it...."

From Senator Mitt Romney's written statement.

Meanwhile: "Vice President Pence... welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on January 6th."

And, from Ted Cruz: "I think everyone needs to calm down.... I think we need to tone down the rhetoric. This is already a volatile situation. It's like a tinderbox and throwing lit matches into it... That’s not helpful ... at a time when we’re pitted against each other. Just relax, and let’s do our jobs... We have a responsibility to follow the law."

AND: Chuck Todd to Ron Johnson: "Stop! You don't get to make allegations that haven't been proven true."

WATCH: @chucktodd to @senronjohnson: "You made an allegation that there was widespread fraud, you failed to offer specific evidence of that widespread fraud, but you're demanding an investigation on ... allegations of widespread fraud."

"Essentially, you're the arsonist here." pic.twitter.com/PtZMSPoWtu

— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) January 3, 2021

"It’s going to be the same old crap, frankly. It’s going to be people coming in without direct knowledge... giving some kind of hare-brained charge that can’t be validated."

"And we’re going to continue to do this. And every time we do it, every time we do something like this, as a country, as a state, as individuals, we’re taking more people out of the system. They’re going to say, 'This is crazy, I’m not going to vote anymore.' So yeah, there’s a hell of a lot of damage going on."

Said Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, referring to the hearing about the 2020 voting irregularities scheduled for today in the Wisconsin legislature. He's quoted in The Wisconsin State Journal.

The headline isn't about the state governor and the state legislature, but about the U.S. Senator: "Sen. Ron Johnson called 'delusional scum' for considering challenge to election." I thought that was a very strange headline. People are always insulting prominent individuals, so why is the fact that somebody hurled one particular epithet the subject of a headline? If the insult-hurler isn't important enough to name in the headline, why put one nasty insult in a headline? It would be different, perhaps, if thousands of people were using the word "scum" in reference to Ron Johnson or if "scum" — like "liar" or "thief" — constituted a specific factual allegation.

But The Wisconsin State Journal decided to make an article that featured not the Governor's statement — which only goes as far as "crap" and doesn't call any person "crap" (just the hearing) — out of this tweet:

This delusional scum continues to crawl further into 45's asshole instead of representing the people of WI who need survival checks and relief. The last time I spoke to his office, his staff assured me they would do more than provide lip service. This ain't it. https://t.co/EK4qSeUPpH

— Francesca Hong (@FrancescaHongWI) December 10, 2020

Who is Hong? The article just says she "was elected in November to represent Madison’s Downtown district." Elected to represent Madison’s Downtown district where? I had to look it up. The answer is in the state assembly. 

And why didn't The Wisconsin State Journal headline also call our attention to "45's asshole"? Hong's idea of where Johnson is crawling seems at least as newsworthy as her opinion of what he is made of. 

By the way, it's a mixed metaphor. Scum can't crawl. 

"The FBI was warned sections of the controversial Steele dossier could have been part of a 'Russian disinformation campaign to denigrate U.S. foreign relations'..."

"... according to newly declassified footnotes from a government watchdog report. The December report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz examined the FBI's investigation into alleged coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia as well as the FBI's four surveillance warrants for former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.... Several footnotes in Horowitz's report were redacted, and Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson pushed for the declassification of four footnotes related to the Steele dossier... Footnote 350 in the IG report addresses the FBI's knowledge of Russian contacts with Steele and the potential for disinformation. Steele had 'frequent contacts with representatives for multiple Russian oligarchs, we identified reporting the Crossfire Hurricane team received from (redacted) indicating the potential for Russian disinformation influencing Steele's election reporting.'..."

Writes Catherine Herridge at CBS News.

"That might be a strategy. But I’ll leave that up to others. I’m just a lowly worker."

Said Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, invited to give a quote for the Washington Post to use in its scintillating think-piece, "Republicans discuss a longer Senate impeachment trial to scramble Democratic primaries," scraped together by Robert Costa, Michael Scherer, and Seung Min Kim.

That's the first quote they have, and isn't it a shame, because they have this theory of what's going on in the heads of the various GOP Senators and they can't get the Senators to cough it up.

We're told Ron Johnson had a "coy smile" when he said that.

The article notes that the GOP Senators (if the House impeaches) will be able to choose whether to do a "lengthy trial" or to entertain a motion to dismiss and get dismissal and get it over very quickly.

The Democratic senators who remain in the presidential race have all said publicly that the impeachment proceedings are more important than political concerns...

Ha ha. They won't cough up their inner thoughts either!

Here are 2 GOP Senators who talk about the 2 options (trial or motion to dismiss) and speak, of course, only in terms of what is the right procedure:

“This is going to require a great deal of work, and I don’t think it should be rushed through,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection in 2020. Collins said any attempt to dismiss impeachment at the outset of a trial would be met with vocal opposition by a “lot of senators, who’d have misgivings and reservations about treating articles of impeachment that way.”...

“The sooner we’re done with this, the better,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). “Why just have people sitting around for this partisan sham? As soon as we possibly can dismiss this or vote along party lines, especially if the Democrats in the House limit the witnesses, I’ll move to do that.”

After 8 years, we finally got our 7th Circuit judge — as the Senate votes in defiance of Tammy Baldwin.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

The Senate voted along party lines to confirm Milwaukee attorney Michael Brennan to fill an opening on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The tally was 49-46. The seat has been open for more than eight years, the longest ever for the nation’s appellate courts.

The Senate gives lawmakers a chance to weigh in on a judicial nominee from their home state by submitting a blue-colored form called the “blue slip.” A positive blue slip signals the Senate to move forward with the nomination process. A negative blue slip, or withholding it altogether, signals a senator’s objection and almost always stalls the nomination.

Until this year, it had been nearly three decades since the Senate confirmed a judge without two positive blue slips. Brennan’s confirmation marked the second time it has happened this year. Baldwin declined to return her blue slip.

Wisconsin snark.

Washington, DC may be frozen from a ‘bomb cyclone,’ but in Wisconsin, this is perfectly good working weather. pic.twitter.com/uSFzmL4qmy

— Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) January 4, 2018

I'm seeing that because it was retweeted by one of my Senators, the other guy in the photograph, Ron Johnson.

Apparently these 2 men are getting together in a hallway in Washington, communing in some sort of Wisconsin way. Ryan, I take it, thinks he's low-key and amiable, but he's really saying these East Coasters are weather hysterics.

It's basically where I was coming from in my post yesterday, "After reading the news in the morning, I'm often surprised, when I go outside, at how warm the cold feels" ("It's quite absurd, the hysteria the news media wants us to come down with").

"This has been a long-stewing simmer for him, and after they cut him loose he was like, ‘Screw them, I owe them nothing.’”

“After the election, he made no secret of how pissed he was—he feels that he won that thing all on his own. They wrote him off for dead and cut all his money off... He was already left for dead and when you’re left for dead and you keep walking, there’s a pretty remarkable level of strength that comes with that.”

That's a quote in The Daily Beast from an unnamed "Wisconsin Republican political operative" in "Republicans Left Ron Johnson for Dead Last Year, Now He Could Kill Their Health Care Bill/Months after they left him cold and alone on the campaign trail, Sen. Ron Johnson is enjoying his newfound freedom from leadership."

ADDED: I'm skeptical of this story, so let me front-page something I wrote in the comments: 

Ron Johnson has such a modest, low-key Wisconsinite demeanor that it seems funny to me to picture him seething and cursing, just burning up and ready to go wild and break things.