Speaker Johnson forces CBS News anchor into embarrassing admission after she tries to smear him as an 'election denier'

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R) thoroughly dismantled on Sunday CBS News anchor Margaret Brennan for attempting to paint him as an "election denier."

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Johnson — and the majority of the House Republican caucus at the time — signed an amicus brief supporting Texas v. Pennsylvania, a lawsuit filed to the Supreme Court. The case alleged that Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin had violated the Constitution because those states changed their election procedures (citing the COVID-19 pandemic as justification) through non-state legislative means.

The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the case after finding that Texas did not have standing to sue.

But in an interview Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation," Brennan tried to use Johnson's support for the case to smear him as an "election denier."

"You were the lawmaker who circulated the legal brief ... which, by CBS editorial standards, makes you an election denier," she told Johnson.

Johnson, however, put up a fight and ultimately forced Brennan to admit that she had not actually read the legal brief — but had only consumed opinions about it.

"That's nonsense. I'm not an election denier," Johnson said. "Did you read the brief? Did you get a chance to read what we filed with the Supreme Court?"

"Well, I have read extensively some criticisms of that, but —" Brennan admitted.

"You read commentary about the brief, but not what we submitted to the court, right?" the speaker followed up.

Brennan, unfortunately, refused to answer the question, instead asking Johnson to affirm that Biden won the 2020 election, which he did before explaining why the court brief does not make him an "election denier."

"President Biden was certified as the winner of the election. He took the oath of office. He's been the president for three years," Johnson said. "The argument that we presented to the court, which is our only avenue to do so, was that the Constitution was clearly violated in the 2020 election.

"It's Article II, Section 1, and anyone can Google it and read it for themselves," he explained. "The system by which you choose electors to elect the president of the United States must be done by the individual states, and the system must be ratified with the state legislatures. That is language, plain language, out of the Constitution.

"The Constitution was violated in the run-up to the 2020 election — not always in bad faith — but in the aftermath of COVID, many states changed their election laws in ways that violated that plain language," he continued. "That's just a fact. We presented that argument and those facts to the court. And it was never directly addressed because of the Texas litigation. But that was the only vehicle we had to present that issue squarely to the court."

There is no word yet whether CBS News will label every Democrat who has challenged the election of a Republican to the presidency as an "election denier."

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