"You Can't Take Everybody"

This is where we are, for Congressman Hank Johnson: "I will give my life for the greater good, and I think everybody has to start taking that stance."

Hank Johnson at his office in Stonecrest, March 2025.

Strident commentary isn’t entirely unusual for Congressman Hank Johnson (D-Atlanta), but it’s usually delivered in small forums with limited press coverage. I have some formal Q-and-A pieces with other people in the pipeline, but as I sat with Johnson and a handful of wine distributors at his Stonecrest office this afternoon, I think it’s worth reprinting his comments as a soliloquy, because they are that on point. It is edited lightly, but if a line is in bold, it is absolutely verbatim.

People have been looking for some sense that Congress understands the gravity of the situation before us. Johnson, 70, is serving in his ninth term and is among the more senior members of the House Judiciary Committee. Kamala Harris’ plan to create term limits on the U.S. Supreme Court largely emerged from work he has been doing for years on judicial reform. Any serious proposal to unscrew the country runs through his ideas.

And in off-the-cuff commentary about the state of the American experiment, he is contemplating his own death in the conflicts to come.

This is where we are.

Rep. Hank Johnson: There’s no predictability now with the attack on the judicial system and the rule of law—which is the certainty that makes people comfortable putting their money into U.S. bonds. If it gets to a point where they feel uncomfortable about getting their money back—because of arbitrary and capricious decisions being made when disputes go to court—then that trust is lost.

So. All these big law firms that are settling with the administration are actually corrupting the adversarial system that underlies the rule of law in this country. Everybody has to have the ability to have lawyers to represent them. If lawyers can be bought off, and judges are being intimidated or threatened with impeachment for the decisions they make, and if the Department of Justice is corrupted— we are now prosecuting, as the President announced yesterday, a couple of people that he has directed the Department of Justice to investigate.

This comes just days after a court in New York dropped the case against Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York, who agreed to open up Rikers Island to the Trump administration for deportation purposes. The rule of law and the Justice Department are being manipulated. The rule of law has been attacked, and so is everything else—including the wine distribution industry.

The reason why is because there are oligarchs at the top looking to parse through the rubble of a destroyed network. I’m giving you a worst-case scenario: there will be businesses left standing—those friendly to the administration—who will be there to pick up the pieces. As soon as they’ve run you out of business, larger entities will step in. They’ll be the ones you get your product from.

The tariffs don’t make economic sense except as a way to force individuals and companies—both foreign and domestic—to come to Trump for some kind of waiver or relief. That’s what he’s setting up.

So the way this has to be fought [is as] you're fighting for your businesses and for your economic vitality and survival. The small businesses that make up the U.S. Wine Trade Alliance—that alliance needs to be talking with Republican senators and Republican representatives. You need to let them know they need to do something to stop this.

So. Some would say I’m being alarmist, or that I’m out in left field by talking about oligarchy and method to this madness. But there is a method to this madness, and it is to run folks out of business, and then from the rubble, pick up what's left for certain people. Just like they do in Russia. Just like Putin.

And so you’ve got to fight this, and you’ll have to fight it together. We’ve got to get Republican senators and representatives to take back this trade cull from Trump. We need to pass legislation that is out there. There are some vehicles out there to make that happen.

So, what I’m suggesting is that the beer and wine industry—along with other small businesses producing other widgets [laughter] should start to band together. Look at this through a worst-case-scenario lens, and start attacking it. Because the markets are already reacting. The administration needs to feel the business community. Maybe not the big business community.

Oh, and I forgot—on the topic of attacks on the rule of law—I left out the fact that he’s attacking the major New York and international law firms, who are submitting meekly, whereas other lawyers are not. There’s a bunch of other lawyers who are not submitting.

So, now the high-end wine industry is being targeted. Because you're smaller. I haven’t tied it all together yet, but there’s a reason they want you out of the way. Somebody wants to get you all out of the way. …

[Someone suggests Amazon’s interest in home alcohol delivery as motivation.]

You need a boogeyman. And Amazon makes a great boogeyman.

You all need to start telling this story—to yourselves and to others similarly situated—so that small businesses across America, whether they’re mechanic’s shops or small parts: you’ve got to get together and organize and fight this.

National strikes? I don’t know. Some way of getting in the way of this happening. Don’t let it happen. Don’t just sit back and be powerless about it, or fateful—in other words, “There’s nothing I can do.”

You’ve got to fight, even though I don’t know how to fight this. You’ve got to find a way. We’re here with you. Nationwide, we need to be having these discussions. …

Trump is a madman. He’s destroying everything that he puts his hand to. But he’s guided by profits. If someone tells him how to make money, that’s what he uses his position to do.

He’s actually going to get a piece of whoever comes out on top of this—if you all are wrecked and shattered, and someone else is positioned to take over the market, he’s going to get a percentage of what they make out of this situation.

Someone mentioned domestic wine production might only come online under a new administration. This guy isn’t planning to leave office. He’s not planning on leaving office.

And that may sound outlandish, but that’s why you attack the rule of law, and that’s why you start floating the idea of a third term. That’s why he told people during the election that “you vote for me this time, you’ll won’t have to vote for me again.”

“You won’t have to vote again,” is what he said. Not “vote for me.” You won’t have to vote again.

Everything he says, he means. Take him at his word. …

This is a very serious situation we’re faced with. And you know, if Trump decides not to follow a court order to bring this gentleman back from El Salvador, this Maryland guy; the court was very weak with its order. That’s not to say that they won’t get stronger in the future with their language, but they pretty much are deferring to Trump at the highest court of the land, pretty much giving him space but trying to wink at him, to let him know, “don’t go too far.”

They don’t want to give a cut-and-dry order. They’re doing everything they can to prevent itself from having to tell him to do something point blank, that “you cannot do this, reverse it and do this,” giving him every opportunity to voluntarily comply with their soft order, leaving it to the district court judge to put the screws in and then reserving the opportunity to come back and hear whether or not the district court judge did it right or not, so we can derail what the judge said based on, you know, the process. As opposed to the substance.

So the courts are doing everything it can not to cross Trump or join the issue directly, to put him in a position to where he says, “I'm not going to do it.” Maybe they don't want to see our democracy get to that point. Because if it does, and Trump says “I'm not going to comply with the court order,” then democracy is broken.

We are very close to that happening.

So, it'll be the markets and the business community that are going to be instrumental in getting Trump to change his mind about some things. It's going to be the business community. Not the legislative branch controlled by Republicans, they're too afraid to do anything against him.

I should be afraid, because Trump is actually out here talking about locking up Americans and sending them to El Salvador.

You have never seen a situation where you could just gather up some folks, load a plane and send them to a country they’re not from, and put them in a gulag in El Salvador and then say, “I can’t bring them back.”

Talking about undocumented immigrants—or not even undocumented, just … Hispanics off the street with a tattoo— you look like a gang member, and you’re subject to being swept up, put in an unmarked van, spirited a thousand miles away from home, and eventually shipped off to El Salvador or Rwanda, or some other place where you will dwell for the rest of your life.

He’s threatening—he said on the plane the other day that “I’d like to put folks who accost Americans citizens who can't abide by the law, they need to go. We need to send them down there. I think that would be okay.” He's already telling you what can happen to people who speak out against him.

So. I should be frightened. But I’m not. You can’t take everybody. If I end up being the one, then fine. I will give my life for the greater good, and I think everybody has to start taking that stance, that I will do everything that I can to try to save our democracy.

Because democracy is what built the greatest economy the world has ever known. But that that economy is getting ready to be eclipsed by China soon, because it's just a much bigger marketplace. We're the ones that they are modeling their free market—so called free market—with government-involved individuals heading up these various enterprises. Not quite a free market system.

Small business people are trying to get started in China. Yes, it's probably not anywhere near like it is here. But despite the lack of democracy, their economy is going to grow. And we are giving up ours, and we're becoming a third world country with a bunch of poor people who can't afford to buy a bottle of wine at the liquor store.