{"id":262782,"date":"2025-10-31T11:54:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T11:54:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/262782\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T11:54:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T11:54:17","slug":"cnn-host-grills-mike-johnson-over-shutdown-i-reject-the-premise-of-the-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/262782\/","title":{"rendered":"CNN Host Grills Mike Johnson Over Shutdown: ‘I Reject The Premise Of The Question’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The \u201cInside Politics\u201d host first asked Johnson if he would accept \u201ca partial government funding deal\u201d to reopen the Department of Agriculture to \u201calleviate the pain\u201d of people whose food benefits are set to expire Saturday<\/a>. He rejected the offer as a political stunt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, there are a handful of moderate centrist Democrats left in the U.S. Senate<\/a>, and they are in panic mode right now because they recognize that their votes have been the reason that all this pain and hardship is being experienced by the American people,\u201d said Johnson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Republican added, \u201cThey have voted now 14 times to impose this hardship and pain. They\u2019re doing it for political purposes. As I\u2019ve explained … they\u2019re worried about the radical left base that is rising, the Democrat Party and some of the leading politicians there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson argued that House and Senate Minority Leaders Hakeem Jeffries<\/a> and Chuck Schumer<\/a> (D-N.Y.) have only stayed in the fight out of fear of future challenges from more progressive politicians, naming New York City mayoral race front-runner Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo here\u2019s the answer,\u201d he told Bash. \u201cWe cannot deviate from the number one job and responsibility of the U.S. Congress<\/a>, and that is to keep the government in operation for the people. And the simplest way to fix this is to reopen the government, not just parts of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they can alleviate a little bit of the pain that they themselves are causing,\u201d he continued in his partisan blaming of Democratic leadership. \u201cLet\u2019s alleviate all the pain and get that done. They have no logical argument why they would not do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bash noted that while those will expire Saturday and are set to affect more than 20 million households, Trump\u2019s administration has found a way to cover military pay<\/a> amid the shutdown, and asked Johnson why he\u2019s \u201cdrawing the line\u201d at hungry Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cWait a minute, wait,\u201d he protested. \u201cI reject the premise of the question. I\u2019m not drawing the line. The Democrats are drawing the line. If we had a contingency fund that we could use, that would be done. The White House \u2026 the executive branch, all the cabinet secretaries are doing everything they can to mitigate and reduce the pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The MAGA Republican argued that contingency funds for food benefits can\u2019t be used because Congress didn\u2019t authorize this ahead of the shutdown. Bash pushed back, noting Democrats say that \u201cthat\u2019s not what the law shows\u201d \u2014 which Johnson said was \u201cridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Already a member? Log in to hide these messages.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The \u201cInside Politics\u201d host first asked Johnson if he would accept \u201ca partial government funding deal\u201d to reopen…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,15284,141555,12,9292,13410,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-262782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-cnn","tag-dana-bash","tag-donald-trump","tag-government-shutdown","tag-mike-johnson","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262782\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}