Just Who Exactly Does Mike Johnson Think Is in Charge of Government?

House Speaker Mike Johnson is taking playing dumb to a whole new level.

During a press conference Monday to highlight the so-called “Democrat Shutdown,” Johnson went so far as to claim that Republicans, who control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, weren’t the ones running the government.

“The Democrats are required to open the government. They keep saying the Republicans are in charge of government. We aren’t—not in the Senate!” Johnson said. “Sixty votes control the Senate. Not a bare majority.”

With the government shutdown entering its fourth week, Johnson has turned playing dumb into an art form as he abstains from actually leading his party. During his daily delivery of remarks to the press, Johnson has incessantly insisted he hasn’t heard about anything bad his government has done while running a deluded defense of President Donald Trump’s administration.

On Monday, Johnson also claimed that cutting trillions of funds to Medicaid had actually “strengthened” the program. Meanwhile, Republicans have repeatedly refused to guarantee the continuance of essential Affordable Care Act subsidies that are set to expire at the end of the year.

Johnson also doubled down on the Trump administration’s latest excuse for not providing funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, starting in November—despite previous USDA guidance. “I got a summary of the whole legal analysis, and it certainly looks legitimate to me,” he said, claiming that contingency funds would require a trade-off for school lunches and infant formula.

The speaker has used the government shutdown to banish Republican lawmakers back to their districts for an extended vacation, where Johnson claimed Monday they were doing “some of the most meaningful work of their careers.” Crucially, the speaker has also used the government shutdown as an excuse not to swear in a duly elected Democrat from Arizona, who is poised to deliver the final signature on a petition to force a vote on releasing the government files on Jeffrey Epstein.

Donald Trump hasn’t ruled out giving more money to Argentina, he told reporters on Air Force One on Monday.

The president claimed that the country’s midterm election results on Sunday, which went very well for right-wing President Javier Milei, are good for the United States because bonds have gone up, making “a lot of money for the United States.” When a reporter asked if Argentina would need “more support,” referring to the president’s $40 billion bailout of the country, Trump replied in the affirmative.

“They might. Yeah, we would consider it,” Trump said.

Trump’s comments come as SNAP funding is set to expire in five days thanks to the government shutdown, with millions of Americans expected to lose food stamps across the country. Health care subsidies are also on the verge of expiring in the U.S., causing health insurance premiums to skyrocket for millions of Americans.

Meanwhile, the up to $40 billion bailout for Argentina that Trump has already approved benefited major hedge funds, including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Pimco, as well as Robert Citrone, a close friend of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who founded the hedge fund Discovery Capital Management.

Thus, when Trump brags that Argentina’s right-wing government is making money for the U.S., he’s not referring to the average American struggling to make ends meet, but rather financial executives and hedge funds. But Trump never was too worried about how the average American is doing.

Donald Trump is economically punishing Canada (and the American public) for daring to televise Ronald Reagan’s position on tariffs.

The president announced Saturday that America’s northern neighbor would literally pay for Ontario’s decision to air portions of one of Reagan’s 1987 radio addresses, in which the conservative icon argued that tariffs undermine economic prosperity and only serve to “hurt every American.” The 35 percent tariff on Canadian goods would increase by at least 10 percent, Trump said.

The advert really irked Trump, who claimed that the very real speech was a “fake.” Trump also cited the advertisement as his reason for canceling trade talks with Canada and then deciding to actually impose more levies on America’s Hat as recompense for the stunt.

“Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “The Reagan Foundation said that they, ‘created an ad campaign using selective audio and video of President Ronald Reagan. The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address,’ and ‘did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is reviewing its legal options in this matter.’

“The sole purpose of this FRAUD was Canada’s hope that the United States Supreme Court will come to their ‘rescue’ on Tariffs that they have used for years to hurt the United States. Now the United States is able to defend itself against high and overbearing Canadian Tariffs (and those from the rest of the World as well!).”

While the ad stitched together some of Reagan’s quotes from different parts of the speech, none of the soundbites used in the ad were made up. In fact, the speech in its entirety reveals Reagan was much harsher on tariffs than the ad made him out to be.

The ad was developed by Ontario’s provincial government. The goal of the ad, per Ontario Premier Doug Ford, was to reach as many Americans as possible. After a conversation with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Ford announced the decision to pull the ad, which will officially stop airing on Monday.

But ultimately, Trump doesn’t appear able to grapple with the reality that his Republican hero considered his favorite economic stratagem a total dud.

“Ronald Reagan LOVED Tariffs for purposes of National Security and the Economy, but Canada said he didn’t!” Trump continued in his post. “Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD. Because of their serious misrepresentation of the facts, and hostile act, I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10 percent over and above what they are paying now.”

Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One Monday, Trump said he had no interest in meeting with Carney to resolve the matter, further elaborating that he wouldn’t be meeting with Carney “for a while.”

President Trump on Monday bragged about passing a dementia test, while challenging Democrats decades younger than him to try and do the same. 

“[We] have a great group of people, which they don’t,” Trump said while taking questions inside Air Force One. “They have Jasmine Crocket, a low-IQ person. [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] is low IQ.… Have her pass, like, the exams that I decided to take when I was at Walter Reed. Those are really hard, they’re really aptitude tests, I guess, in a certain way. But they’re cognitive tests.” 

The “cognitive tests” that Trump is bragging about so proudly—and condescendingly telling two outspoken, progressive women of color to take—is most likely some variation of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. The MoCA is a 10-minute assessment designed to identify signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s, and yet Trump talks about it like it was the Graduate Record Examinations or the LSAT. 

Trump visited Walter Reed Medical Center earlier this month, raising questions about whether he once again took the dementia test on this visit.

The president has been bragging about this test for years now. 

“It was 30 to 35 questions.… The first questions are very easy. The last questions are much more difficult. Like a memory question. It’s, like, you’ll go: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV. So they say, ‘Could you repeat that?’ So I said, ‘Yeah. It’s: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV,’” Trump said back in 2020. “They said nobody gets it in order.… It’s actually not that easy, but for me, it was easy.”

“I think it was 35, 30 questions,” he said again last year. “They always show you the first one, like a giraffe, a tiger, or this, or that—a whale. ‘Which one is the whale?’ OK. And that goes on for three or four [questions], and then it gets harder and harder and harder.”

The test itself is controversial within the medical community, and Trump’s misrepresentation of it has been thoroughly debunked over the years.  

“It’s a very, very low bar for somebody who carries the nuclear launch codes in their pocket to pass and certainly nothing to brag about,” Jonathan Reiner, a George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences professor and cardiologist, told The Washington Post last year.  

And yet Trump, in the midst of a government shutdown, continues to place the MoCA on a pedestal, using it to disparage Representatives Crockett and Ocasio-Cortez even though they could likely pass it with flying colors. Especially if it just consists of  “Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.”

President Donald Trump’s administration claims that its hands are tied against funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program while the government is closed, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s own shutdown plan says that’s not the case.

The USDA published a memo in August claiming that SNAP contingency funds could not legally be used to cover regular benefits for the 42 million Americans that use them, and that any states trying to cover the cost would not be reimbursed, Axios reported Monday.

“SNAP contingency funds are only available to supplement regular monthly benefits when amounts have been appropriated for, but are insufficient to cover benefits,” the memo stated. “The contingency fund is not available to support FY 2026 regular benefits, because the appropriation for regular benefits no longer exists.”

Now the funds could solely be used for so-called contingencies, such as natural disasters, USDA claimed. “For example, Hurricane Melissa is currently swirling in the Caribbean and could reach Florida,” the memo stated. “Having funds readily available allows the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to mobilize quickly in the days and weeks following a disaster.”

But the USDA’s Lapse of Funding Plan, published a month later and which Axios reported has been removed from the agency’s website, stated just the opposite.

“OMB’s General Counsel provided a letter to USDA on May 23, 2025 stating that there is a bona fide need to obligate benefits for October—the first month of the fiscal year—during or prior to the month of September, thereby guaranteeing that benefit funds are available for program operations even in the event of a government shutdown at the beginning of a fiscal year,” the disappeared document states.

“In addition, Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operations should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds that can be used for State Administrative Expenses to ensure that the State can also continue operations during a Federal Government shutdown,” the plan stated. “These multi-year contingency funds are also available to fund participant benefits in the event that a lapse occurs in the middle of the fiscal year.”

The memo also claimed that using the contingency funds would prevent additional transfers to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, which has reportedly been funded using Trump’s tariff money during the shutdown.

This latest memo from the USDA is part of a wider campaign from the Trump administration to hold the health and well-being of millions of Americans hostage, while suggesting it is the Democrats who are responsible. In fact, the USDA website currently has a banner at the top explicitly blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

But in reality, it is the White House that is picking and choosing which projects to fund and what to withhold to make Americans hurt—so it can pressure Democrats into signing a clean continuing resolution.

Earlier this month, the USDA sent a letter to states warning that a lapse in appropriations had resulted in “insufficient funds” to pay SNAP benefits through November. Last week, states began to issue warnings to their most vulnerable residents that benefits would be suspended starting in the middle of October.