The Matt Walsh Show - Introducing The Isabel Brown Show： Inside the Shutdown with Speaker Mike Johnson

00:00:00.160 As you know, the Daily Wire added an incredible new talent to our lineup.

00:00:04.700 The Isabel Brown Show premiered on Daily Wire Plus on September 8th, and she's been crushing it. 0.99

00:00:09.600 Smart, unapologetic coverage of politics, culture, science, faith, and everything in between.

00:00:15.000 Every weekday, Isabel takes on the most interesting issues from real discussions about what it'll take to save Western civilization,

00:00:22.240 to her perspective as a new wife and mom, and everything else you can imagine.

00:00:25.860 This is your invitation to watch The Isabel Brown Show live every weekday at 12 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire Plus

00:00:33.060 or find and follow wherever you listen to podcasts.

00:00:35.940 But today, all I need you to do is keep listening right here.

00:00:39.920 You're about to hear Isabel Brown with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on the government shutdown.

00:00:45.440 What happened, who's really responsible, and what comes next.

00:00:49.680 This is The Isabel Brown Show.

00:00:52.220 Speaker Johnson, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your very, very busy schedule.

00:00:56.200 For young people today, the media is very much twisting the narrative of what a government shutdown even is and how we got here.

00:01:02.560 So for our viewers who might be the average 18-year-old that didn't get the world's best civics education,

00:01:07.840 can you explain what's going on this week?

00:01:09.700 I don't blame anybody for not understanding all that.

00:01:11.960 It's kind of complicated.

00:01:12.880 But let me make it really simple, okay?

00:01:15.280 Go back to the 1974 Budget Control Act, okay?

00:01:18.300 There's a federal law that says the way that Congress is supposed to spend taxpayer dollars is very,

00:01:24.880 with great stewardship, okay?

00:01:26.200 You're supposed to do 12 separate appropriations bills every year.

00:01:29.740 And why is that important?

00:01:30.920 Because if you divide all the federal funding into 12 separate categories,

00:01:34.420 then you can accurately debate it and have dialogue and have thoughtful conversation.

00:01:39.180 Gee, what is the best use of taxpayer dollars?

00:01:41.080 We want to spend it efficiently and effectively, right?

00:01:43.080 So you divide all the government into 12 different categories and you do that.

00:01:47.140 Here's the problem.

00:01:48.100 Congress hasn't done that for a long, long time, okay?

00:01:50.340 Because Congress has a tendency to not do its duty and responsibility because it's hard work.

00:01:55.000 So what they do instead is they kick the can down the road until the end of the year,

00:01:58.620 usually right about Christmastime, and there's a giant omnibus spending bill.

00:02:02.720 You heard the term omnibus, right?

00:02:04.600 And that's where they just cram everything in all at once.

00:02:07.160 The bill is sometimes 2,000 pages long.

00:02:09.200 No one's read it, understood it, not debated it.

00:02:11.260 And it's massive amounts of money, trillions of dollars all at once.

00:02:14.820 That is bad stewardship, okay?

00:02:16.760 So I became Speaker almost two years ago in October of 23.

00:02:20.180 I was not expecting to have the job.

00:02:22.160 And I'm a fiscal conservative, and I'm worried about Congress being irresponsible with taxpayer funds.

00:02:28.280 And so I made it a commitment after I became Speaker that I would force the muscle memory back to Congress

00:02:32.960 to make them do what we call regular order,

00:02:35.940 and that is 12 separate appropriations bills going through both chambers and working through it.

00:02:39.360 But it's taken a long time to do that because it's like pushing a boulder up a hill

00:02:43.500 and trying to force people into this job.

00:02:45.920 But the good news is we did it.

00:02:47.920 And this year, the House Appropriations Committee, in a bipartisan fashion,

00:02:52.920 using our Republican majority, we got 12 separate appropriations bills done through committee.

00:02:57.640 We got three of them passed off the floor.

00:02:59.520 The Senate, for the first time in years, passed three separate bills off the floor on their side.

00:03:05.260 The problem is those three bills don't match up exactly.

00:03:07.920 So what happens in our process is that if there's a difference between the two chambers,

00:03:12.520 then you have a subset of members of both chambers who go to what's called a conference committee

00:03:16.800 to work out the differences.

00:03:18.380 That's it.

00:03:19.040 They finish that up.

00:03:20.240 They send it to the president for signature.

00:03:21.820 We're in the middle of that process, okay?

00:03:23.260 And it's a big thing, a big achievement to get Congress back to it, but we ran out of time

00:03:27.820 because the end of the fiscal year is September 30th, not the end of the calendar year.

00:03:32.900 So here we are on the eve of that.

00:03:35.160 So what do we do?

00:03:36.260 Well, we have the majority in both chambers.

00:03:38.320 Republicans are in charge.

00:03:39.400 We're sensible.

00:03:40.080 We're responsible.

00:03:41.160 We're efficient, effective government people.

00:03:43.460 So we said, let's do a short-term stopgap funding measure called a CR.

00:03:48.260 We call it a continuing resolution to keep the government open for seven more weeks

00:03:53.060 to November 21st.

00:03:54.880 Why?

00:03:55.360 We're just trying to buy time.

00:03:56.580 We just want to have a little more time for the appropriators to finish this process

00:03:59.180 and get it done.

00:03:59.920 Get the bills to President Trump's desk and get them done.

00:04:03.100 And that's a simple thing.

00:04:04.860 Chuck Schumer and all the Democrats here have given speeches for decades about how you can't

00:04:08.740 shut the government down and you've got to keep it open.

00:04:11.040 Suddenly, he just changed his tune, though.

00:04:12.780 And so they voted against it.

00:04:14.560 Now, they've done that a few times.

00:04:16.380 Leader Thune in the Senate is going to continue to put the House's bill, because we passed

00:04:20.040 it in the House two weeks ago.

00:04:21.940 We had one Democrat join us.

00:04:24.320 The rest of them voted to shut the government down.

00:04:26.640 But we got it done.

00:04:27.420 We sent it to the Senate, and that's where it sits.

00:04:29.500 So here's the problem.

00:04:30.800 The clock ran out September 30th.

00:04:32.560 So at midnight on October 1, you know, today, we shut the government down.

00:04:37.880 Now, what's the problem?

00:04:38.680 That's a serious problem, because there are real Americans affected by this nonsense.

00:04:43.360 Two questions that ought to be answered there.

00:04:44.880 Number one, why is Chuck Schumer doing this?

00:04:47.540 Why did he change his tune?

00:04:48.540 The guy's been in Washington, like, longer than you and I, almost longer than I've been

00:04:51.980 alive, okay?

00:04:53.080 And he's always been against this.

00:04:54.600 He said it was dangerous, and we'd be derelict in our duty, and how could you crush the American

00:04:58.920 people when suddenly he's doing it?

00:05:00.220 Here's the answer.

00:05:01.520 J.D.

00:05:01.820 Vance said it today.

00:05:02.680 I've said it.

00:05:03.160 We've all pointed it out.

00:05:04.840 It's a good question, and the answer's simple.

00:05:06.800 Chuck Schumer is running scared of the far left base of his party.

00:05:10.180 He's up for re-election in a couple years, and he's afraid that AOC is going to challenge

00:05:14.460 him, because the Marxists are taking over the party.

00:05:16.740 Now, Chuck Schumer's a far left legislator, but he's not quite liberal enough for all of

00:05:20.560 them, so he's got to show a fight.

00:05:22.460 He's got to show that he's fighting Trump.

00:05:24.140 So he's decided to shut the government down.

00:05:25.840 Here's what happens.

00:05:26.600 Real people get hurt.

00:05:27.400 I mean, you're talking about the WIC program, right?

00:05:31.240 Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Supplemental Program.

00:05:34.600 It's not funded anymore, because we don't have the ability to send the money, because

00:05:37.420 they just dried it up.

00:05:38.760 You've got soldiers, TSA agents, Border Patrol agents, who do have to go to work, but they're

00:05:43.700 not going to get paid.

00:05:44.740 It's a real problem.

00:05:45.680 I mean, if somebody's, let's say there's a young soldier who's deployed overseas right

00:05:49.880 now, left his young wife and two small children at home, they're not going to get their

00:05:54.000 monthly paycheck.

00:05:54.480 They don't get it until all this is resolved.

00:05:57.400 You have real problems with FEMA, for example.

00:06:00.620 We're in the middle of hurricane season.

00:06:01.800 I'm from Louisiana.

00:06:02.540 This is serious business.

00:06:03.880 As we sit here today, there are two hurricanes off the eastern seaboard of the United States.

00:06:08.580 If your flood insurance lapses, or if you buy a new home and you need a new insurance policy,

00:06:13.140 you can't get that right now, because FEMA just got shut down for those services.

00:06:17.340 All sorts of veterans' health care.

00:06:19.480 Yep.

00:06:20.020 We run the suicide prevention programs every day through this.

00:06:23.620 They just got shut down.

00:06:24.860 I mean, this is real stuff.

00:06:26.300 People get harmed, and it's totally unnecessary, and Chuck Schumer's doing it for politics.

00:06:31.820 This idea of gravitating towards Marxism, what specifically are some of these initiatives

00:06:36.360 that Chuck Schumer's pushing for?

00:06:38.280 Well, when we say big government liberals, I mean, these guys are taking it to the next

00:06:41.900 level, okay?

00:06:42.480 Marxism, of course, you know, communism and socialism are sort of branches of that underlying philosophy,

00:06:48.100 right?

00:06:48.940 Socialism is you just want the government to take over everything, basically, and all means

00:06:52.360 of production and control and everything.

00:06:54.240 That's what they're moving towards.

00:06:55.260 So, instead of the simple seven-week stopgap funding measure, a clean continuing resolution,

00:07:01.960 clean, we said, we didn't add any of our Republican or conservative priorities to it.

00:07:06.820 We just, status quo for seven more weeks, really just buying time.

00:07:10.680 And instead of just voting on that, which he always has through his whole career, and

00:07:14.760 they did 13 times during the Biden administration, okay, over the last previous four years, Chuck

00:07:20.000 Schumer votes no.

00:07:20.760 And instead, he sends us a counterproposal.

00:07:23.740 Well, guess what's in that?

00:07:24.700 He wants to add $1.5 trillion, with a T, dollars in new spending on a seven-week stopgap

00:07:31.840 funding measure.

00:07:33.040 And included in that, they want to make sure they would give health care to illegal aliens 0.98

00:07:36.900 again.

00:07:37.080 Naturally, yes.

00:07:38.000 To just stop.

00:07:39.100 And they want to claw back $50 billion that we put into a rural hospital fund to prop those 0.93

00:07:46.220 up, because many of them are in real financial straits.

00:07:50.760 And people say, why would he do that?

00:07:52.740 Well, you think about it, a lot of those rural counties and areas are in red states.

00:07:57.580 I mean, you have to wonder what kind of thought went into this.

00:08:01.260 They just completely overplayed their hand, and it's absurd.

00:08:04.740 Right before I walked into here, I've been on the phone with the president for the last

00:08:07.660 hour.

00:08:08.560 And he and I were talking.

00:08:09.360 He said, Mike, I can't believe how crazy this is.

00:08:12.120 There's nothing for us to negotiate, because the president likes to make a deal, right?

00:08:14.880 Yep.

00:08:15.920 Mr. President, there's nothing to make a deal with.

00:08:17.960 There's nothing we can give.

00:08:18.900 We didn't put any of our priorities.

00:08:20.500 There's nothing I can take back to sweeten the deal.

00:08:23.020 He goes, I can't believe Schumer did that.

00:08:25.600 I can't either.

00:08:26.520 But he painted himself into a corner.

00:08:28.420 That's the part that I think is so fascinating to me, is I keep trying to ask myself and

00:08:32.320 give the benefit of the doubt here to the left on any sort of political legitimacy to

00:08:36.860 this game whatsoever.

00:08:38.540 And yet, I don't think they're aware of where the average American, particularly young Americans,

00:08:43.060 are at right now, especially critical of big government policies.

00:08:47.100 You know, I'm a very close friend of Charlie Kirk, and the last few weeks has been incredibly

00:08:50.860 fascinating, obviously heartbreaking as well, but so stirring to see how young people are

00:08:55.460 responding to this and becoming more generally conservative and skeptical of big government.

00:09:00.180 And yet, they seem completely unaware of that from the left side of the aisle here.

00:09:03.300 Well, two things explain it.

00:09:04.980 Trump derangement syndrome is very real.

00:09:06.920 You know, they just, they can't, they can't countenance him at everything he says or does, 0.89

00:09:12.380 they're instinctively for the opposite, no matter how crazy, right?

00:09:15.380 And then you had the woke progressive left that effectively took over the party a few years

00:09:19.980 back, and they're driving that party right off a cliff.

00:09:22.600 This is not your grandfather's Democratic Party, right?

00:09:24.700 This is a far different.

00:09:26.680 They actually are Marxists.

00:09:28.120 In fact, they're literally going to elect a Marxist as the mayor of America's largest

00:09:31.940 city in a few weeks.

00:09:33.920 It's a stunning development.

00:09:35.820 And we've been mourning Charlie's loss.

00:09:38.100 He was a friend of mine as well, as you know.

00:09:39.560 And I think I spoke at four vigils for him over the last couple of weeks.

00:09:44.040 I was speaking at the Kennedy Center, which is the one we did here in D.C. for him.

00:09:47.980 And there, and at all the vigils I spoke at, and of course, at the event in Arizona, I

00:09:51.940 know, I mean, you were there.

00:09:52.860 It's amazing.

00:09:54.040 The numbers of people that turned out and the numbers of young people who are both so 0.52

00:09:59.320 broken because they feel so close to Charlie, you know, this voice is ubiquitous.

00:10:03.300 And his image, they're all involved in Turning Point, and many more want to be now.

00:10:08.240 So they're mourning that, but at the same time, they feel like there's this sort of burning

00:10:11.460 desire to just get engaged and get involved, right?

00:10:14.500 The Charlie Kirk effect, we're calling it, and it's real.

00:10:17.040 And what I said, I summarized in all the comments that I made, I said, you know, if we're going

00:10:21.060 to honor the life and legacy of Charlie, the best thing we can do is live like Charlie did,

00:10:26.080 right?

00:10:26.580 In two things, you advance his principles, and you adopt his approach.

00:10:31.400 Yeah.

00:10:31.820 The approach was one in love.

00:10:33.040 He's trying to win over hearts and minds, and he was never hateful.

00:10:36.380 Charlie was like me.

00:10:37.240 Mike Huckabee said one time, he's running for governor of Arkansas many years ago.

00:10:40.060 He said, you know, I'm a conservative, but I'm not mad at anybody.

00:10:43.380 I mean, that's our approach, right?

00:10:45.440 We're going to be winsome warriors, but you have to be prepared to give an answer for the

00:10:49.280 hope that you have, as Scripture says, and be ready for those debates, and Charlie was.

00:10:53.420 But he never hated anybody on the other side of the table.

00:10:55.340 So that kind of message, the hopeful message, the things that he articulated, faith, family,

00:11:00.780 freedom, patriotism, American exceptionalism, people respond to that.

00:11:05.700 And it's in one sense, in my view, it's a response to the woke progressive nihilism that

00:11:11.540 just leads to emptiness and despair and hopelessness.

00:11:15.300 It's an offer of hope and eternity and real truth, and that's what people are yearning for,

00:11:19.740 you know?

00:11:20.240 But if we present that in a political context, and we show how those things connect, which

00:11:24.460 Charlie was an expert at doing, now you're really good, and people get engaged for that.

00:11:29.780 We're starting to see that generational shift in the Charlie Kirk effect here on the Hill.

00:11:33.620 I know there's one Turning Point USA alum who's a member of Congress, Representative Luna,

00:11:37.840 who's quite remarkable.

00:11:39.480 And we go way back to see her journey has been absolutely incredible.

00:11:42.900 How do you think that's going to impact the future of the party here on the Hill? 0.98

00:11:45.600 I know generationally, young people are all about big government sucks and socialism sucks.

00:11:50.220 So you're seeing that tug of war happen even on the right side of the political aisle today.

00:11:53.720 How do you think that impacts the shutdown and your agenda moving forward?

00:11:56.560 There's an old saying, if the people will lead, the leaders will follow, right?

00:12:00.400 And so what you'll see is, and you've already seen it, it inspires more backbone and confidence

00:12:05.580 in people who actually believe those things were reluctant to talk about it.

00:12:09.620 I became speaker a couple years ago.

00:12:11.240 The first thing I did was I did an interview.

00:12:14.060 Well, I did my floor speech, and I did an interview with Hannity, and we just go live that night.

00:12:17.240 And I mean, this is unrehearsed and unprepared because I wasn't expecting to get the job.

00:12:20.160 And he says, people don't know anything about Mike Johnson.

00:12:23.140 He said, what could you say?

00:12:24.960 How could you summarize what you believe, your philosophy?

00:12:27.520 And I said, I didn't think.

00:12:29.000 I didn't have talking points over here.

00:12:30.580 And I said, well, Sean, I don't know.

00:12:32.580 It's pretty simple for me.

00:12:33.680 If you want to know what I think about anything, go dust off the Bible on your shelf.

00:12:36.760 I'm a Bible-believing Christian.

00:12:38.080 You know, I had no idea what a landmine that was.

00:12:43.080 And they came after me with sharp knives, you know.

00:12:45.440 But some of us have always spoken like that.

00:12:48.420 We've been trying to bring back those principles.

00:12:51.200 Charlie was about, what I loved about our friend was he liked the temporal policy debates.

00:12:56.540 He was about the temporal things, but he was much more about the eternal things, the permanent things, you know.

00:13:01.460 And I try to, and I have always tried to weave that into everything we do.

00:13:04.320 And now more and more people are seeing it that way.

00:13:07.800 And you've heard people as high-ranked as the vice president say in the last few days,

00:13:11.980 I've spoken more about my faith in Christ over the last two weeks than I had, you know.

00:13:16.540 Ever before.

00:13:17.340 Yeah.

00:13:17.920 And everybody's doing that now.

00:13:19.700 So it's so refreshing to us because we're walking around like, wow, we're not the freaks anymore.

00:13:23.640 Like, oh, this is the thing.

00:13:24.820 Everybody, welcome to the party.

00:13:26.600 And more people are more, I think, you know, open about what they really believe.

00:13:32.760 And what is the core foundational principle behind the policies that we're advancing?

00:13:38.300 That's what wins over the hearts and minds.

00:13:40.000 And we have a real opportunity to do that now.

00:13:42.040 Last question for you.

00:13:42.860 If you're giving a message to the next generation for what to expect out of this shutdown and, in general, what to expect out of this Congress,

00:13:49.100 what can we expect to see in the next few days and months?

00:13:52.280 Well, you can make an argument, really, objectively.

00:13:54.720 The first six months of this Congress was the most productive success of any in memory, maybe of all time.

00:14:00.140 Going back to the American Revolution, why?

00:14:02.700 Because we had unified government.

00:14:03.920 So we had President Trump in the White House and you have Republicans in charge of the Senate and the House because we got a mandate in the election in 24 and we acted on that.

00:14:12.200 So we did the big, beautiful bill and this, you know, marquee legislative achievements with the smallest margin in U.S. history.

00:14:18.240 I had a one vote margin for 90 of the first 100 days.

00:14:20.920 You know, we have defied expectation because the Republicans stayed unified.

00:14:25.780 And my message to all my colleagues is as long as we can do that, we are unlimited in the potential of what we can achieve.

00:14:31.180 So we're planning more of those big marquee pieces of legislation.

00:14:34.940 The big, beautiful bill, the Working Families Tax Cuts Bill, we call it, was a reconciliation bill, which you can do.

00:14:42.260 You don't need 60 votes in the Senate, which is the normal case.

00:14:45.100 You can do it with a bare majority.

00:14:46.400 So we're planning Reconciliation 2.0 right now for the fall.

00:14:50.260 I'd like to do a third one in the spring before we're done with this Congress.

00:14:53.300 And then we have some other marquee things that we're doing in addition to all the things the president's done with executive orders that we're codifying, putting into written law.

00:15:01.820 So regulatory reform, tax cuts, and pro-growth policies for the economy, but then also changing the size and shape and scope of government all at once.

00:15:11.520 I mean, this is something that many of us have been working on for our whole lives, you know.

00:15:15.240 And we have marquee achievements for all these things, but there's more to come.

00:15:18.760 And then we go into an election year, the midterm election next year.

00:15:22.620 I just literally got off the phone with the president.

00:15:24.500 He said, Mike, I can't believe—sorry, I'm doing his voice.

00:15:27.800 You're pretty good at it, so we'll keep it.

00:15:29.380 It's only twice in 90 years, you know.

00:15:31.660 The president's picked up seats in the first midterm.

00:15:33.700 I said, but you're going to do it, sir.

00:15:35.040 We're going to define history.

00:15:36.720 Lots of reasons for that.

00:15:37.820 But we had a demographic shift in 2024.

00:15:39.840 We'll keep a lot of those voters. 0.99

00:15:41.660 We have a favorable election, Matt.

00:15:43.280 There's way more House Democrats sitting right now, as we're talking, in districts that President Trump won than that Harris won, that Republicans in Harris seats.

00:15:52.160 And we've got a favorable map.

00:15:53.820 The Democrats are in free fall.

00:15:55.540 And the fourth factor that none of us saw coming is the aftermath of Charlie's passing.

00:16:00.060 And the energy that that puts in the hearts and minds of people, young people who want to be engaged, they understand what's happening, they want to take their country back, and we're presenting to them an opportunity to do that, I think that has a big effect in the midterms that nobody saw coming.

00:16:15.980 God has a way of working all things together for good.

00:16:18.740 Charlie used to preach that, and he believed it, and we do.

00:16:21.440 His passing was so untimely and tragic and unspeakable.

00:16:25.780 To me, in some ways, it still doesn't seem real.

00:16:27.920 Yeah.

00:16:28.620 But God is going to use that.

00:16:31.460 He already is.

00:16:32.500 And there's such great hope in that.

00:16:34.320 And Charlie is watching all this, and he knows.

00:16:37.700 And that's a great comfort to all of us.

00:16:39.480 Well, as you know, we've been the apologists over here on our show for the fact that Gen Z will save America, and we are incredibly excited to keep cheering you on and supporting everything you're doing to serve the American people. 0.92

00:16:50.000 Thank you for your service to our country and for bringing back home the message that big government sucks.

00:16:55.800 Congrats for all your success.

00:16:57.080 It's well earned, and we're excited.

00:16:58.800 Keep going.

00:16:59.040 Thank you.

00:16:59.960 Thank you again to Speaker Johnson for taking the time to join us, and make sure you guys are subscribed to the channel to get tomorrow's episode and every episode thereafter.

00:17:07.180 We can't wait to be spending some more time here on Capitol Hill to unveil all of the great plans to serve the American people the best way our elected officials know how.

The Matt Walsh Show - October 05, 2025

Introducing The Isabel Brown Show： Inside the Shutdown with Speaker Mike Johnson

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