By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson sidestepped a question on Sunday on whether he accepted that Donald Trump lost to Democratic President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, giving a response similar to that from the former president’s running mate in the vice-presidential debate.
Trump, who lost to Biden in 2020 and falsely claimed the elections were unfair, is once again the Republican Party’s presidential candidate and faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 elections. Polls show a tight race.
“You want us to litigate things that happened four years ago when we are talking about the future,” Johnson said in a confrontational interview on ABC News on Sunday.
“We are not going to talk about what happened in 2020, we are going to talk about 2024,” Johnson said.
He added: “Joe Biden has been the president for almost four years. Everybody needs to get over this and move forward.”
When pressed further, he said: “This is a gotcha game that’s played, and I’m not playing it.”
In Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, Senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, also sidestepped the question.
Johnson also refused to condemn the former president’s suggestion that the Republican presidential candidate’s political opponents may be behind attempts to have him killed.
Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13. He also escaped an assassination attempt in September that was thwarted by a U.S. Secret Service agent patrolling Trump’s Florida golf course. Investigators have found no evidence of the involvement of Trump’s political opponents in the ongoing probes.
Johnson was also asked if he would help in certifying the 2024 election results if Trump lost.
“I’m going to follow the Constitution. … Congress has a very specific role and we must fulfill it,” he said.
Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the congressional certification of the results of the 2020 elections.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Mary Milliken and Mark Porter)