Happy Monday and welcome to another week of MAGA Mike Johnson marching in lockstep with Donald Trump by using the People’s House as a personal stage for Trump’s campaign sequel. This week, Johnson refused to admit that President Biden won the 2020 presidential election and defended Trump’s widely condemned, harmful rhetoric about immigrants. 

Here’s what MAGA Mike has gotten up to as of this Monday, but let’s be clear: If it’s a day ending in “y,” Johnson is hard at work turning the People’s House into an arm of Trump’s presidential campaign instead of delivering on the issues Americans care about. 

DNC National Press Secretary Sarafina Chitika released the following statement:

“After failing to accomplish a single thing for working families last year and instead sending the House home early, MAGA Mike Johnson is still refusing to get anything done other than using his position of power to further Donald Trump’s campaign. Three years after January 6th, Johnson is still unwilling to plainly say that President Joe Biden is the rightful winner of the 2020 election. As Trump’s campaign trail rhetoric becomes increasingly extreme, Johnson is choosing to double down and defend him, just as he did three years ago when he parroted Trump’s false claims of a ‘rigged’ election. Voters deserve better than two conspiracists who worked harder to overturn the results of the last election than they do to deliver results for the American people.”

Three years later, Johnson still refuses to confirm that President Biden won the 2020 election. 

Politico: House Speaker Mike Johnson called suggestions that he is an election denier “nonsense,” but refused to affirm that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election during an interview that aired Sunday.

Vanity Fair: “President Biden was certified as the winner of the election, he took the oath of office, he’s been the president for three years,” Johnson told Brennan, while repeatedly maintaining that the Constitution was “clearly violated” during the election.

“The Constitution was violated in the run-up to the 2020 election, not always in bad faith, but in the aftermath of Covid, many states changed their election laws in ways that violated that plain language,” Johnson argued. “That’s just a fact.”

MAGA Mike was a key congressional leader in shaping Trump’s false legal arguments that the 2020 election was stolen. 

New York Times: Johnson Played Leading Role in Effort to Overturn 2020 Election

A constitutional lawyer, Mr. Johnson was also a key architect of Republicans’ objections to certifying Mr. Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Many Republicans in Congress relied on his arguments.

Mr. Johnson also falsely claimed the election was “rigged.”

CNN: Johnson also sent an email from a personal email account in 2020 to every House Republican soliciting signatures for an amicus brief in the longshot Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate electoral college votes from multiple states.

Politico: A relatively junior House Republican at the time, Johnson was nevertheless the leading voice in support of a fateful position: that the GOP should rally around Donald Trump and object to counting electoral votes submitted by at least a handful of states won by Joe Biden.

A review of the chaotic weeks between Trump’s defeat at the polls on Nov. 3, 2020, and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack shows that Johnson led the way in shaping legal arguments that became gospel among GOP lawmakers who sought to derail Biden’s path to the White House — even after all but the most extreme options had elapsed.

MAGA Mike said on Sunday that Trump’s comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” were “not hateful.”

The Messenger: Speaker Johnson Insists Trump’s Immigrant ‘Blood Poisoning’ Attack Is ‘Not Hateful’

Newsweek: On CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, host Margaret Brennan asked House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, “When President Trump says immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country, is that a statement you agree with?”

Johnson, a staunch Trump supporter, replied: “That’s not language I would use, but I understand the urgency of President Trump’s admonition. He’s been saying this since he ran for president the first time, that we have to secure the border and I think the vast majority of the American people understand the necessity of that and I think they agree with his position.”

The Hill: Brennan then sought to clarify if Trump’s statement “goes beyond” what the Speaker is personally comfortable with, to which he said, ” It’s not language I would use. But…understand-”

“Cause it sounds hateful,” Brennan interjected.

“Well, it’s not hateful,”’ Johnson shot back. 

Johnson visited the southern border last week while he and his GOP colleagues refused to take up President Biden’s national security supplemental request. 

Fox News analyst: “You don’t see House Republicans involved in trying to have real solutions. They’re involved in that photo op theater down at the border.” 

MSNBC: Speaker Mike Johnson took no fewer than 60 of his House GOP colleagues on a trip to the southern border this week, enacting a ritual that is both familiar and pointless.

The Hill: Johnson faced some pushback from Tapper on Wednesday over his comments about Biden’s funding request.

“That won’t solve any of the problems I just articulated,” Johnson told Tapper when asked why Republicans were not moving the supplemental funding.

When Tapper said, “I’m sure the people, the Border Patrol agents that you’re with, think it might do something, at least in terms of making their job a little easier for the next month or so,” Johnson replied, “No, no, actually, they don’t.”

“They don’t want the $14 billion?” Tapper asked.

“No, no,” … Johnson said.

Associated Press: But Johnson, R-La., told The Associated Press during the border tour that he was holding firmly to the policies of a bill passed by House Republicans in May without a single Democratic vote. The bill, H.R. 2, would revive many of the policies pursued by former President Donald Trump, build more of the border wall and impose new restrictions on asylum seekers. Democrats called the legislation “cruel” and “anti-immigrant,” and Biden promised a veto.

At a news conference, Johnson suggested he could use a looming government funding deadline as further leverage.

New York Times: And Mr. Johnson has repeatedly signaled that House Republicans will only accept an agreement that reflects their own hard-line bill, meaning that any bipartisan deal struck in the Senate could still collapse in the other chamber.

CNN: “Let me tell you, I’m not willing to do too damn much right now to help a Democrat and to help Joe Biden’s approval rating,” Rep. Troy Nehls, a Texas Republican, told CNN. “I will not help the Democrats try to improve this man’s dismal approval ratings. I’m not going to do it. Why would I?”