Wednesday's split-screen news cycle presented an ironic juxtaposition regarding the current state of American democracy.

On one side was the continuing saga of Donald Trump's former lawyers and advisers flipping on him to work with prosecutors investigating his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

On the other side was the swearing-in of newly minted House Speaker Mike Johnson, one of the key players in that electoral scheme — who now sits second in line to the presidency.

In finally breaking a logjam that had the House speakerless and paralyzed for three weeks, House Republicans have solved one problem for the nation while potentially creating a bigger one.

Though little-known to most Americans and notably lacking in the bombast that characterizes so many of his fellow MAGA politicians, Johnson's quiet role in the attempted coup of Jan. 6, 2021, was more substantive than that of most of the loudmouthed demagogues in Trump's orbit.

Johnson, an attorney elected to the House from Louisiana in 2016, was the author and chief promoter of a brief to the Supreme Court arguing that the election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — all won by Joe Biden — shouldn't be certified because officials in those states had loosened policies regarding early voting and mail-in voting in light of the pandemic raging in 2020.

It was an attempt to deny the votes of a wide swath of Americans based on the most cynical of technicalities. The Supreme Court threw it out immediately.

But as The New York Times noted in an extensive analysis last year (in a piece that dubbed Johnson "the most important architect of the Electoral College objections"), his efforts gave a patina of legal legitimacy to the generally unhinged overthrow attempt, which likely drew more House Republicans to it than would otherwise have signed on.

Despite the failure of his argument in court, Johnson ultimately joined 138 of his Republican House colleagues in voting to reject election results.

This is the man who swore Wednesday to defend the Constitution against "all enemies, foreign and domestic" — something he assertively declined to do before and during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

With Trump likely to be the 2024 Republican nominee, will Johnson use his new powers as House speaker to thumb the scales toward a constitutional crisis that could throw a close election to either a House vote or the Supreme Court? Either outcome would work in Trump's favor, even if he hasn't legitimately won.

Johnson has never repudiated his role in the attempted election overthrow. In fact, in a press conference prior to Wednesday's speakership vote, Johnson shrugged off a reporter's question about it — then stood smiling as his fellow Republican House members shouted down the reporter with "shut up" and "go away."

It was a disgraceful display of political arrogance and a reminder that most of the GOP House majority still doesn't get it: The entire attempt to overturn the 2020 election was an illegitimate, arguably criminal, demonstrably dangerous attack on Americans' fundamental right to have their votes counted. Any involvement in it at all should be politically disqualifying. Instead, one of democracy's assailants now has one of America's biggest gavels.

While we disagree with Johnson's policy stances on just about everything — he's a hard-right "no" on abortion rights, LGBTQ rights and further aid to Ukraine, to name a few — that's not even the issue. The next speaker was always going to be conservative on policy.

But true conservatives, who traditionally care about rule of law and fealty to the Constitution, should consider that the House is now led by a man who assertively attempted to disenfranchise millions of voters at the behest of a president determined to hold onto power despite having been voted out of office.

That is not conservative at all. And it should give pause to anyone, of any party or political philosophy, who values democracy.

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