House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wouldn\u2019t acknowledge Sunday that Joe Biden won the 2020 election when asked directly about the election denialism that former president Donald Trump continues to promote on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n
During a testy exchange on ABC News\u2019s \u201cThis Week,\u201d host George Stephanopoulos asked Johnson if he could say \u201cunequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Trump lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson declined, saying only that \u201cthis is the game that is always played by mainstream media with mainstream Republicans. It\u2019s a gotcha game.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo like Vance, you can\u2019t say,\u201d Stephanopoulos replied \u2014 referencing GOP vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), who during a debate last week also avoided answering whether Biden won the election, setting off one of the night\u2019s most memorable exchanges.<\/p>\n
During the interview Sunday, Johnson accused Stephanopoulos of trying to get him to \u201clitigate things that happened four years ago when we\u2019re talking about the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to talk about what happened in 2020,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cI\u2019m not going to engage in it. We\u2019re \u2014 we\u2019re not talking about that.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Stephanopoulos argued that Trump \u201cevery single day\u201d claims that the \u201celection was rigged, that he won and that Joe Biden lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying if you accept that or not,\u201d Stephanopoulos said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to play the game,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n
In the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, Johnson led a congressional effort to overturn the presidential results in four battleground states, gathering 125 House Republicans to join him in signing a Supreme Court brief claiming that the results were fraudulent because state election officials changed voting procedures \u2014 without first seeking legislative approval \u2014 to address the challenges of casting ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. That effort failed.<\/p>\n
Johnson was also among the Republicans who, on Jan. 6, 2021, voted against certifying the electoral college vote for Biden in two key battleground states.<\/p>\n
Johnson, a constitutional lawyer, has been a loyal top Trump ally since he first joined the House. The speaker has repeatedly visited the former president at his Mar-a-Lago estate, and he has served as a defender of Trump in Congress.<\/p>\n
Johnson\u2019s comments Sunday may draw scrutiny about what he might do between Election Day on Nov. 5 and Congress\u2019s certification of the vote on Jan. 6 if Trump does not win in the electoral college.<\/p>\n
The House speaker does not have any powers when it comes to the process of Congress certifying the results of an election. Additionally, Congress approved new safeguards in 2022, clarifying that a vice president\u2019s role in the certification process is largely ceremonial.<\/p>\n
Still, Johnson and other House Republicans could attempt to slow down or stymie the certification of the election by supporting GOP efforts to question the results through lawsuits, as they did in 2020.<\/p>\n
In the past few weeks, as Election Day approaches, Republicans other than Trump have repeatedly refused to engage with the question of whether they agree with Trump\u2019s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. During the vice-presidential debate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) vigorously pressed Vance on whether he believes Trump didn\u2019t win the last election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would just ask, did he lose the 2020 election?\u201d Walz said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTim, I\u2019m focused on the future,\u201d Vance said, without addressing the question.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a damning non-answer,\u201d Walz responded.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was asked on NBC News\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d if he could say \u201cdefinitively\u201d that Trump lost the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe Biden was elected president in 2020,\u201d Cotton said. \u201cIt was an unfair election in many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
The senator then claimed, without evidence, that election fraud happened in 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut did Trump lose?\u201d host Kristen Welker pressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe Biden was elected,\u201d Cotton replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut do you just not want to say that Trump lost? If Biden is president, can you just simply say Trump lost?\u201d Welker said.<\/p>\n
Cotton replied that Biden was, indeed, elected in 2020.<\/p>\n
Both Johnson and Cotton have long refused to acknowledge the results of the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
In January, Johnson told CBS News\u2019s Margaret Brennan during an interview on \u201cFace The Nation\u201d that while Biden was \u201ccertified as the winner of the election, he took the oath of office, he\u2019s been the president for three years,\u201d the Constitution was \u201cviolated\u201d before the 2020 vote.<\/p>\n
Just last month, reporters asked Johnson if he would commit to observing regular order in the certification of the 2020 election, even if Harris beats Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we have a free, fair and safe election, we\u2019re going to follow the Constitution,\u201d Johnson replied. \u201cAbsolutely. Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
That \u201cif\u201d drew criticism from Democrats.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohnson was a key architect of Donald Trump\u2019s efforts to overturn the last election, and now he\u2019s laying the groundwork to do the same thing all over again if Trump loses this November,\u201d Democratic National Committee spokesman Alex Floyd said in a statement. \u201cJohnson has made it clear he has no regrets about his election denier track record.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wouldn\u2019t acknowledge Sunday that Joe Biden won the 2020 election when asked directly about the election denialism that former president Donald Trump continues to promote on the campaign trail. During a testy exchange on ABC News\u2019s \u201cThis Week,\u201d host George Stephanopoulos asked Johnson if he could say \u201cunequivocally that Joe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10682,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}