Speaker Johnson says ‘25th Amendment is appropriate’ to remove Biden

While Democrats are soul-searching on whether to support President Biden as the Democratic nominee, House Speaker Mike Johnson and fellow Republican leaders view the president’s tenure as a danger to the country.

Polls and some Democrats in Washington have turned against Mr. Biden, something that Mr. Johnson said Republicans should enjoy politically. Yet he’s not enjoying the reality of it, arguing that Mr. Biden’s condition is “dangerous.”

Asked again if he supported Rep. Chip Roy’s resolution to call on Vice President Kamala Harris to remove Mr. Biden from office with the 25th Amendment, Mr. Johnson said most Americans and Republicans would agree that it was appropriate for her to take that historic step. 

“There’s a time to every purpose under heaven; desperate times call for desperate measures. I think the 25th Amendment is appropriate here,” Mr. Johnson, Louisiana Republican, said Tuesday at the U.S. Capitol. 

Members of House Republican leadership hammered Mr. Biden as unfit to serve as president, contending the GOP was right all along about the president’s health and mental decline. 

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik, New York Republican, accused Democrats and members of the media of covering up the president’s condition. 

“Every time we raised these legitimate concerns, far-left Democrats and their loyal stenographers in the mainstream media rushed to Biden’s defense, claiming that the clearly diminished Joe Biden was as sharp as ever and accusing us of peddling conspiracy theories,” she said. 

House Democrats met off campus Tuesday in a closed-door meeting to bridge the growing divide in their ranks on whether to support Mr. Biden. Members who spoke to reporters said they still back him as the Democratic presidential nominee but that more conversations were needed before they could completely unify behind him. 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Louisiana Republican, noted that Democrats were considering “throwing out the votes of 14 million Democratic primary voters who chose Joe Biden to be their nominee.” 

“Think about that. The party that loves lecturing people about democracies is in a smoke-filled room trying to throw out the democratically chosen nominee for president by the Democratic voters,” Mr. Scalise said. 

Their concern over Mr. Biden’s ability to serve comes as leaders from around the world arrived in Washington for a three-day NATO summit starting Tuesday, again putting the president’s ability under a microscope. 

Mr. Johnson said those leaders were seeing Mr. Biden’s state “with their own two eyes.” 

“It is not a good circumstance for us to have a commander in chief who is not on his A game, who can only work a few hours a day and can’t answer questions in complete sentences,” the speaker said. “That’s not a good look.”