House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) held a press briefing on Friday where he spoke about the debate performances of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Good afternoon, everybody. This is a historic week in America, a historic day in the House.
00:06A lot going on, so I thought I'd come out and give you a little bit of an update. Everyone
00:10here on Capitol Hill is talking about the debate last night, as I know all of you are
00:14and everyone is around the country. It was a stark display, a big contrast between the
00:20two candidates for president. I think what everybody has seen now with their own two
00:24eyes, what they've all witnessed in an almost surprising fashion for some, I'm not sure
00:29why it was surprising to them, because we've been seeing this for a long time, but there
00:33was only one man on that stage who was capable and qualified of being elected president in
00:37the next term, and his name is Donald J. Trump. The current occupant of the White House, President
00:41Biden, showed what he's really about. I think on every metric of performance, President
00:48Trump obviously did much better. He was right on the issues. He showed the temperament,
00:54the stamina, the mental acuity that is necessary to do this really important job at this
00:59really important time in American history. I wanted to correct one thing about the record
01:04because President Biden showed last night that he was weak, sadly, that he is feeble,
01:12and he said a number of things that are just demonstrably untrue. One of the things that
01:17was the most staggering that we heard him say is that he claimed that on his watch,
01:22we have not lost any American troops, that the lives of no American troops have been
01:26lost as long as he's been president. Obviously, that is not true. I wanted to read 13 names
01:34by way of example that he seems to have forgotten already, which is really shocking and sad,
01:39but apparently he's already forgotten about the 13 American heroes who were lost with
01:45his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. These are their names, Mr. President. These
01:50are their names. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Darren Hoover, Marine Corps Sergeant Johanni
01:55Rosario, Marine Corps Sergeant Nicole LG, Marine Corps Corporal Hunter Lopez, Marine
02:04Corps Corporal Dagan W. Page, Marine Corps Corporal Humberto A. Sanchez, Marine Corps
02:11Lance Corporal David L. Espinoza, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jared M. Schmitz, Marine Corps
02:18Lance Corporal Riley J. McCollum, Marine Corps Lance Corporal Dylan R. Merola, Marine
02:26Corps Lance Corporal Kareem M. Nakuri, Navy Petty Officer Third Class Maxton W. Soviak,
02:34and Army Staff Sergeant Ryan Noss. Mr. President, that's 13 examples of troops that were lost
02:41on your watch, and it's shameful that apparently you can't remember that. We do, and we will
02:46honor their memory. I said it was a big day on Capitol Hill and a big day in the country.
02:51We passed more appropriations today. You saw that. This week you saw the House continuing
02:56to work aggressively to push 12 separate appropriations bills, which is the way the law is supposed
03:02to work. House Republicans have committed to build that muscle memory back and to go
03:06through with regular order. Today we passed three more large measures, the Defense Appropriations
03:12Bill, the State and Foreign Operations Bill, and of course the Homeland Security Bill.
03:20Each of those were bipartisan. They passed out of the House, and we'll send them over
03:23to the Senate now. As of this afternoon, the House has now funded nearly 70 percent of
03:28the federal government for FY25. We've done the appropriations process as we were supposed
03:33to do with member involvement, member engagement, amendment process, and all the rest. And it
03:38should be noted that the Senate has passed exactly zero appropriations bills. We need
03:43the Senate to do their job, and we need the process to work for the American people, and
03:47that's what we'll do. The last thing I want to note, and I'll take a couple of questions,
03:50this was a big day at the Supreme Court as well. The Chevron doctrine has been overturned,
03:55and this is something that will be a remarkable turn of events. It will allow us, I genuinely
03:59believe, to exercise again Article I authority, the legislative branch, and the way our framers
04:05intended this to work is supposed to have the authority to determine how the agencies
04:10of the government work and what their scope is. The Chevron doctrine since 1984 has made
04:15that a real problem because it gave deference to the agencies to interpret their own rules,
04:21and that is why the administrative state has grown so far out of control. It's one of the
04:25primary root problems that we've been trying to work through here. And so in a 6-3 decision,
04:31the Supreme Court has made the right choice there. I filed an amicus brief, and that
04:35case, the House filed a brief in that case, and we're delighted by that outcome. It's
04:40a long time coming. It took almost 40 years to get here. The other case that was handed
04:45down was the Fisher case today, also a 6-3 opinion, and the import of that is the decision
04:52says effectively the court agrees that a number of the defendants in the January 6th proceedings
04:57have been overcharged, and that is something that I also think many people have recognized
05:03for some time, and now the highest court in the land has declared that to be so. So
05:07a big day. We've made a lot of history this week. I think the debate last night, the reverberations
05:13for that will continue, and I think it will have a big effect on our ability to fix the
05:18country. Why? Because I think that this will help ensure that Donald Trump is elected president
05:23in November, that we take back the majority in the Senate for the Republican Party, and
05:27that we grow the House majority for Republicans here. We cannot wait for that to happen, and
05:32the American people need it to happen as soon as possible, because we have to fix every
05:36metric of public policy. We'll be ready to do that on day one. So I'll take a couple
05:39of questions. Yes, sir.
05:40One of the things we had last night was Ukraine. You spent a lot of money on the Capitol, on
05:45getting them sucked into the past. You've met with people whose families have been killed
05:48by the Russian military. What's your reaction to Trump saying that there's money in the
05:52region to do anything on anyone but Putin?
05:55Listen, I think what President Trump said in the debate last night was exactly right.
06:00He has the evidence to prove it. Remember, these are two men running for president who
06:03have both been president. So you can ignore the rhetoric and the talking points of all
06:08their surrogates, and even the candidates themselves look at the record. What President
06:11Trump was talking about is his record. And it is objectively true, irrefutably true,
06:17that we did not have hot wars like this when President Trump was in the Oval Office. Why?
06:22Because our enemies feared and respected him. We maintain peace through strength. That is
06:26an admonition that Ronald Reagan used to remind us of. We believe in that principle. I think
06:30it's one of our core principles. And I think that we lose that at our peril. I think President
06:36Biden clearly has projected weakness on the world stage. Everyone around the world saw
06:41the same sad display that we saw last night. And our adversaries see that as well. And
06:47what President Trump was reminding the country of is that Iran and China and Russia and North
06:52Korea and our adversaries see that as well. And he was saying, and I think he was right,
06:57I don't think Vladimir Putin would have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump was in the White House.
07:01I don't believe Iran, through its proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah, would have committed
07:06the atrocities on October 7th in Israel if Donald Trump was in the White House. And he
07:10pointed out one of the reasons why. Iran would not have had the funding and the ability to
07:14do it because he had tied their hands. And President Biden empowered Iran. That's why
07:19we're in the situation we're in. So I think when he said that, I think heads were nodding
07:23all around the country. I think everybody in their living rooms and wherever they were
07:26watching that debate said, yeah, that's exactly right. We all can see it with our own two
07:29eyes.
07:30I'm not sure what's going to happen in that proceeding. But what was important for us
07:44to do is state the position of the House. And that is that the January 6th committee
07:50was wrongfully constituted. I think the work that they did there has a gigantic blemish
07:56upon it. I think it's illegitimate because now, as we've investigated what that committee
08:00did, they apparently covered up evidence and potentially even destroyed evidence. We'll
08:05have a large report coming out of the findings. And I think that's going to be alarming to
08:09a lot of people.
08:10But in the meantime, I think we had a responsibility to let the judicial branch know, the court
08:15system know, that we do not deem that to be an appropriate committee the way that that
08:19was handled in the previous Congress. And so that's what we did in that case. And the
08:24outcome will be the outcome. But we had to let our voice be heard.
08:27Mr. Speaker, Representative Luna has offered up a resolution to the courts in here in contempt
08:32against the Attorney General. Do you plan to bring that to a vote? And do you think
08:36that's the best avenue to get the taste from special counsel for this investigation?
08:40Well, all the House Republicans are in 100 percent agreement that we have to be aggressive
08:45in enforcing the subpoenas of the House. This is about our Article I authority on the Constitution,
08:51and we cannot allow the executive branch to defy that. Merrick Garland has refused to
08:57turn over something that we are entitled to receive. Because we're pursuing our oversight
09:01responsibility under the Constitution, we have to ensure that the transcript that we've
09:06been provided of special counsel Herr's investigation of President Biden or his lengthy examination
09:13and questioning of President Biden, we have to make sure the transcript matches the audio
09:18tape. That is a very reasonable thing and a necessary thing for the House and its investigatory
09:23authority to do. The Attorney General is not turning it over. He does not have the authority
09:27to decide whether that tape is turned over to the House. He's the Attorney General.
09:32This is a special counsel proceeding. The special counsel, by definition, a necessity,
09:37works outside the scope of the Department of Justice. He doesn't get to make that call.
09:42I called the Attorney General myself, and we had a conversation about this, and I said,
09:46Sir, you have to turn this over. He refuses to do so. The White House, as he has made
09:51public and said publicly, has commanded him, the President of the United States, has told
09:55the Attorney General not to turn over the tape. I think after last night's debate, I
09:59think we all understand very clearly why that is. He will very likely sound exactly on that
10:05tape as he did on the stage last night, and that's embarrassing to the President. We're
10:08sorry about that. We're not trying to embarrass the President. We're trying to get down to
10:12the facts. So that being said, we're going to be as aggressive as you can. We use every
10:16tool in our arsenal to make sure that the evidence that the House is entitled to is
10:21turned over. So we are going to court on Monday. We're filing a lawsuit. We are going
10:26to go pursue and execute upon that subpoena. We're going to get the courts, the third branch,
10:32to enforce the executive branch to turn over the tapes to the legislative branch. It's
10:37an exercise in civics, and we'll be pursuing it.
10:39So the court, you're going to go through the court system and not attempt to inherit the
10:43tape. Is that your way?
10:44Look, I think the easiest way, the best way, is to allow the third branch to resolve this
10:49dispute between the executive and the legislative branch. There may be other avenues that we
10:54can pursue, and we're looking into all that, but we're not committed to anything yet. What
10:58Anna, Paulina Luna, and I and all House Republicans agree upon is that we've got to use every tool
11:04in the toolbox here, so to speak, because this is very, very serious, a serious matter
11:09for the country, and we're going to do our duty here.
11:11Senator Royce has said that he's going to put forward a resolution to ask the Vice President
11:16to use the 25th Amendment power to have a cabinet in the present life, in light of last
11:20week's debate. What do you think about that decision?
11:22Well, there's a lot of people asking about invoking the 25th Amendment right now because
11:26this is an alarming situation. As I mentioned, our adversaries see the weakness in this White
11:31House as we all do. I take no pleasure in saying that. I think this is a very dangerous
11:35situation. But, you know, unfortunately, it's not the House that gets to determine that.
11:39It's the Cabinet under the Constitution, of course. It's the Cabinet that makes that
11:43decision. I would. I would ask the Cabinet members to search their hearts. I think, you
11:48know, you've all been reporting all day long about the panic that has ensued in the Democratic
11:52Party. I would be panicking, too, if I were a Democrat today, and that was my nominee.
11:57I think they know they have a serious problem. But it's not just political. It's not just
12:01the Democratic Party. It's the entire country. We have a serious problem here because we
12:06have a president who, by all appearances, is not up to the task. And these are very
12:11dangerous times. This is a very serious moment in American history, and it needs to be regarded
12:15and handled as such. And we hope that they will do their duty, as we all seek to do our
12:20duty, to do best by the American people. These are fateful moments.
12:23Search their hearts, and then you think it's as you should, as opposed to a general rule?
12:27If I were in a Cabinet, in the Biden administration right now, in a Cabinet, I would be having
12:33that discussion with my colleagues at the Cabinet level. I would. And I think many of
12:36them, I think in their heart of hearts, they understand exactly what we do. They see exactly
12:40what we do. And we'll see what action they take. It's a serious situation.
12:44Thank you all so much.