House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said that the Democrats’ “sugar high” will not last amid the party’s enthusiasm for Vice President Harris.
“I mean, obviously, the Democrats are on a sugar high. Everybody’s acknowledged that. And I think that that gets real after Labor Day,” Johnson said to reporters at an event for Republican Joe Teirab in Minneapolis, according to CNN.
“I think that Kamala Harris is about to be put to the real test,” Johnson said, according to CNN.
Teirab is looking to unseat Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) in her reelection bid in November. Teirab thanked Johnson for speaking alongside him outside the Minneapolis’s Police Department’s Third Precinct in a post to social media platform X.
Johnson’s comments come after Harris formally accepted the nomination to be the Democratic Party’s candidate for the White House at the Democratic National Convention last week.
“It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done. Guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth: the privilege and pride of being an American,” Harris said last week.
Since launching her bid for the White House last month, Harris has garnered enthusiasm from within the Democratic Party. She has also closed the gap with former President Trump in many national and swing-state polls.
According to The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s national polling average, Harris has a 3.6 percentage point lead over Trump based on an aggregate of 133 polls.
Johnson’s comments echo other lawmakers and pundits who warned that Harris’s recent boost is due to a "honeymoon period.” Trump said earlier this month that Harris’s “honeymoon period” would end eventually.
“Everything she’s touched has turned bad. She’s incompetent,” Trump said at the time.
The Hill has reached out to Harris’s campaign for comment.
