House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News on Monday that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is deliberately steering the country toward a government shutdown to appease the far left.
President Donald Trump met with congressional leaders earlier in the day, but negotiations ended without progress. Democrats demanded sweeping healthcare concessions, while Republicans pushed for a clean funding extension.
Johnson spoke with Sean Hannity about the negotiations Monday night.
“I fully expected that they would come into the White House today and be reasonable. But they weren’t. They dug their heels in. It’s painfully obvious that he’s got to watch his back because the young socialists are coming for him, AOC and the others, who want to challenge him for his seat,” Johnson said. “And that is 100% what Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, by extension, are watching for. Their own political cover.”
“They will exact all this damage that we just heard them say in their own words, in previous years. They are willing to do it just so they get political cover. They haven’t backed off on any of those demands, Sean. You had it right. They want to take hard-earned taxpayer dollars, and they want to give new benefits to illegal aliens,” Johnson added. “We eliminated that in our Big, Beautiful Bill. They want to bring it back. They want to prop up NPR and PBS. They want $500 million. That’s their demand in their counteroffer to prop up the Corporation for Public Broadcasting again.”
Johnson said Democrats are pushing a $1.5 trillion stopgap bill loaded with partisan spending.
“We’re not doing that. Left-leaning media outlets don’t need to be funded by taxpayers. They want to spend $1.5 trillion on a simple seven-week stop-gap funding measure so our appropriators can get back to the job of just funding the government,” Johnson added.
Watch the clip above.