Mr Viral
In a combative interview with Meet the Press’ Kristen Welker on Sunday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson claimed that Donald Trump’s medical records are “irrelevant” because his “health is on display—everyone in America can see it. The man works nonstop.”
“I saw that Kamala Harris issued her medical records—congratulations,” Johnson said, referring to the Harris campaign’s move this week to release a health summary from her doctor, appearing to dare her competitor to do the same. “Donald Trump’s health is on display for the entire country every hour of every day. He has more stamina and mental acumen and strength than any political figure probably in the history of the country that I can remember.”
Johnson also claimed that Trump “doesn’t require as much sleep as the average person,” adding that, in this way, “he’s an unusual figure.”
While in office, Trump said he got around five hours of sleep a night—the same as about 20% of Americans, according to a poll from this year.
Back in July, when President Joe Biden was still running for reelection, Johnson was one of the loudest Republican voices questioning his fitness for office and calling for him to step aside. At the time, the Speaker accused Democrats of being “complicit in the largest political cover-up in history” for knowing “for a long while that Joe Biden was not capable of holding his office.” Just as Biden’s age and ability concerned top leaders across the country, so too has Trump’s fitness been called into question. Since Biden dropped out, Trump is now the oldest major party nominee for president in history, and, if he wins and completes another term, he will be the oldest president ever.
According to an analysis by The New York Times, “with the passage of time,” Trump’s “speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past.”
With just over three weeks until Election Day—and with swaths of the American public already having cast their vote—the presidential race reportedly remains remarkably close. This home stretch has been punctuated by media appearances from Republican congressional leaders like Johnson doing the work of backing up Trump’s increasingly unhinged remarks.
In his MTP interview alone, which clocked in at about 13 minutes, Johnson said Harris was only releasing her medical records because she was “desperate,” defended Trump’s unfounded claims about the Biden-Harris administration funneling hurricane relief funds to migrants, and misrepresented the GOP’s continued efforts to roll back access to abortion across the country.
Republicans this election cycle have been working around the clock to rework their past rhetoric on reproductive healthcare to better appeal to the American electorate—which overwhelmingly supports access to abortion. Johnson, too, has followed suit.
When Welker asked Johnson if he would pledge not to hold a vote on any legislation that would ban abortion, the speaker said that “we need to be talking about what people really care about,” things like the cost of living and immigration. (For women under 30, abortion has surpassed inflation as their top election issue, and, in 10 states, voters will be directly weighing in on abortion access via ballot measures.)
Welker asked again, would Johnson hold a vote on a national abortion ban?
“We’re nowhere in a universe where that would be possible right now,” Johnson said. “I have to build a cultural consensus,” he continued, “there’s a lot of work to do.”
Johnson has, infamously, been doing this work for years.
As Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin has chronicled, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, Johnson called it “a great, joyous occasion.” His goal for his home state of Louisiana, as he’s explained, is to “get the number of abortions to ZERO!!” As a lawyer, he worked to shut down abortion clinics, as a legislator, he cosponsored the “Life at Conception” bill, which would force pregnancy from the point of fertilization and included no exceptions for IVF, and, as a religious leader, he blamed school shootings, in part, on pregnant people having access to abortion care.
On Sunday, Johnson encouraged anti-abortion organizations to keep working toward a cultural consensus on the issue before adding, “We need to take care of these ladies that are in difficult situations with their pregnancies. That’s what the states are doing, very effectively. Crisis pregnancy centers and others around the country, care pregnancy centers—there’s a lot of great work being done.”
Crisis pregnancy centers are facilities that act as legitimate reproductive health care clinics for pregnant people but, in practice, aim to dissuade people from accessing certain types of care, like abortion and contraceptive options. After Dobbs, “Tennessee boosted state support for crisis pregnancy centers from $3 million to $20 million; Florida raised it from $4.5 million to $25 million, and Texas went from giving the groups $5 million every two years to giving a whopping $100 million for 2022 and 2023,” according to Jessica Valenti’s new book Abortion.
Watkins concluded the interview by asking if Johnson, who is the second in line for the presidency, would accept and certify the results of the 2024 election—a task that Trump’s own running mate, JD Vance, has continuously refused to commit to.
“Of course, I’m going to follow the Constitution, I’m going to follow the law, that’s my job, my duty. I took an oath to do that, and I will fulfill my oath,” Johnson said.
“Regardless of who wins?” Welker clarified.
“Of course, yes,” Johnson replied. “If,” he continued, “it’s free and fair.”
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