The Daily Beast attacked Speaker Mike Johnson in a story Wednesday over the Louisiana Republican's boringly normal financial situation.
According to the news outlet, Johnson manages a "extraordinarily precarious" financial situation. That's because his financial disclosure forms show that he and his wife do not own bank accounts stashed with cash; they hold no investments in the stock market, have no retirement accounts, and have taken on considerable debt in the form of a mortgage, a home equity loan, and a personal loan.
The Daily Beast used Johnson's situation to make three attacks:
- That Johnson is bad with money and thus not a fiscal conservative.
- That Johnson is "ripe for influence buying," according to the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics.
- That Johnson "plans to use his congressional position as a springboard to something more lucrative once he’s done in government."
The story gained viral attention on Wednesday after Matt Fuller, Washington bureau chief of the Daily Beast, posted the story to social media.
"Mike Johnson doesn't have any retirement savings, own a single stock, or have any assets at all. He has less than $5,000 in his bank account. He's got a 250-500K mortgage, a home equity loan, and a personal loan. So what's his retirement plan? To lobby?" Fuller suggestively wrote.
Reaction to the Daily Beast's story included:
It turns out that people aren't angry the new House speaker is, at least financially speaking, like a sizable percentage of Americans: not rich and scraping by on what he does have to provide for his family.
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