US Speaker dodges question on Trump’s 2020 loss
Source: ABC News
Republican US House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson has dodged a question about whether he accepted that Donald Trump lost the 2020 US election.
Johnson’s response was similar to that of Trump’s 2024 runing mate JD Vance in last week’s vice-presidential debate.
Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and continues to claim it was an unfair vote.
He is again the Republican Party’s presidential candidate, facing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democrats’ candidate in the November 5 elections. Polls show a tight race.
“You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we are talking about the future,” Johnson said in a confrontational interview on America’s ABC News on Sunday (local time).
“We are not going to talk about what happened in 2020, we are going to talk about 2024.
“Joe Biden has been the president for almost four years. Everybody needs to get over this and move forward.”
When pressed further, he said: “This is a gotcha game that’s played, and I’m not playing it.”
Last week, Vance also sidestepped the question during the vice-presidential debate against the Democrats’ Tim Walz.
Source: C-Span
Johnson also refused to condemn Trump’s suggestion that his political opponents may be behind attempts to have him killed.
“For years now, the leading Democrats in this country, the … highest elected officials and the current nominee for president, have gone out and said that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy,” he said.
“That, you know, the republic will end if he’s reelected.”
“It’s absolute nonsense. And they have incited dangerous people to do dangerous things – the rhetoric has.”
Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. He also escaped what has been labelled an assassination attempt in September after a waiting gunman was thwarted by a US Secret Service agent patrolling Trump’s Florida golf course.
Investigators have found no evidence of the involvement of Trump’s political opponents in the ongoing probes.
The second shooting sparked calls to ease tension in US politics. At the time, Biden said that “political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated.”
“It’s time to cool it down,” he said.
Trump was back in Butler, Pennsylvania, at the weekend, where he led a moment of silence for the four victims of the July shooting – including himself.
He also shared the stage with billionaire Elon Musk, who endorsed him for the November election.
On Sunday, Johnson was also asked if he would help certify the 2024 election results if Trump loses next month.
“I’m going to follow the Constitution. … Congress has a very specific role and we must fulfil it,” he said.
In early 2021, Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the congressional certification of the 2020 result.
Then vice-president Mike Pence persisted in going ahead with his role, despite heavy pressure from Trump and death threats from his marauding supporters.
-with AAP