House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was confronted with concerns about President Donald Trump's mental fitness and indicated he shares them.
MSNBC's Chris Hayes broadcasted video footage of Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) informing the Louisiana Republican that the president had, in her view, demonstrated his unfitness for office during his speech with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth before hundreds of top military leaders.
"The president is unhinged," she told Johnson in the clip. "He is unwell.”
Johnson seemed to concede Dean's point in his response.
“A lot of folks on your side are, too," Johnson said. "I don’t control him."
Dean was unsatisfied with his reaction and immediately challenged him to justify the president's speech, in which he called on military leadership to use American cities as "training grounds" and to turn their weapons against "the enemy within," and he also rambled at length about walking safely down stairs and other topics far afield.
“Oh my God, please," she said. "That performance in front of the generals?”
Johnson then claimed ignorance, saying "I didn't see it," but Dean continued.
“It’s so dangerous!" Dean said. "You know I serve on Foreign Affairs and Appropriations [Committee], it’s a collision of those two things. Our allies are looking elsewhere, our enemies are laughing. You have a president who is unwell.”
Dean also challenged Johnson during their Capitol Hill conversation over an AI-generated video depicting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and handlebar mustache, and the Pennsylvania Democrat later said Johnson asked whether the social media post could be considered racist.
“He asked me, like, rhetorically, ‘Is that really racist?’" she later told CNN's Manu Raju. "It’s really racist, it’s despicable, and he should have called it out. And I said, 'Did you see what the president did in that performance before the generals?' He said he hadn’t seen it."
Footage of the encounter posted online by NOTUS confirms her account of the conversation.
"Is it racist?" Dean said, repeating Johnson's question. "You put a sombrero on a Black man who’s the leader of the House? You don’t see that as racist?”