House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) wouldn’t 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’s “This Week,” host George Stephanopoulos asked Johnson if he could say “unequivocally that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Trump lost.”
Johnson declined, saying only that “this is the game that is always played by mainstream media with mainstream Republicans. It’s a gotcha game.”
“So like Vance, you can’t say,” Stephanopoulos replied — 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’s most memorable exchanges.
During the interview Sunday, Johnson accused Stephanopoulos of trying to get him to “litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future.”
“We’re not going to talk about what happened in 2020,” Johnson said. “I’m not going to engage in it. We’re — we’re not talking about that.”
But Stephanopoulos argued that Trump “every single day” claims that the “election was rigged, that he won and that Joe Biden lost.”
“I’m just saying if you accept that or not,” Stephanopoulos said.
“I’m not going to play the game,” Johnson said.
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 — without first seeking legislative approval — to address the challenges of casting ballots during the coronavirus pandemic. That effort failed.
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.
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.
Johnson’s comments Sunday may draw scrutiny about what he might do between Election Day on Nov. 5 and Congress’s certification of the vote on Jan. 6 if Trump does not win in the electoral college.
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’s role in the certification process is largely ceremonial.
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.
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’s 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’t win the last election.
“I would just ask, did he lose the 2020 election?” Walz said.
“Tim, I’m focused on the future,” Vance said, without addressing the question.
“That is a damning non-answer,” Walz responded.
On Sunday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) was asked on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” if he could say “definitively” that Trump lost the 2020 election.
“Joe Biden was elected president in 2020,” Cotton said. “It was an unfair election in many ways.”
The senator then claimed, without evidence, that election fraud happened in 2020.
“But did Trump lose?” host Kristen Welker pressed.
“Joe Biden was elected,” Cotton replied.
“But do you just not want to say that Trump lost? If Biden is president, can you just simply say Trump lost?” Welker said.
Cotton replied that Biden was, indeed, elected in 2020.
Both Johnson and Cotton have long refused to acknowledge the results of the 2020 election.
In January, Johnson told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan during an interview on “Face The Nation” that while Biden was “certified as the winner of the election, he took the oath of office, he’s been the president for three years,” the Constitution was “violated” before the 2020 vote.
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.
“If we have a free, fair and safe election, we’re going to follow the Constitution,” Johnson replied. “Absolutely. Yes.”
That “if” drew criticism from Democrats.
“Johnson was a key architect of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the last election, and now he’s laying the groundwork to do the same thing all over again if Trump loses this November,” Democratic National Committee spokesman Alex Floyd said in a statement. “Johnson has made it clear he has no regrets about his election denier track record.”