Sen. Johnson on Covid, Ukraine, Inflation and More

CLAY: We are joined now by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson. And Senator Johnson, I’ll start with this since we saw the vote yesterday: 57 to 40 in the Senate in favor of ending the mask mandate on airplanes, on trains, everything else, every Republican but Mitt Romney voted yes to do that.

And even eight Democrats voted as well in favor of ending that mandate, many of whom, four of them, at least, are up for reelection. This means independents are finally starting to get a little bit sane here, don’t you think, Senator Johnson, and recognizing that we’re in an absurd situation to be continuing with these pandemic restrictions two years into this process?

SEN. JOHNSON: It certainly proves that public opinion is important and it helps sway votes. I noticed a Wall Street Journal opinion poll said about 5% of Americans think covid is the number-one issue facing us. I think people are ready to get on with their lives. Unfortunately, a lot of covid cartel is not.

They want to continue to push the state of fear. They want to continue to control our lives. And that’s unfortunate, but I think the vast majority of Americans just want the pandemic over and move on with their lives.

BUCK: Senator Johnson, it’s Buck. How do you think the Biden administration is handling — you probably saw earlier today the short speech he gave a on the situation with Ukraine, there was the Zelensky address to Congress this morning. Put aside that this war shouldn’t have happened in the first place and we all agree it’s terrible, is the Biden administration making the right moves right now? What would you want them to do differently?

SEN. JOHNSON: I think the fact that President Zelensky felt he had to come before a joint session of Congress and plead for the help he actually needs that Ukrainian people actually need to defend themselves against the atrocity and war crimes of Putin I think is pretty well proof that Biden is not doing what he should be doing.

We should have obviously supplied them a lot more lethal defensive weaponry before Putin ever invaded Ukraine. What we should have also done is taken a full inventory of what other military assets would be available should Putin invade like the SU-300 anti-aircraft surface-to-air missiles, like the MiG jets, and we should have got that to Ukraine quietly without anybody knowing it whatsoever until those missiles slammed into some Russian jets. But that’s not what happened.

We had a mini-debacle with the whole dispute over the MiG jets, denying Zelensky some, I think, probably pretty helpful assets. As we saw, they undertook an air strike against an airfield that Russia had taken over.

Listen. The Ukrainians are showing such courage and, quite honestly, skill. In many places they seem to be fighting Russia to a standstill. They’re initiating counter-offenses right now. They need support. And, unfortunately, the Biden administration has been slow, they’ve been dragged in supplying the support. It’s really shameful.

CLAY: Senator Johnson, how much are you concerned — there’s been a lot of talk about the jets and what exactly should happen with all of these jets and whether we should allow Ukrainian pilots to potentially come in to Germany and take these jets back into Ukraine. Should we? And where is the line, if we are concerned, where we move from providing support, to engaging in some way in direct conflict with Russia, in your mind?

SEN. JOHNSON: I think everybody agrees we want to avoid direct conflict. But providing them — what’s the difference between a MiG jet that can knock down a jet or a Stinger missile that can do the same thing? I mean, we’re providing them lethal defensive weaponry. Nobody’s contemplating Ukrainian’s gonna use those for offensive operations into Russia. Defend their homeland, their freedom, their families, their children. That’s completely appropriate.

You know, one thing we’re not talking enough about, though, is providing information to the Russian people. We’ve seen some very courageous Russians protesting, that one news producer, her protest. We need the Russian people to understand what Putin is doing. The best-case scenario right now is for the Russian people to depose Vladimir. We need to do everything we can to get the Russian people up to speed with what’s actually happening because, let’s face it: Putin is very effective as controlling the media; so that’s something we really ought to triple, quadruple our efforts to inform the Russian people what’s happened. They don’t support this war. They don’t really understand what’s happening.

BUCK: Speaking to Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Senator, the Fed is raising interest rates, first time it’s happened since 2018. A lot of us are looking at this trajectory of the economy with, you know, Biden year one in the books. Year two looks like it’s gonna be really shaky. Folks are talking stagflation. Some are even talking recession. What do you see happening here?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, I’ve been warning about stagflation for well over a year. I stopped voting for this covid relief after the CARES Act because every time we’d vote for a new trillion-dollar covid relief package, we had a trillion left unspent from the previous session.

I started hearing from Wisconsin businesses pretty early on that, just like when I started my business in the early eighties when price increases were expected and readily accepted, and then 30 years it’s like pulling teeth getting a a price increase, once we started opening up the monetary spigots and just flooded the economy with trillions of dollars, we were sparking inflation.

And so for at least over a year businesses once again are in the position where price increases are expected, they’re accepted. Of course I think we’re in a wage price spiral right now where the wage gains people have enjoyed have been wiped out by inflation. I just remember how incredibly difficult it was to break that cycle and it required two people of enormous courage, Ronald Reagan and Paul Volcker to do that in the early eighties. I’m not seeing a whole lot courage here in Washington, D.C., today; so I am highly concerned about not only inflation really harming American families, but stagflation on top of that.

CLAY: Senator Johnson, we’re coming up on obviously mid-March, and soon people, including yourself — and I’d encourage people listening on our number-one affiliate there we’re ranked the best in the city of Milwaukee to be supporting you — all over Wisconsin as people are listening to us.

What is going to happen, in your mind, in Congress between now and when everybody goes back and starts officially campaigning in the summer and the fall season? Do you think we try to get — the Biden administration does — a tax increase? Do they try to break up some of the parts of Build Back Better and pass that? Or do you think, by and large, we’re kind of not gonna have a lot of activity in Congress in terms of passing bills? How do you read the tea leaves as a Democratic strategy based on what you see on the Hill right now?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, my concern is, for whatever reason, Democrats always want to increase taxes on the American public. You know, President Biden said that he wasn’t gonna increase taxes on anybody making less than $400,000, but it’s important to note that inflation is the Democrat tax on the middle class. But there certainly seems a desire on the part of Democrats to spend more money to tax the hard-earned, you know, fruit of labors of the American public so I’m always concerned about that. I’ve got my antenna up.

Hopefully, they’ll run out of time. Again I am concerned about that because, let’s face it, Joe Biden is actually saying the solution is to inflation and he’s backed up by a compliant media is literally more deficit spending. It’s insane. It makes no sense. That’s what they actually say. And you gotta be careful. You gotta watch what they say because they actually carry out as best they can.

CLAY: Senator Johnson, I get — yeah. Building on that, when do you think the congressional session will be over and basically the clock will be run out and everybody will pivot towards midterms? Is it July? When are you anticipating, hey, we’re out of D.C. and people don’t have to worry about tax increases occurring in 2022 and we can go vote in the midterms?

SEN. JOHNSON: Well, one of two scenarios. Either we reach the August recess, and I think that pretty much campaign mode, or the public opinion polls continue to turn south to a point where Democrats really are afraid that they may be looking a blowout election here. I think that’s — to a certain extent we’re starting to see that scenario, which evidence of that is what happened with the — the anti-mask mandate vote in the Senate.

CLAY: Yes.

SEN. JOHNSON: So even Democrats are concerned about polls. It’s not the science that’s changed on this stuff. The polls have changed.

BUCK: Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, sir, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming by.

SEN. JOHNSON: I appreciate again, RonJohnsonForSenate.com. I have to add that in there. I need a lot of support.

CLAY: We encourage everybody to go check out your website and support you as much as they can. Thank you, Senator.