“I’m just a regular guy,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told Katie Miller with his wife, Kelly, sitting next to him for the Katie Miller Podcast. “We’re simple people,” Johnson later added as the couple discussed everything from how Mike doesn’t like mayonnaise, bananas or candy corn to what he thinks about the hit show “Dancing with the Stars.”
“We’re very simple people, yeah,” Kelly Johnson affirmed.
For the record, as Katie and Kelly giggled about the contestants dancing the Cha-Cha, Mike chimed in with a grin, “This is such a girl show.”
It’s the first of Katie’s cute couple interviews in which she sits down with members of the Trump administration and their wives. This week’s guests are the Hegseths, where Katie asks the TheoBro who is accused of war crimes and mass murder how he likes his wings.
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, and his wife, Katie Miller, an aide for DOGE, attend the White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday, April 21, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
At first glance, everything looks like a fun time. Katie has her infectious smile, trendy style and potentially hilarious “Would-you-rather” questions. You’d have no idea she goes home after the interview to Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff who angrily yells at a funeral: “You have nothing! You are nothing! You are wickedness! You are jealousy! You are hatred! You are nothing!”
You’d have no idea how Mike Johnson has used his power to promote discrimination against LGBTQ people or how he ignorantly declares, “Go pick up a Bible … that’s my worldview.”
Whether interviewing the Hegseths, the Johnsons or whoever else she may have on next, Miller’s goal seems to be to normalize the way these men view marriage. That’s ironic given these same people are always so concerned that any portrayal of LGBTQ people simply existing for a few seconds of screen time might normalize same-sex marriage.
Since they care so much about what is being normalized, perhaps we should take a look at Miller’s interview with the Johnsons to see what sort of marriage they want to see normalized.
‘The good man scorns the wicked’
Their interview begins by casting the difference between Republicans and Democrats as a dichotomy between goodness and wickedness.
“The Bible says that you’re supposed to bless those who persecute you. I mean, that’s heavy. That’s heavy,” Mike begins as he tells how he feels about the Democrats coming after him. “But there’s also a favorite Psalm that we always repeat to one another. Psalm 37. And it says, ‘Do not fret when men succeed in their wicked ways.”
Remember what Miller’s husband declared at Charlie Kirk’s funeral. Those of us who oppose the Trump administration are “wickedness.”
But what does that have to do with marriage? For the Johnsons, goodness in marriage means keeping God at the center. “Keeping the Lord the center of our marriage is how we keep it strong,” Kelly Johnson explains. “In fact, that’s the only way to do this, through each of us having our own personal walks with him, with the Lord, and then of course as a couple.”
And because these couples interpret reality as a hierarchy of authority and submission, ultimately being good requires sorting out who gets the final say.
Who’s in charge
“Which one of you has veto power at home?” Katie asks.
Mike laughs and points to Kelly.
“Probably me,” Kelly responds, also laughing.
“100 percent,” Mike agrees. “A man has to know his place.”
That’s an interesting choice of words given complementarian Southern Baptists often talk about women knowing their place in the home. At one point in their interview, Mike credits a Southern Baptist pastor for teaching them to say they don’t have arguments but “intense fellowship.”
But why are they laughing while talking about the wife having veto power at home? The more they continue talking, the more patronizing and belittling to women their narrative begins to feel.
At one point, Mike mentions a contest he once helped with in Louisiana to find the couple who had been married the longest. “It turned out this elderly Black couple,” he said. Then he began impersonating the Black man telling him the secret to a happy marriage.
“Lean in real close,” Mike begins in a deep Southern drawl. “It’s two things. Uh, let her think she’s the boss … and buy her a new car every three years.”
The three of them laugh as they talk about how the wife couldn’t drive the car but had a beautiful shiny car in the driveway. There’s no reflection on there needing to be a boss in marriage, or on men letting women think they’re the boss. Mike simply jokes, “She clearly is the boss.”
Men are waffles and women are spaghetti
The three continue yucking it up as they talk about the differences between men and women, specifically in the way they think and process feelings.
“I had my feelings surgically removed back in the ’80s, so they can’t hurt my feelings,” Mike jokes.
“When things get particularly intense in politics, Mike has to make sure it’s not too much for Kelly to handle.”
When things get particularly intense in politics, Mike has to make sure it’s not too much for Kelly to handle. “Sometimes I have to throttle back because I don’t want her to carry the entire load that I have because it’s too much,” he says. But it’s not because they process emotions differently from one another as individuals. Instead, Mike says it’s because, “Men and women are different in … that men can compartmentalize things.”
“Men’s brains are like waffles,” Kelly adds. “They have little compartments and they can think on one little compartment at a time and close it. And men actually have a compartment that has nothing in it. So when you ask him, ‘What are you thinking about?’ And he says, ‘Nothing,’ he means it. … But women, we cannot do that. We are always thinking. In fact, our brains are like spaghetti because it’s the meatballs, the pasta, the sauce, the oregano. We’re thinking all of it and we can’t stop thinking.”
At one point, Kelly says Mike is “kind of like a robot sometimes. He has like a button. He can just turn that button off, lays down, and he’s out.”
Miller responds, “Men can do that.”
“They can,” Kelly affirms. “It’s really incredible.
“I cannot,” Miller admits.
“I can’t either,” Kelly agrees.
Then Mike chimes in by adding, “See, you’re wired different.”
Of course, all this is pseudoscientific nonsense. People process information and stress differently as individuals, not on the basis of gender binaries. Given how experience shapes the brain, many of these assumptions would seem to come from the different experiences men and women have based on the roles they’re given in society, not based on any innate scientific difference between men and women.
“Of course, all this is pseudoscientific nonsense.”
But a lot of conservatives think it’s fun to imagine men are able to handle pressure and make decisions without being overwhelmed by emotion while that is all too much for women.
Thus, in the world of Katie Miller and the Johnsons, eventually the conversation gets to putting women in their place.
Women’s roles
A lot of the patriarchy dynamics they were promoting are revealed in the assumptions behind their words. For example, when discussing Mike’s job as speaker of the House, Kelly says, “I just tried to get rid of as many things as possible and simplify so we could focus on doing this job and doing it well and still having a great marriage and taking care of the family.” In other words, the primary focus for their family was Mike’s calling. As his helpmeet, Kelly’s role is simply to help Mike focus on his job.
“She’s my most trusted adviser,” Mike explains. Again, the language being used here sets Mike up as the one doing the real work, or the one with the authority. Kelly’s role is that of an adviser.
Then Miller asks Kelly, “What advice would you give to moms who struggle with a husband who is working a ton, traveling a ton, and still carrying the burden of raising and being the primary parent at home?”
Notice how she doesn’t ask the same question about dads who stay home.
“If your husband is gone a lot, I would say have fun with the kids, enjoy them, invest in them, and then invest in yourself,” Kelly responds. “Take care of yourself. Do something for yourself, whether it’s exercising or going out with your friends or possibly if you want to work, you know, or have a little part-time job, something that keeps you going and gives you something of your own.”
A little part-time job?
That gives her something of her own?
And that gets to the heart of the problem here. When women are made to think they’re the boss at home, are defined as emotional mind spaghetti who can’t handle stress like men, and who are relegated to the role of advisers, they don’t actually have any ownership in life. Instead, they are owned.
They’re made to feel better about it all by being allowed to have a shiny car sitting in their driveway, by getting their nails done or by watching “a girl show” about dancing.
And then despite how all these messages are dehumanizing women and empowering men, they’ll be shared by conservatives on social media who completely lack awareness of these dynamics because a fun YouTuber like Katie Miller normalizes them by making them look like regular, simple people.
As Jesus once said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful but inside are full of the bones of the dead.”
Rick Pidcock
Rick Pidcock is a 2004 graduate of Bob Jones University, with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible. He’s a freelance writer based in South Carolina and a former Clemons Fellow with BNG. He completed a Master of Arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary. He is a stay-at-home father of five children and produces music under the artist name Provoke Wonder. Follow his blog at www.rickpidcock.com.
Related articles:
Johnson gives ‘glory to God’ for Trump’s big bill but others say God is mocked
The hypocrisy of House Speaker Mike Johnson | Analysis by Rodney Kennedy
Is it weird that Mike Johnson’s underage son is his porn accountability partner? | Analysis by Rick Pidcock