It’s becoming an unfortunate trend to have the Speaker of the House step in during crisis moments when a leader is required, and none can be found in the White House. Speaker Johnson went to Columbia University because the moment demands a leader.

Our readers will remember that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy stepped up after the Maui wildfires and right after the October 7th attacks – all while the Biden White House dithered and fussed and gaffed instead of stepping up to lead. And now, Speaker Mike Johnson goes to Columbia to stand up for the civil rights of Jewish students, because no leadership is apparently available within the Biden-Harris administration.

Seriously, where the hell is Kamala Harris right now? We know where Joe Biden is – cognitively incapable of making any decisive action and trying to win the Hamas vote in Michigan. But where is Madam Vice President, she with the Jewish husband? She who is waiting just offstage for the moment Old Joe fails to make it up the short flight of stairs on Air Force One? The politically smart thing for Kamala Harris to do, would be to go to Columbia herself and stand up for the civil rights of the Jewish students, and all the students who are now having to attend their very expensive university online for the rest of this semester while professors walk out of class to go cosplay with the students in their tents. Kamala Harris could actually help herself and Joe Biden by standing up at Columbia against anti-Semitism. But she can’t do it, because first of all, she’s a coward, and second, she probably agrees with the LARPers on the lawn. The Biden-Harris administration is hopelessly in thrall to the hard left, and aside from lip service, cannot be bothered to stand up on principle if it’s going to piss off the radical base. But please don’t film these radicals, because they’re just looking for some privacy.

Once again, I’ve been told by Columbia pro-Palestine campers not to film them: pic.twitter.com/bzDrUGk9wB

— Rikki Schlott (@RIKKISCHLOTT) April 24, 2024

With the president fecklessly carping about both sides, and the vice president missing in action, Speaker Johnson is stepping up. Before he even got to campus, he was calling for the resignation of Columbia’s utterly useless president, Minouche Shafik.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called for Columbia University’s president to resign Wednesday, ahead of his visit to the school.

“This President Shafik has shown to be a very weak, inept leader. They cannot even guarantee the safety of Jewish students? They are expected to run for their lives and stay home from class? It’s maddening,” Johnson said in a radio interview with Fox News’s Hugh Hewitt.

Columbia announced this week classes would be hybrid the rest of the semester because of the unrest and safety concerns.

“What we are seeing on these college campuses across the country is disgusting and unacceptable and every leader in this country, every political official, every citizen of good conscience has to speak out and say that, ‘This is not who we are in America,’” Johnson said. He added there must be “accountability, and that is what my colleagues and I will be working on.”

All 10 Republican lawmakers from New York, along with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), have called on Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to resign.

Yeah, President Shafik is doing a stellar job of bringing the campus back into order. I don’t see a lot of leadership here.
https://twitter.com/georg3/status/1783142134167613794
Hilariously, Governor Kathy Hochul, who had no problem with the Democrat delegation that visited Columbia on Monday, is now whining that Speaker Johnson is showing up at all.

“I think politicizing this and bringing the entourage to put a spotlight on this is only adding to the division,” Hochul said of his afternoon visit to the tumult on the Manhattan campus. “A speaker worth the title should really be trying to heal people and not divide them, so I don’t think it adds to anything.”

She added he’d be better off working on a border deal as New York continues to grapple with a surge of migrants.

“It seems to me there’s a lot more responsibilities and crises to be dealt with in Washington,” the Democratic governor said. “I’d encourage the speaker to go back and perhaps take up the migrant bill, the bill to deal with closing the borders, so we can deal with the real crisis that New York has.”

Boo-hoo. Maybe if you were leading, Governor, and putting pressure on Columbia to preserve the civil rights of their students, Speaker Johnson wouldn’t be showing up to point out the failures of your president and his administration. Besides, it’s not like you want the border closed, anyway – you just want money.

The speaker said that he would be sharing a meal with some of the students who are still celebrating Passover, and then hold a press conference along with other members of a congressional delegation that would be going with him, which consisted of most of the New York Republican delegation. The presser at Columbia by Speaker Johnson expressed zero confidence in President Shafik, and protesters were trying to drown out the Speaker.

The protesters are just proving Speaker Johnson’s point. Columbia has lost control of the situation, and the institution has fallen. Johnson later said in response to a press question that he plans on calling Joe Biden to inform him about what they have seen. I expect the president will continue to do exactly what his administration has been doing – nothing.

Featured image: Mike Johnson, official Congressional portrait by Ike Hayman, cropped, public domain