Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson faced questions Wednesday over his party’s disastrous underperformance in Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District—one that has members of his party sounding the alarm over Rep.-elect Matt Van Epps’ narrow victory.

Given his responses, either his heart wasn’t in it, or he is really, really bad at spinning bad news.

“We’re excited about the win,” he said, barely pretending to be excited. “A lot of people are not reporting that Cook rates that district as an R-plus-10. It’s not an R-plus-25. President Donald Trump won it by 22 points. It’s actually rated to be a slightly Republican district. So winning it by 9 points is almost exactly on the nose of what we might expect.”

Here’s the problem: That’s not what R+10 means. At a

See Full Page