According to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, President Joe Biden was so cognitively troubled that, when he was pressed on why he signed an executive order pausing the export of liquified natural gas, he had no idea what he had done and didn’t remember having even signed it. Such is what Speaker Johnson told Bari Weiss on an episode of her podcast “Honestly” for The Free Press on Friday, January 17.
Specifically, Speaker Johnson told her of an incident in which he had to deal with the president and some of his backers and found, through his “personal observation,” that the president “has not been in charge for some time.” He told the natural gas executive order story when Weiss pressed him to elaborate on what he meant by that.
Doing so, Johnson noted that, in January of 2024, he was trying to schedule a meeting with President Biden to discuss “big national concerns” that Johnson claimed to have been “was losing sleep over.” President Biden’s staff members, however, kept brushing him off and refused to schedule the meeting.
Eventually, the president’s staff scheduled the meeting. Commenting on what he found when he showed up for it, Speaker Johnson said, “I show up and I realize it’s actually an ambush ’cause it’s not just me and the president.” He continued, “It’s also Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem, you know, The CIA Director.”
Johnson then said that those Democrats started pressing him on his stance on the war in Ukraine, at which point he said he told Biden, “‘I cannot answer this from my constituents in Louisiana/ Sir, why did you pause LNG exports to Europe? Liquefied natural gas is in great demand by our allies. Why would you do that? Cause you understand we just talked about Ukraine, you understand you are fueling Vladimir Putin’s war machine, because they gotta get their gas from him.'”
President Biden, however, was apparently stunned and told the Speaker of the House, “I didn’t do that.” Speaker Johnson claimed to have informed him that the EO pausing LNG exports would do “massive damage to our economy, national security,” and asked for a copy to be printed out so they could go over its provisions together.
Commenting on what happened next, Speaker Johnson told Weiss, “He genuinely did not know what he had signed. And I walked out of that meeting with fear and loathing because I thought, ‘We are in serious trouble—who is running the country?’ Like, I don’t know who put the paper in front of him, but he didn’t know.” Watch him here:
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Commenting on a post about the matter, one person argued the story reflects quite poorly on Speaker Johnson, writing, “Your team red homerism is missing the elephant in the room: @SpeakerJohnson
sat on this for a year. This isn’t the W you think it is. Instead of bringing impeachment proceedings. He failed his oath. I hold those around Biden, like the Speaker, “Dr” Jill etc, responsible. Not Joe, who was barely sentient.”