Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was caught by his own words Wednesday night after CNN’s Kaitlan Collins called out Republicans for some shutdown hypocrisy.
Johnson initially thought he was making a good point by invoking a statement by Democratic Representative Katherine Clark, who spoke of using the shutdown as leverage despite knowing “that families will suffer.”
“It was pretty shocking today to hear them say that. They usually don’t say the quiet part out loud,” Johnson told Collins. But the CNN journalist then played a montage of Johnson’s fellow Republicans making similar statements, including then-vice presidential nominee JD Vance last year and President Donald Trump just last month.
“Some people might look at that and say, ‘Well, how is what Democrats are doing now different than what Republicans have argued before?’” Collins asked Johnson, who quickly claimed that those instances were “different times and different circumstances.”
Kaitlan Collins responds to Mike Johnson's pearl-clutching about Democrats discussing "leverage" by playing a clip of JD Vance, Russ Vought, and Trump making versions of the same argument. Johnson insists it's different, because reasons. pic.twitter.com/3QoSdnwpjd
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 23, 2025Johnson insisted that the current shutdown was the first time that the government was shut down despite a clean continuing resolution being presented, and that Republicans have a clean record in that regard. But even if Vance’s statements last year could be claimed as “different circumstances,” Trump’s statements were only last month.
Trump has also publicly threatened to lay off federal workers, using their jobs as well as their backpay as leverage against the Democrats to get what he wants during the shutdown. Meanwhile, recent polls are not looking very well for the president, showing that as this standoff drags on, Trump and his fellow Republicans are taking a hit with the public.
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