Mike Johnson goes nuclear on Chuck Schumer over ‘playing games’ with shutdown

Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday expressed outrage at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for playing politics with the ongoing government shutdown.

Schumer on Wednesday celebrated his decision to shut down the government despite Americans facing accumulating effects of a prolonged funding lapse. Johnson said during a press conference at the Capitol that Schumer’s motive for maintaining the shutdown is fear of losing his New York Senate seat to Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or someone else more radical than him.

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“They’re desperate. There’s a rising Marxist wing in the Democrat Party. They’re about to elect the mayor of New York City. Chuck Schumer is from New York. He sees a rising Marxist challenge to himself,” Johnson said. “And there’s one thing that Chuck Schumer cares about more than anything else and that is his Senate seat. The guy’s been in Congress for 44 years. He doesn’t know how to live life outside this building. And so he will do anything to make sure that he keeps that seat.”

“He thinks AOC is going to challenge him or some other Marxist. I’m just telling you the plain truth and I take no pleasure in this. I’m trying to muster every ounce of Christian charity that I can, but this is outrageous!” he continued. “He’s playing games with the American people. Real people are being hurt! Veterans and troops and everybody, people that rely on these services. God bless America. Do the right thing and open the government.”

Millions of Americans are on the precipice of missing a paycheck while American businesses that engage with the federal government could advance with layoffs because of the economic fallout. Active-duty service members, among other federal employees, could miss their next paycheck if the government does not reopen by Wednesday.

“We knew that this would be a hard fight. It is still a hard fight,” Schumer told Punchbowl News in a sit-down interview on Wednesday. “But every day we’re getting better and better as the message sinks in more and more deeply.”

“Every day gets better for us,” he added.

Schumer has mostly kept his caucus united in repeatedly voting against reopening the government as the shutdown extended to its ninth day on Thursday. No other Democrats so far have joined Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and independent Maine Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats, to vote for a clean extension of government funding that Republicans support.

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