Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday said House Speaker Mike Johnson’s use of a video compilation featuring Democrats arguing against shutting down the government in years past is evidence that the Louisiana Republican has learned how to troll his adversaries from the “master” — President Donald Trump.
Vance was making an appearance on Fox News to cast blame on Democrats for causing the government to run out of money by withholding votes for a stopgap bill the previous night when he was asked about Johnson placing a monitor outside his office running the supercut of House Democrats on repeat.
He replied: “ I see that Mike Johnson has apparently learned from the trolling master President Donald Trump by putting that video outside of his office, just throwing the Democrats words right back at them.”
Vance told the Fox and Friends hosts that one should not shut down the government for “policy disagreements” even though Republicans have for years routinely used government funding disputes as leverage to extract unpopular policy concessions from Democratic presidents.
“You don’t shut down the government because you have a policy disagreement about a totally separate issue, and that’s what the Democrats have done,” he said.
Vance blamed what he called “the far left faction of Senate Democrats” for refusing to vote for the stopgap funding bill and falsely claimed that their push to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies that will expire next year is premature even though insurance companies have already set higher rates based on that future expiration in renewal notices set to be sent to Americans this month.
“Don’t shut down the government because you don’t get what you want. That’s exactly what Senate Democrats have done in this case,” he said.
During Trump’s first term in 2018, Republicans in Congress — at Trump’s behest — forced what would become a 35-day lapse in appropriations because the president said he wouldn’t sign an appropriations bill that lacked funds for his signature border wall even though the provision didn’t have enough support to get through the Senate.
On Tuesday, the last day of the government’s fiscal year, Republican-controlled Senate put forth the failed stopgap bill to keep the government open until Thanksgiving. But Democrats voted against the continuing resolution, also called a CR, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer leading the charge to a shutdown.
Only Senators Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Angus King (I-Maine) and John Fetterman (D-Penn). joined the Republicans. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky) was the only Republican to oppose it.
