The state of the economy and who is to blame wasn't the only thing VP JD Vance blatantly lied about during his interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox on Friday night.
Vance was also asked about the looming government shutdown, and pushed the same bullshit we heard from Speaker Mike Johnson, who, as Politico reported, wrote this on the evil bird site:
“Democrats are holding the AMERICAN government HOSTAGE — in an attempt to give FREE health care to NONCITIZENS, which was just outlawed by Congress,” House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote in an X post today.
Johnson is referring to a portion of Republicans’ domestic spending megabill that penalizes California and other states for using state tax revenue to cover undocumented residents by expanding their versions of the federal Medicaid program.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries pushed back on this narrative during a news conference today.
“Federal law currently prohibits health care funds being used for undocumented immigrants,” Jeffries said. “Period, full stop. And no one is asking for that law to be repealed.”
Trump was repeating the same nonsense:
Trump, who canceled a negotiation meeting with Democratic lawmakers, falsely claimed that Democrats want Republicans to add funding for "transgender surgeries" and "$1 trillion dollars in new spending to continue free health care for illegal aliens"—neither of which is even remotely true.
GOP lawmakers had enough shame to drop the transgender surgery lie, but they’ve been spreading the falsehood that Democrats are demanding to add health care for undocumented immigrants in order to keep the government open.
[..]Of course, Democrats are not actually demanding funding for transgender surgeries or health care for undocumented immigrants.
They are, however, demanding that Republicans actually negotiate with them to get their votes. And in exchange, they want the GOP to agree to extend subsidies for low-income Americans’ health insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
If the subsidies are not extended, premiums will skyrocket and millions will lose their health insurance. In fact, Republicans are worried that not extending those subsidies could hurt them politically in the 2026 midterms—but not enough to negotiate with Democrats to extend them.
And as we discussed here, what Democrats have asked for is to "fund healthcare, in the form of extending ACA subsidies and restoring funding to Medicaid that was cut in Trump's Big Beautiful Ugly Bill.
That won't stop people like Vance from repeating the words "illegal aliens" over and over again and lying that they supposedly proposed a "clean bill," when what they proposed was anything but -- as he did during this exchange with Ingraham:
INGRAHAM: October 1st, if uh the White House and Congress doesn't agree for a plan to continue funding the government, the government will shut down. The Democrats' spin machine full force all day long. It's going to be all week long, blaming the administration for not funding the government saying Russ Vought is threatening mass firings, are going to be permanent if the Democrats don't come to the table. To that you say?
VANCE: Well, he's threatening what? He's threatening to try to find a way to make the government function if the Democrats shut it down. We have to realize the Democrats, their whole argument is we are going to shut down the government unless you give a trillion dollars for medical benefits for illegal aliens.
The major healthcare reform that we've done in this administration is we've made it harder to give your hard-earned tax dollars to medical benefits for illegal aliens.
The Democrats want to undo that, and they're saying that unless you give that money to those illegal aliens, unless you give those benefits to those illegal aliens, we are going to shut down the people's government.
It's such a stark contrast between two parties' priorities. We want to put the government to work for the American people first. The Democrats want to shut down the government because we won't give free benefits to illegal aliens.
It's such a good, again, contrast for what the Democrats stand for and what Republicans stand for. We're not going to be, look, we're not going to be taken hostage by the Democrats' desperate desire to give your tax money to illegal aliens. We're just not going to do it.
INGRAHAM: Is it hard, though?
VANCE: So we've put a bill out there. By the way, Laura, the bill that we've put out there that was passed by the Republican Congress is just a continuation of the current levels of government funding.
By the way, Laura, I don't even like that. I think the government should be spending less money, but we recognize that we have to, because the Democrats control 47 seats in the Senate, we recognize we need 60 total votes. That means we have to get seven Democrats, and that means we have to get something that the Democrats can actually vote for.
If you can't get seven Democrats to vote for a clean continuing resolution, if you can't get seven Democrats who won't shut down the government because they're so concerned about not providing benefits to illegal aliens, then what are we supposed to do?
Are we supposed to actually bargain with effectively those who are trying to take the government hostage to give benefits to illegal aliens? We refuse to do it.
