GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson said Sunday that he has seen President Biden deteriorate behind the scenes and indicated Republicans have held discussions about investigating Dem efforts to cover it up.
But Johnson (R-La.) also suggested that Republicans would likely challenge efforts by Democrats to replace Biden at the top of the ticket — as GOP candidate Donald Trump continues to score widespread gains on Biden in recent polls.
“I didn’t want to come out and talk about personal interactions with the president because I’ve been concerned about … this projection of weakness on the world stage in a very dangerous time,” Johnson told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“But now that the cat is out of the bag, you can hear from the Republican speaker to affirm what everyone else has known and seen. The Democrats have been involved in a big cover-up here,” the GOP leader said.
Johnson stressed that Biden, 81, is “not capable of doing [the job] now” and that he is no longer the “Joe Biden of even four years ago.”
The Republican speaker emphasized that it’s “not [Biden’s] fault,” saying Father Time has simply taken a toll on him, as critics say was devastatiing evident during his match-up with Trump at their June debate.
Moderator Jake Tapper was taken aback by Johnson’s reference to a “cover-up” and asked whether that’s something that should be “investigated in a serious way by Congress or even law enforcement?
“Well, that’s something we’ve discussed,” Johnson replied without giving specifics. “Top Democrats in Congress and elsewhere were coming onto television regularly and saying Joe Biden is running circles around us.
“It was just comical. They all knew that wasn’t true,” Johnson said. “They put up a false pretense about his capabilities. Now the whole country sees it, and they have painted themselves into a corner.”
Earlier in the interview, Johnson was pressed about whether he would back efforts to try to legally block the Democrats if they attempt to replace Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the ticket.
“They have real problems,” the GOP speaker said of the Democratic Party. “In some of these states, it’s a real hurdle, they have a real problem of replacing the nominee at the top of the ticket, Joe Biden was chosen after a long, small d — democratic process — by 14 million people.
“It will be very interesting to see if the so-called party of democracy, the Democrats, go into a back room somewhere and switch it out and put someone else at the top of the ticket. I mean, I think they’ve got legal hurdles in some of these states. And it’ll be litigated,” he predicted.
Several Democrats such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have raised concerns that if the party swaps out Biden and Harris at the last minute, it will become vulnerable to GOP-backed legal attacks.
At the moment, Biden is expected to be crowned the Democrats’ standard bearer within the coming weeks ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.
Still, nearly three dozen congressional Democrats have already publicly called upon Biden to step aside. So far, he’s refused to do so and has maintained that he’s “firmly committed” to seeing through his re-election campaign.
But the pressure against him to drop out is mounting.
Meanwhile, Johnson also detailed plans to convene a bipartisan task force to investigate the Secret Service over the failed July 13 assassination attempt against Trump, 78.
“The task force is important because we need precision. We need to act quickly. We need to get the answers and accountability to the American people. They deserve it,” Johnson said.
“We’re going to get down to the bottom of it. This will be a bipartisan task force with subpoena authority to strike quickly, get right to the heart of the matter, get the answers, accountability, and make sure this never happens again.”
The speaker was tight-lipped about additional specifics such as leadership of the task force but said he plans to disclose more of that information Monday.