House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is done letting Democrats rewrite history. With another government shutdown looming, Johnson decided to flip the script — not with rhetoric, but with receipts. Outside his Capitol office, he’s got a video playing on loop that shows Democrats in their own words blasting government shutdowns — the same Democrats now engineering one to protect their pet projects and open-borders priorities.
The compilation is devastating. There’s Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019, declaring on the House floor: “It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want.” Fast forward to today, and her party is doing exactly that.
Under President Biden, Democrats insisted we must keep the government open.
Now under President Trump they’re saying the opposite.
Last week every single House Democrat but one voted to SHUT DOWN the government.
WATCH Democrats in their own words explain how damaging that is. pic.twitter.com/RNPNpCqheX
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) September 22, 2025
Then comes Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who just last year warned that a shutdown would plunge “seniors who rely on Social Security” into chaos and devastate average Americans. His tone back then? Outrage. His tone today? Silence — as he drives headlong into a shutdown to secure funding for illegal alien healthcare and NPR.
The reel doesn’t stop there. Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries solemnly warned in December 2024 that “families will be hurt. Farmers will be hurt.” Minority Whip Katherine Clark went further, lamenting in 2023 that service members would “work without a paycheck” and firefighters would be furloughed. And Rep. Ayanna Pressley, in a fiery video last year, declared, “This shutdown — you know who’s going to feel the pain? You. Seniors, veterans, working families, hungry kids, y’all.”
Every one of them is now on the opposite side of their own arguments, willing to let the government close its doors to appease the far-left fringe.
President Trump addressed the issue directly during an Oval Office press conference Tuesday, underscoring where the real blame lies: “They are shutting it down. We’re not shutting it down. We don’t want it to shut down because we have the greatest period of time ever. I tell you we have $17 trillion being invested, so the last person that wants it shut down is us.”
Republicans, for their part, are unified in the belief that the Schumer Shutdown will backfire on Democrats. The GOP offered a clean, short-term continuing resolution to keep the lights on while negotiations continue.
Democrats refused. Now, as Johnson’s video makes clear, they’re hoisted on their own petard, forced to answer for their contradictions in front of the very voters they claim to represent.
