House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried to pile onto the intrigue about President Joe Biden's fitness to continue serving and campaigning — but was quickly caught in a lie.
During an interview with Politico's Rachel Bade released on Thursday, Johnson claimed that Biden's team refused to let Johnson take a meeting with him for weeks after Johnson was first appointed to House leadership. "Now we know why," Johnson told her — implying that there was a conspiracy to keep Johnson from finding out about Biden's cognitive state.
But this isn't true, Biden ally Chris D. Jackson wrote on X — and he brought the receipts to prove it.
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"What a lie. He met with the president the day after he was sworn in. These guys can't tell the truth about anything," wrote Jackson, providing a screenshot of a contemporary NBC News report announcing Biden and Johnson had met the day after Johnson took the speakership.
The commenters erupted over this revelation, with think tank policymaker Norm Ornstein slamming Johnson as a "disgraceful liar," and one other person demanding Politico reporters stop being so credulous: "I swear Politico needs to be shut down. All they do is promote one lie after another after another."
Johnson was first elected to the speakership in 2023, after a weekslong intraparty fight in the GOP kicked off with a renegade group of far-right lawmakers voting to oust then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
Biden has now faced several weeks of pressure from key Democratic party officials and high-dollar donors to step down, amid concerns about his ability to run a campaign that will defeat former President Donald Trump a second time. Axios has claimed that Biden is already making plans to bow out of the race as soon as this weekend, but officials close to the president continue to deny this.
