Click here to read Politco article.

Here’s a video of him on Fox News.

Here’s RawStory about Raj Shah:

Mike Johnson hires ex-Trump official accused of being ‘one of the most egregious liars’

Excerpt:

“Shah previously spent four years as senior vice president for public affairs at Fox Corporation. Before that, he served as a top communications official in the Trump White House, and was research director at the Republican National Committee during the 2016 campaign.”

When Shah worked communications at the White House, he was known for a number of controversies, including his claim that adult film star Stormy Daniels was lying about the alleged hush payment to her from Trump and that “The president is the only one who has been consistent.” Trump is now under indictment for that financial arrangement.

More recently, when Shah was working at Fox News, he was caught at the center of the fury surrounding the network’s $800 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for defamation about their voting equipment, having allegedly helped push the false claims, and left the company shortly after.

“One of Donald Trump’s first press hires in the White House and one of the most egregious liars who worked for him,” House staffer Aaron Fritschner posted on X. “They don’t call this guy ‘MAGA Mike’ Johnson for nothing folks.”

I expect we will soon be hearing Raj Shah telling us things that he knows aren’t true as he speaks for MAGA Mike Johnson who may or may not know that his claim that the election was stolen is a lie, but more than likely believes that Noah’s ark saved life on earth not all that long ago if you believe God created the Earth in seven days about 6,000 years ago. Reference.

Apparently according to evangelicals who literally interpret the Bible God got pissed off with the way his human handiwork turned out and decide to reboot the planet with a flood that would wipe out all life and instruct Noah to make his ark to repopulate the planet. I suppose for unknown reasons the only way to do this was by covering all the land masses with water and drown all land creatures rather than just get rid of all the bad people and start over with a new Adam and Eve.

So we have Noah’s birth, which occurred about 1,056 years after the creation of Adam. Then, in Genesis 7:11, we are told that the flood came in the 600th year of Noah’s life, so that would mean the Great Flood came approximately 1,656 years after Adam was created in Eden. Using a similar method places the creation of Adam and Eve at around 4004 BC. So, doing the math, Noah’s flood occurred in approximately 2348 BC. Reference.

My impression is that we won’t hear MAGA ike, perhaps best called Mystical Mike, reiterating the things he believes about pesky things like how God created the Earth about 6,000 years ago and what He decided to do after that, and how He promulgated a list of rules (mostly laid out in Leviticus, The Third Book of Moses, in the Old Testament, with lots of admonitions and recommendations of killing transgressors. You can get an idea of what Mystical MAGA Mike believes from reading the part of the sex obsessed part Bible in the Skeptics Anotated Bible here.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction to the portion on Leviticus.

The first line is “I wouldn’t read Leviticus if I were you. No one else does.” My impression is that this is the primary book of the Bible that Miracle MAGA Mike and his wife read and heed.

The Bible Skeptic goes on: 

Instead, I’ll summarize it for you: Get an animal, kill it, sprinkle the blood around, cut the dead animal into pieces, and burn it for a “sweet savor unto the Lord.”

Here are the gory details:

• “All the fat is the Lord’s.” 3:16
• Moses puts blood on Aaron’s right ear, thumb, and big toe. 8:23-24
• God kills Aaron’s sons for offering “strange fire before the Lord.” 10:1-2
• Hares are unclean since they chew the cud. 11:6
• Bats are just unclean birds. 11:13,19
• Four-legged birds are an abomination to God. 11:20
• Insects have four legs. 11:21, 23
• Baby girls are twice as dirty as baby boys. 12:1-8
• God’s cure for leprosy. 14:2-32
• What to do if “he that hath the issue spit upon him that is clean.” 15:8
• What to do “if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him.” 15:16-18
• Menstruating women are unclean to God. 15:19-30
• God’s law for wet dreams. 15:16-17, 32
• Don’t look at any naked menstruating women. 18:19
• Homosexuality is an abomination to God. 18:22
• Don’t mix seeds when sowing a field or wear a garment with mixed fibers. 19:19
• If you have sex with a slave woman, you must then scourge her. 19:20
• Don’t round the corners of your head or mar the corners of your beard. 19:27
• Children who curse their parents, adulterers, and homosexuals must be killed. 20:9-12
• Woman with “familiar spirits” must be stoned to death. 20:27
• The unchaste daughters of priests must be burnt to death. 21:9
• Handicapped people must not approach the altar. 21:16-23
• A man curses and blasphemes while disputing with another man. Moses asks God what to do about it. God says that the whole community must stone him to death. “And the children of Israel did as the Lord and Moses commanded.”  24:10-23
• God’s instructions for buying slaves. 25:45-46
• “Ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.” 26:16
• God will “send wild beasts among you, which shall rob your of your children.” 26:22
• “And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.” 26:29
• God places a dollar value on human life; women are worth less (50 – 60%) than men. 27:3-7

Click below to enlarge the index of the section on Leviticus.

Fortunately for Democrats, Johnson can’t erase all the things he, and also his wife, said that make them both look like they are bigotted evangelical fanatics.

Case in point: Mike Johnson’s wife removes website comparing LGBTQ+ relations to bestiality and incest: report (link Salon).

These bigoted and in some cases beliefs that buggers the imagination expressing literal intretpretions of the Bible will be used as necessary to good effect in the coming election by Democrats. This is why I wrote about how he is a gift to the Demorcats (here).

Addendum:

Whether it is fair to call the new Speaker Mystical Mike remains to be seen. There’s nothing wrong with being a mystic, lots of spiritual people are what I might call good mystics. However Mike, if he is, I’d consider to be a mean mystic. Below is from Wikipedia:

Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute,^[1][2] but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning.^{[web 1]}It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.^{[web 2]}

The term “mysticism” has Ancient Greek origins with various historically determined meanings.^{\[web 1][web} Derived from the Greek word μύω múō, meaning “to close” or “to conceal”, mysticism referred to the biblical, liturgical, spiritual, and contemplative dimensions of early and medieval Christianity. During the early modern period, the definition of mysticism grew to include a broad range of beliefs and ideologies related to “extraordinary experiences and states of mind.”

This is my version of the drawing Wikipedia used to illustrate this article: