House Speaker Mike Johnson of La., watches after a joint session of Congress confirmed the Electoral College votes, affirming President-elect Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election, Monday, Jan. 6, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

So it's entirely plausible that the fake "Jefferson prayer" was searched for on Google before copy-pasted into the teleprompter. When one searches for the prayer, however, at the top of the results is the debunking offered by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation,

The problem is not just that Republican officials keep peddling fake quotes from the Founding Fathers. The problem is also why they keep doing this.

House Speaker Mike Johnson sparked an unusual religion controversy last week when he recited a prayer in front of Congress after being reelected as speaker of the House. The problem, at least according to some scholars, wasn’t that he prayed in the U.S. Capitol. It was that he claimed to be quoting former President Thomas Jefferson.

According to the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, there’s no evidence that the third president of the United States ever recited a prayer for the nation, as Mike Johnson suggested.

Shortly after being reelected as House Speaker, Mike Johnson read a prayer that he claimed was from Thomas Jefferson, despite there being no evidence the third president ever said it. In fact, the quotation has been falsely attributed to Jefferson so often over the years that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation has debunked it.

Johnson’s use of what Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation call a “spurious quotation” was reported by Brian Kaylor.

These Christian Nationalists like Mike Johnson are so desperate to rewrite history and how our founding fathers felt about the separation of church and state.

The win came after a tense stand-off with House Republicans and a phone call from Donald Trump to two members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus.

Trump's pick has secured the powerful House Speaker role after surviving a close vote against Democrat Hakeem Jeffries.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson reads a prayer attributed to Thomas Jefferson which Jefferson never wrote.

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