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EXCERPT:
JOHNSON: “So everybody leaves and he and I are standing awkwardly in the middle of the Oval Office, right over the rug by that coffee table and I said, 'Mr. President, thanks for the moment. This is very important. I got some big national security things I need to talk to you about that I’ve heard, and I think you know. What do we do? But first, real quickly, Mr. President, can I ask you a question? I cannot answer this for my constituents in Louisiana. Sir, why did you pause LNG exports to Europe? Like, I don’t understand. You know, liquefied natural gas is in great demand by our allies. Why would you do that? Because you understand, we just talked about Ukraine, you understand you’re fueling Vladimir Putin's war machine because they got to get their gas from him?' And he looks at me stunned with this, and he said, 'I — I didn’t do that.' I said, 'Mr. President, yes, you did. It was an executive order like three weeks ago.' He goes, 'I didn't do that,' and he’s arguing with me. I said, 'Mr. President, respectfully, can I — could I go out here and ask your secretary to print it out? We will read it together. You definitely did that.' He goes, 'Oh, you’re talking about natural gas?' 'Yes, sir.' He said, 'No, no, you misunderstand.' He said, 'What I did is I signed this thing, we’re going to conduct a study on the effects of LNG.' I said, 'No, you’re not, sir, you paused it. I know. I have the terminals, the export terminals in my state, I talked to those people this morning. This is doing massive damage to our economy, national security.' It occurred to me, Bari, he was not lying to me. He genuinely did not know what he had signed. And I walked out of that meeting with fear and loathing, because I thought we’re in serious trouble. Who is running the country? Like, I don’t know who put the paper in front of him, but he didn’t know."