House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Sunday refused to say former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.
During a heated interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, Johnson also declined to criticize comments from Donald Trump and Eric Trump implying Democrats helped fuel the assassination attempt against the former president in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.
The Republican nominee held another rally in Butler over the weekend. Eric Trump, the president’s son, said at the campaign stop “They tried to smear us. They came after us. They impeached him twice. And then, guys, they tried to kill him. They tried to kill him, and it’s because the Democratic Party, they can’t do anything right.”
There is no evidence Democratic officials inspired either of the assassination attempts against Donald Trump. Thomas Matthew Crooks, the shooter who attacked Donald Trump’s July rally, injuring the former president and killing one attendee, was a registered Republican who once donated $15 to a liberal group.
Ryan Routh, the suspect in the second assassination attempt against Donald Trump, has been registered as an unaffiliated voter for years. He most recently voted for and donated to the Democratic Party, but there’s no evidence he was influenced by Democratic Party leaders.
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Johnson said Sunday that he couldn’t speak to Eric Trump’s comments on the assassination attempt, adding “I don’t know what Eric was saying because I only heard just a snippet there. I don’t know the context.”
Stephanopoulos challenged him, saying, “You just saw it, sir.”
Johnson told Stephanopoulos that, “We need everybody on all sides to turn the rhetoric down and let’s have a debate about the records of these candidates, not the rhetoric. Let’s talk about the policies, not the personalities.”
Stephanopoulos alleged that, “You’re actually repeating the charge,” adding “I don’t know what more context you need” in order to address the comments.
The ABC host asked Johnson multiple times whether he was willing to say definitively Biden won the 2020 presidential election. Republican vice-presidential candidate JD Vance declined to do the same during Tuesday’s debate on CBS.
Biden won the 2020 election. Donald Trump and his allies launched dozens of lawsuits following the election, and the former president has long said without evidence the race was impacted by voter fraud. Courts across the country have rejected the allegations.
“You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we’re talking about the future,” Johnson said. “We’re not going to talk about what happened in 2020.”
