Fox Reporter Grills Speaker Johnson On GOP’s ‘Fun and Trolling’ During Shutdown
Chad Pergram, Fox News’ senior congressional correspondent, pressed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Friday about Republicans “having fun and trolling people” while the government is shut down and some Americans are losing their jobs.
“How do you say that they take no pleasure in this and then the next minute say, “Oh, they’re just having fun and trolling people”? This is a government shutdown. On one hand, you say this is very serious—people’s jobs are on the line. On the other hand, it’s ‘Oh, this is just fun and games and trolling,’” Pergram asked Johnson during his Friday presser on Capitol Hill.
“So the effects are very serious on real people, real Americans. We support federal employees who do a great job in all these different areas,” Johnson replied, adding:
But what they’re trying to have fun with, trying to make light of, is to point out the absurdity of the Democrats’ position, and they’re using memes and all the tools of social media to do that. Some people find that entertaining, but at the end of the day, the decisions are hard ones. And I’m telling you, they’re not taking any pleasure in that.
Johnson has consistently highlighted the more “painful” aspects of the shutdown, while some of his GOP colleagues have delighted in it. President Donald Trump has posted AI-generated clips of top Democrats wearing a sombrero, while Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) boasted Trump’s OMB director, Russ Vought, “has been dreaming about this moment, preparing for this moment since puberty.”
On Thursday, Johnson said Vought “takes no pleasure in this, because Russ has to sit down and decide, because he’s in charge of that office, which policies, personnel, and which programs are essential and which are not.”
“That is not a fun task, and he is not enjoying that responsibility. And it could end today if the Senate Democrats would come to their senses and do the right thing for the American people. But if they don’t, and if they keep the government closed, it’s going to get more and more painful, because the resources run out, and more and more things have to be reduced and eliminated,” Johnson added.
Watch the clip above via C-SPAN.
