46th President of the United States Joseph Robinette Biden—his name evokes some kind of response in everyone. People on the right say that he is an old incompetent man who, with his adrenochrome-drinking members of Congress, is ruining America with his “woke” politics. People on the left say he is not doing nearly enough and that he is an old man who should not be the voice of the new generation and his policies are center-left at best. Whatever you think of him, it’s probably not good or very positive about his term in office,

But regardless of all of this, we need to keep him in office.

Why? Trump. 

Now, this isn’t an attack on the Republican party, this is an attack on Trump. Many Republicans, like Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney, and Adam Kinzinger, just to name a few, agree that Trump is an existential danger to democracy despite being in the same party as Trump. These few Republicans understand that he is a wannabe dictator. 

No, that isn’t an opinion, he said.

At a town hall event in Iowa with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Hannity asked him a supposedly simple question, “Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” 

Trump quickly responded, “Except for day one,” He goes on to say that he vows to “close the border” and “drill, drill, drill,” (referring to oil.) This was met with applause and laughter from the audience. 

To not make it clear enough he said this after “I love this guy,” (Hannity) “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one” 

Now, Think about any other American politician and imagine them saying, “When I’m President, I am going to be a dictator for only one day to push my policies forward” Think about Obama or Bush or every Presidential nominee saying something similar. They would be crucified and would lose the support of both parties, and you would think to save what little of a reputation they have they would apologize for being so un-American. 

And yet, Trump is the exception to this. And guess what? He even doubles down on this. 

Trump said while delivering a speech to the New York Young Republican Club’s 111th Annual Gala, “I didn’t say that. I said I want to be a dictator for one day. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill.”

Trump wants to become dictator for a day—what does that mean? Is he going to have complete power for a day and just give up power? He wouldn’t even concede! Will he bypass the legislative branch? How? And he can already kinda do that, constitutionally, with executive orders.

So what's the point of saying he’s going to be dictator for a day? He’s testing his limits.

Trump, throughout his entire political career, has been testing what he can get away with. It began with calling Mexicans rapists, telling Americans to inject bleach to fight the COVID-19 virus, and telling his followers to fight on January 6th. 

January 6th is a great example of how Trump gets his dangerous ideas into the heads of followers because it came with the idea of the 2020 election being stolen by “Sleepy Joe”. He kept saying this throughout the months before January 6th, saying it louder and louder and adding more to the conspiracy, and then when he couldn’t win in the courts, he and his goons told their followers to fight like hell to save the stolen election, which resulted in an attempted coup on January 6th.

You can see this same strategy coming back, “dictator for a day”. He’s going to say more and louder and add to it— it’s a classic fascist move.

Another classic fascist move is calling people you don’t like vermin.

Dictators are elected because they are likable. One of the scariest things about Hitler was that he was elected, that people wanted him in power, and that he got that power.

Trump is a person that people love. No other president has stores created by their followers to sell merchandise with only his name and face on it. These people will do anything for Trump. They showed that on January 6th. And now Trump is asking for something truly un-American…complete power…It was met with applause.

The term dictator should have never been brought into the debate, but now here is where Trump has lowered the bar.

Say all you will about Biden, all the negatives, but he is not the existential threat to this country like Trump. At least under Biden, the news and media can mock him about anything.

But under a Trump dictatorship, we won’t have the freedom to debate. His politics will happen without question. 

America has to vote for Biden in 2024 because he wants to still be a President and not a Führer.

On October 25, 2023, after a three-week-long search for a new Speaker of the House of Representatives, Rep. Mike Johnson from Louisiana's 4th congressional district slipped his way in and won. And with that, something magical happened: all of America came together and collectively said “Who?”  

In all honesty, that’s the main reason why the GOP reps elected him in the first place: no one knows him, so he was a safe bet.

But as people did find out about him, what they found was that he was… weird. 

When I say “weird,” I mean really weird. Even weirder than the usual ultra-Christian Republicans.

Mike Johnson is so weird that he should not be a Speaker.

First off, he’s a notorious election denier. In 2020, he signed and helped lead the effort on an Amicus brief to overturn the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In a more sane world, his doing this would instantly make him an unfit and dangerous choice for Speaker, but because we live in the Upside Down, this is fairly normal in the GOP today (and, sadly, the least weird thing about him.)

Johnson is also weird with his son (his biological son, not his secret adopted son… who is only 11 years younger than him).

He is very open about the fact that both he and his son use a piece of technology called Covenant Eyes, the purpose of which is to stop anyone who subscribes to it from looking at adult content. This means his son and he both monitor each other’s “...usage…” of “...adult sites…” on the Internet.

Listen, there’s only so much I can say in a student newspaper.  Google it… assuming your dad and you aren’t using Covenant Eyes.

Forgetting for a moment how gross that is, Johnson openly admits that he is using a 3rd Party app that he claims “Scans…all the activity on your phone or your devices, your laptop, tablet.”

Think about that.  Are you comfortable that the man third in line from the presidency actually invited spyware onto his phone and willingly allowed all his information to be scanned?

Now I can go on about many other things. Like, he believes that the fall of the Roman Empire was because of "homosexual behavior” (not true by the way).  Or, how he worked closely with an organization that runs “gay conversion camps.”  Or, how he doesn’t seem to have any assets worth listing on his finance disclosure form… but we only have so much room.

What I want to talk about is his Christian Nationalist ideas.

Now, politicians are allowed to have religious beliefs. For instance, President Joe Biden is a devout Catholic who attends religious services regularly. You probably didn’t know that because he doesn’t center his policies on his Catholic beliefs or talk about them often.

That’s not Mike Johnson!

“Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview.” That’s Mike Johnson telling Fox News about his stance on every issue. He’s open about his want to put Christianity more and more in American politics. He thinks the US is not a democracy but a “biblical” republic and that “The separation of church and state is a misnomer.” All of this has made The New York Times call him the first Christian nationalist to be speaker. 

America isn’t a Christian nation, no matter how many far-right extremists scream it.  America is a secular country that allows for every religion to be practiced safely.  That same “separation of church and state” that Mike Johnson calls a “misnomer” is central to the very idea of this country. 

Former GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger put it perfectly on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert:

“The Bible is something that, you know, for me, I use it as a guide for my life. I'm a Christian, right? The Bible shows me how to live my life, but I think this country was founded on the idea that a representative represents not just people who share his faith or her faith but people that you represent-- 700,000 people that I represented, they all don't believe the same thing I do. I'm not any more of a congressman for a certain set of people than I am for others and that's what this country was founded on, the idea that we are going to protect churches existence but we're not going to be a government based on the church. That's what the Taliban tried out in Afghanistan is a government that's based simply on a religious focus. We can be people who are spiritual in government, but recognize that doesn't include anybody else who's atheist, Jewish, Muslim, or anything else in this country. This is a free country.”

Mike Johnson is a man who was willing to attack democracy on behalf of Donald Trump. He’s a man who is okay with spyware searching through his phone on behalf of weird religious taboos against adult content.  And, he’s a man willing to subvert his oath to the Constitution on behalf of his idea of God.

He is not a man who should be Speaker of the House.