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Congressional Republicans are failing the Trump test

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by Juan Williams, opinion contributor - 04/13/26 9:30 AM ET

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by Juan Williams, opinion contributor - 04/13/26 9:30 AM ET

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President Donald Trump talks with reporters before boarding Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Friday, April 10, 2026, en route to Charlottesville, Va. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

This is a test: After last week, can you find an excuse for congressional Republicans who refuse to admit that President Trump’s capacity to lead the nation is now legitimately in question?

I can’t find one.

How do the same people who spent years attacking President Biden as mentally infirm cover their eyes to the threat posed by this nearly 80-year-old’s erratic outbursts and possible cognitive decline?

Less than two years ago, congressional Republicans scrutinized Biden’s every word, his every stumble, even the mechanics of how he signed documents.

But that chorus of critics on Capitol Hill is now silent as President Trump raises far greater danger with an unsteady hand in control of the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

On Easter Sunday, Trump demonstrated a disturbing lack of stability to all the world by writing to Iranian leaders on social media: “Open the F—— Strait you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

He added: “A whole civilization will die…I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.”

At that point, partisanship had to recede.

This is no longer a matter of sharing video of Biden’s stumbles on the steps to Air Force One. And there is no comparing Biden’s mumbling to Trump’s loss of control in the middle of a war. 

What is happening now is far more serious. We are dealing with a president’s unstable behavior as he has the nation spending a billion dollars a day on a war he started without evidence of a clear threat to the U.S. 

Trump is acting, according to multiple reports, against the advice of top intelligence, senior military officers, and his vice president. 

Despite all those signs of Trump’s emotional and judgment problems, congressional Republicans apparently think their responsibility is to back Trump. They refuse to deal with his declining ability to conduct the nation’s business.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and the Republican House majority have more to say about their support for the Olympics banning transgendered athletes. The chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Brian Mast (R- Fla.), is preoccupied with social media posts on the birth of bald eagles.

The Speaker remained silent about Trump even as Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), the House minority leader, spoke of the need to stop the president “from getting us into World War III.” Jeffries proposed holding a House vote to deny the president the power to fight the war.

In the Senate, the top Republican, Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), also bit his tongue.

Thune did not object to Trump’s failure to brief top Senate chairs on the war.

Thune had no comment even after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) had described the president’s behavior as that of an “unhinged madman.”

He had nothing to say even after Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R- Alaska) said she could not excuse the president’s threat to an entire civilization as “an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations with Iran…It endangers Americans both abroad and at home.”

Thune and Johnson remained quiet even after the American pope, always reluctant to get into politics, spoke up and called Trump’s hyperbolic military threats “truly unacceptable.”

To this day, the president has failed to offer the American public the reason for the war. Polls show there is no “rally-around-the-flag” support for this action. 

Republican inaction in Congress also pales in contrast with criticism from many of Trump’s backers in the world of right-wing social media.

Here’s Alex Jones: “How do we 25th Amendment his ass?” he asked on his InfoWars broadcast.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of Trump’s most loyal allies, wrote: “25TH AMENDMENT!!! … We cannot kill an entire civilization. This is evil and madness.”

Candace Owens, another major voice on the right, called Trump’s recent declarations “beyond madness.”

Traditional Republican voices are also calling for Congress to act. The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial page wrote critically that Trump’s “threats of unleashing ‘Hell,’ and an end to Iran’s ‘civilization,’ rais