House Speaker Mike Johnson failed to refute a lawmaker’s claim that Donald Trump is “unwell” following the president’s speech to an unprecedented assembly of U.S. military leaders.
“The president is unhinged,” Rep. Madeleine Dean, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, told Johnson in footage later aired on MSNBC. “He is unwell.”
“A lot of folks on your side are, too,” Johnson replied in the video. “I don’t control them.”
“Oh my god, please,” Dean continued. “That performance in front of the generals?”
“I didn’t see it,” Johnson responded.
During the speech in question, Trump gave rambling remarks to a gathering of military leaders on Tuesday and spoke about active-duty military troops being sent to U.S. cities to use as “training grounds” as they wage a “war” on ideological opponents the president has dubbed “the enemy within.”
“That is so dangerous,” Dean said of the president’s speech during the confrontation. “You know I serve on [the] Foreign Affairs and Appropriations [Committees]. It’s a collision of those two things. Our allies are looking elsewhere. Our enemies are laughing. You have a president who is unwell.”
Veterans groups have also condemned the president’s comments.
The president’s rhetoric during the Virginia speech was “authoritarian and un-American at its very core,” Air Force veteran Gretchen Klingler, director of Veterans for American Ideas at Human Rights First, told The Independent earlier this week.
“The president sounded incoherent, exhausted, rabidly partisan, at times stupid, meandering, couldn’t hold a thought together,” Retired General Barry McCaffrey told MSNBC of the speech.
Elsewhere during Dean’s heated conversation with Johnson, the Pennsylvania Democrat took issue with President Trump sharing an AI-modified video of Democrat Minority Leaders Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer, in which Jeffries is in a sombrero and dubbed audio of Schumer making profane comments about Democrats and immigrants.
“You put a sombrero on a Black man who’s the leader of the House. You don’t see that as racist? We need you desperately to lead…It’s disgraceful. It’s racist. You should call it out,” Dean told the Republican leader.
“I’m working on it,” Johnson responded. “And personally, it’s not my style. I love you and I respect you, OK?”
