Something you’ve probably picked up on over the last eight years and change is that the Republican Party is embarrassingly, slavishly devoted to Donald Trump, a man they treat like a cult leader who can do no wrong and for whom they’d happily drink cyanide if he asked. That’s how, for example, you can explain their deranged response to Hunter Biden being prosecuted and found guilty on gun charges, and it’s also how you can explain the leader of the House of Representatives agreeing to use the full weight of the federal government to go after Trump’s enemies and help him overturn a conviction by a jury of his peers.

Politico reports that shortly after he was convicted on 34 felony counts in New York, Trump called House Speaker Mike Johnson and, in between “frequent F-bombs,” told the Louisiana lawmaker that Congress must destroy the Democrats he claims have been “weaponizing” the Department of Justice against him. He also specifically demanded Johnson do something about his guilty conviction, reportedly saying, “We have to overturn this.”

Did Johnson respond by reminding Trump that he was found guilty in state court (over which Congress has no jurisdiction) or by telling the ex-president that he should set an example and respect the rule of law? Did he also remind Trump that he’s a devout Christian who uses special software to prevent himself from looking at pornography, so the idea that he would go to bat for a guy found guilty on charges stemming from paying hush money to a porn star would go against everything he claims to believe? We’ll give you two guesses, but you’ll likely only need one!

Per Politico:

The Speaker didn’t really need to be convinced, one person familiar with the conversation said: Johnson, a former attorney himself, already believed the House had a role to play in addressing Trump’s predicament. The two have since spoken on the subject multiple times.

While it’s not clear exactly what Johnson could do to help Trump overturn his conviction, the Speaker has already put pressure on his pals at the Supreme Court, saying in an interview earlier this month: “I think that the justices on the Court—I know many of them personally—I think they are deeply concerned about that, as we are. So I think they’ll set this straight.”

As for targeting the prosecutors with cases against Trump, Johnson is apparently all over it:

Johnson has also been in talks with Judiciary Committee chair and Trump ally Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) about using the appropriations process to target special counsel Jack Smith’s probe. It’s an apparent softening of his position: He said in a Politico interview last month that he found a similar idea by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) unworkable; now, he’s actually looking into it.

“That country certainly sees what’s going on, and they don’t want Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg and these kinds of folks to be able to continue to use grant dollars for targeting people in a political lawfare type of way,” Jordan told us.

On Thursday, Trump spoke with Republicans on Capitol Hill, his first appearance there since he incited a violent attack on the Capitol that his allies in the GOP don‘t think he should be held responsible for. And apparently it was as cringey and cult-y as one would expect: