Trump is 'all over the place' — and Mike Johnson is struggling to cope: report

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U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks during an event honoring the LSU baseball NCAA national champions and the LSU-Shreveport baseball NAIA national champions at the White House in Washington, D.C., October 20, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

With the partial shutdown of the United States' federal government dragging on after more than a month, GOP and Democratic lawmakers are still unable to reach a bipartisan agreement on a spending bill.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) are warning that millions of Americans could lose their health insurance in 2026 if subsidies for the Obamacare exchanges on healthcare.gov are not funded, while House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) is making the repeatedly debunked claim that ACA subsidies are intended for undocumented immigrants.

Maura Quint of the liberal/progressive group Fair Share America discussed President Donald Trump's responses to the shutdown during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast" posted on November 3. And both Quint and host Greg Sargent (a former Washington Post columnist) noted the contradictions between Trump's comments and Johnson's.

Trump is now calling for Senate Republicans to "initiate the nuclear option" and "get rid of the filibuster" in order to get a spending bill passed — an idea that many conservatives, Quint and Sargent stressed, are very uncomfortable with.

Quint told Sargent, "I think it is very clear that Trump has been saying whatever he wants to say for really long time. And I would not want to have to be Mike Johnson and try and figure out how to justify these words, because that is probably one of the toughest jobs out there right now: trying to make sense of Trump. It's nearly impossible."

When Sargent asked Quint if Trump's anti-filibuster rant "wrecks the Republicans own argument," she responded, "It absolutely does. I mean, Trump both wants to pretend that he is being magnanimous and he's governing for all of America, while at the same time, he obviously just wants to govern by fiat. And what he really would like is to not have to talk to anybody about anything. But what we have, of course, is that the Democrats have been in D.C. ready to have any sort of conversation and Republicans haven't even been there…. (Republicans) just sort of line up like little baby ducklings behind whatever Trump says. The problem is Trump is kind of weaving all over the place, so it's very, very hard to follow."

Listen to the full New Republic podcast at this link or read a transcript in Q&A form here.

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