For Turner, Maybe The Writing Was Always On The Wall

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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) came out swinging on Thursday in the wake of news that Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had removed the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), and replaced him with a MAGA loyalist.

In a statement, Jeffries called the move “shameful.”

Mike Turner is a serious, thoughtful and highly-principled leader, whose work as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee has been extremely impactful. Throughout his time in the House of Representatives, Chairman Turner has upheld his oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies and championed our national security interests. Mike Turner has robustly promoted the safety of the American people and the Free World and his unjustified ouster is likely being applauded by our adversaries in Russia and China. Shameful. 

But the odds of Turner holding on to such a power post during the 119th Congress with Donald Trump in the White House were, perhaps, always low — and not just because of his reputation as a foreign policy hawk. While Johnson denies it, the New York Times reports that Johnson’s decision to boot Turner was just another Trump fealty test: according to the Times, Johnson told Turner as much.

Turner has been vocal about the U.S. preserving its relationships with NATO allies and supporting Ukraine during Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country, the latter of which has made him an outsider among MAGA Republicans.

Johnson replaced Turner with a Trump loyalist, Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), and maintains that the decision was just part of a 119th Congress fresh start.

“It’s a new Congress,” Johnson told reporters Thursday. “We just need fresh horses in some of these places.”

There’s another reason Turner may be out of favor with the president-elect: He was among the minority of Republicans who went against Trump in January 2021 and voted to certify the results of the 2020 election — a member of a disintegrating class of Republicans within the current Congress. Many of those who bucked Trump in favor of the Constitution have since left, some forced out in the face of more MAGA primary challenges. Many of those who remain have strived in the years since to burnish their MAGA credentials.

“I am appalled at what is occurring in the U.S. Capitol right now,” Turner tweeted on Jan. 6 during the Capitol attack. “President Trump needs to call for an end to this violence and permit Congress to facilitate a peaceful transition of power.”

Turner would later go on to criticize and vote against Trump’s second impeachment, calling it a “snap impeachment” — perhaps in his own bid to get back in Trump’s good graces.

If so, it was apparently not enough. Whether he chooses to stick around in Congress, where Republicans have control by margins that are verging on historically tight, remains to be seen.

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