House Speaker Mike Johnson was confronted with an inconvenient truth from an unlikely source: Fox News.
Johnson was being interviewed on The Will Cain Show on Monday when the host brought up the reaction of voters to the government shutdown that started on Oct. 1.
The Fox News host cited an NBC poll of 1,000 registered voters showing 52 percent blamed Donald Trump and the Republican Party for the shutdown, as opposed to 42 percent who agreed with the Trump administration that the Democrats were to blame.
A confused Cain asked Johnson, “Why would the polls look like that when you are clearly voting to continue to fund the government and Democrats are not voting to continue to fund the government?”
Johnson started by disputing the figures: “For one thing the polls are all over the place. I mean, CNN was reporting just on Friday of last week that Republicans were winning this, as if it was some sort of political game.”
Then he took a swing at the media, deflecting from the issue at stake. “Statistics like that, polls like that, don’t surprise me,” he said. “The entire media establishment is parroting the talking points of the Democrats every day. It is the most staggering level of gaslighting we have ever seen in American politics.”
“I think the longer the strike’s on, and the more pain experienced by real Americans, I think they will be digging beyond the headlines and looking to see who was really responsible—and the facts are clear.”
Donald Trump also complained about “Fake Polls” in a Truth Social post on Monday.
“So many Fake Polls are being shown by the Radical Left Media, all slanted heavily toward Democrats and Far Left Wingers,” he wrote. “In the Fair Polls, and even the Reasonable Polls, I have the Best Numbers I have ever had and, why shouldn’t I?”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office clapped back with a post on X: “SAD! Trump cares more about imaginary polls than making sure people have access to food & affordable health care.”
Johnson said on Monday Republicans would meet to discuss extending the stopgap bill to reopen the government beyond Nov. 21 and negotiate funding for the rest of the year.
“We’re very mindful of the calendar. We’re very frustrated by that,” Johnson said. “It’s part of the reason we’re so angry about this, because they’re eating up the clock, and the Democrats know how much more we have to do here this year.”
As well as his awkward moment on Fox, Johnson dealt with a tricky question on CNN on Monday.
Manu Raju asked Johnson about the difference between the MAGA attacks on President Joe Biden’s use of clemency and Donald Trump admitting on 60 Minutes on Sunday that he didn’t know the crypto billionaire he pardoned this year.
“Last week, you came here to these mics and you were very critical of Joe Biden’s use of the autopen. You said he didn’t even know who he was pardoning. But last night on 60 Minutes, President Trump admitted not knowing he pardoned a crypto billionaire who pleaded guilty to money laundering. Does that also concern you?” Raju asked.
The speaker replied: “I don’t know anything about that. I didn’t see the interview. You have to ask the president about that. I’m not sure.”
That led to one X user compiling a thread of multiple times when Johnson “wasn’t sure” about a question he was being asked.
That included saying in May, “I don’t know anything about the meme coin thing”; saying of the Epstein files in June, “I don’t know, that’s not my lane”; and, when asked last month about pro-Hitler sentiment in Republican group chats, noting, “I don’t know who these people are. I’ve never heard of them.”
The post Fox News Confronts Mike Johnson With Damning Shutdown Poll appeared first on The Daily Beast.
