With 82 other Republicans, Emmer opposed Trump-backed efforts to overturn the results of the election. In other words, while Emmer is certainly not a Democrat, and is not even a reliable defender of the right to vote, he chose at a critical juncture in American history to fulfill one of democracy’s most basic constitutional functions: certifying the peaceful transfer of power.

Because of that stance, Emmer’s speakership bid was doomed, and Republicans quickly chose a new, more Trump-deferent prospect. Despite a record that makes him the least experienced speaker since the 19th century, Johnson was immediately hailed by the former president as a “spectacular” choice for the top spoke in the House. Johnson’s not all that much more right-wing than Emmer on fiscal, foreign policy, or social issues—although the Louisianan’s rigid, and extremely outspoken, opposition to abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights is notable even among Republicans.

Johnson sought the speakership with the one qualification that matters to Trump: a disregard for democracy. After the 2020 election results made it clear that Trump had lost, the representative from Louisiana urged the defeated Republican president to “keep fighting” the outcomes, promoted conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, and became, as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has noted, “a key architect of the January 6th strategy to overturn the US election.”

A lawyer, Johnson organized an amicus brief that was signed by more than 100 House Republicans in support of a move by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to invalidate electoral votes from four swing states that had backed Biden: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In an e-mail that Johnson circulated asking colleagues to sign on, the Louisiana Republican wrote, “President Trump called me this morning to express his great appreciation for our effort to file an amicus brief in the Texas case on behalf of concerned Members of Congress. He specifically asked me to contact all Republican Members of the House and Senate today and request that all join on to our brief.”

Ominously, Johnson added in a memo to Republicans who feared the 45th president’s political disfavor that Trump “said he will be anxiously awaiting the final list to review.”

Paxton’s suit crashed and burned ,offering a reminder that neither he, nor Johnson, was particularly familiar with—or respectful of— well-established laws and precedents governing presidential elections and the Election College.

But Trump approved of the partisan boondoggle, as he did Johnson’s rallying of the 139 House Republicans who supported at least one of the objections to certifying electoral votes from swing states that favored Biden.

All of this would seem to have been consequential to Americans as the relatively unknown Johnson emerged Tuesday as the front-runner in the race to replace McCarthy. By any reasonable measure, it mattered that someone with so much disregard for democracy was being positioned to serve as the leader of the chamber that will certify the results of the 2024 presidential election—in which Trump is again running—and who would, if chosen, be second in the line of succession for the presidency.

But Johnson and his fellow House Republicans didn’t see it that way. At the Tuesday press conference where caucus members circled around Johnson and formally launched his speakership bid, ABC News congressional reporter Rachel Scott asked about the role the Louisianan had played in seeking to overturn 2020 election results. Johnson refused to answer, but his face lit up as his colleagues booed the reporter. And he beamed when House Education and Labor Committee chair Virginia Foxx, a North Carolinian who makes Jim Jordan seem levelheaded, repeatedly shouted for the reporter to, “Shut up!”

A day later, Mike Johnson was sworn in as speaker of the House. And the answer of House Republicans to those who raise concerns about the perilous state of American democracy is now, formally and unequivocally, “Shut up!”