The Michael Knowles Show - October 05, 2025


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


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

209.45442

Word Count

3,747

Sentence Count

280

Misogynist Sentences

3

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 As you know, the Daily Wire added an incredible new talent to our lineup.
00:00:04.040 The Isabel Brown Show premiered on Daily Wire Plus on September 8th, and she has been killing it.
00:00:09.020 Smart, unapologetic coverage of politics, culture, science, faith, and everything in between.
00:00:14.260 Every weekday, Isabel takes on the most interesting issues,
00:00:18.360 from real discussions about what it'll take to save Western civilization,
00:00:22.220 to her perspective as a new wife and mom.
00:00:25.240 This is your invitation to watch The Isabel Brown Show live every weekday at 12 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire Plus,
00:00:33.020 or find and follow wherever you listen to podcasts.
00:00:36.600 But today, all I need you to do is keep listening right here.
00:00:40.580 You are about to hear Isabel Brown with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson on the government shutdown.
00:00:45.280 What happened? Who's really responsible? And what comes next?
00:00:48.820 This is The Isabel Brown Show.
00:00:51.320 Speaker Johnson, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your very, very busy schedule.
00:00:54.740 For young people today, the media is very much twisting the narrative of what a government shutdown even is
00:01:00.620 and how we got here.
00:01:01.520 So for our viewers who might be the average 18-year-old that didn't get the world's best civics education,
00:01:06.820 can you explain what's going on this week?
00:01:08.660 I don't blame anybody for not understanding all that.
00:01:10.940 It's kind of complicated.
00:01:11.860 But let me make it really simple, okay?
00:01:14.160 Go back to the 1974 Budget Control Act, okay?
00:01:17.280 There's a federal law that says the way that Congress is supposed to spend taxpayer dollars is very,
00:01:23.840 with great stewardship, okay?
00:01:25.160 You're supposed to do 12 separate appropriations bills every year.
00:01:28.700 And why is that important?
00:01:29.880 Because if you divide all the federal funding into 12 separate categories,
00:01:33.380 then you can accurately debate it and have dialogue and have thoughtful conversation.
00:01:38.160 Gee, what is the best use of taxpayer dollars?
00:01:40.060 We want to spend it efficiently and effectively, right?
00:01:42.040 So you divide all the government into 12 different categories and you do that.
00:01:46.100 Here's the problem.
00:01:47.060 Congress hasn't done that for a long, long time, okay?
00:01:49.320 Because Congress has a tendency to not do its duty and responsibility because it's hard work.
00:01:53.960 So what they do instead is they kick the can down the road until the end of the year,
00:01:57.580 usually right about Christmastime, and there's a giant omnibus spending bill.
00:02:01.680 You heard the term omnibus, right?
00:02:03.560 And that's where they just cram everything in all at once.
00:02:06.120 The bill is sometimes 2,000 pages long.
00:02:08.160 No one's read it, understood it, not debated it.
00:02:10.240 And it's massive amounts of money, trillions of dollars all at once.
00:02:13.740 That is bad stewardship, okay?
00:02:15.720 So I became Speaker almost two years ago in October of 23.
00:02:19.140 I was not expecting to have the job.
00:02:21.080 And I'm a fiscal conservative, and I'm worried about Congress being irresponsible with taxpayer funds.
00:02:27.240 And so I made it a commitment after I became Speaker that I would force the muscle memory back to Congress
00:02:31.960 to make them do what we call regular order,
00:02:34.900 and that is 12 separate appropriations bills going through both chambers and working through it.
00:02:38.320 But it's taken a long time to do that because it's like pushing a boulder up a hill
00:02:42.480 and trying to force people into this job.
00:02:44.900 But the good news is we did it.
00:02:47.140 And this year, the House Appropriations Committee, in a bipartisan fashion,
00:02:51.880 using our Republican majority, we got 12 separate appropriations bills done through committee.
00:02:56.600 We got three of them passed off the floor.
00:02:59.040 The Senate, for the first time in years, passed three separate bills off the floor on their side.
00:03:03.740 The problem is those three bills don't match up exactly.
00:03:06.900 So what happens in our process is that if there's a difference between the two chambers,
00:03:11.480 then you have a subset of members of both chambers who go to what's called a conference committee
00:03:15.760 to work out the differences.
00:03:17.300 That's it.
00:03:18.020 They've finished that up.
00:03:19.220 They send it to the president for signature.
00:03:20.800 We're in the middle of that process, okay?
00:03:22.220 And it's a big thing, a big achievement to get Congress back to it, but we ran out of time
00:03:26.780 because the end of the fiscal year is September 30th, not the end of the calendar year.
00:03:31.860 So here we are on the eve of that.
00:03:34.120 So what do we do?
00:03:35.240 Well, we have the majority in both chambers.
00:03:37.280 Republicans are in charge.
00:03:38.360 We're sensible.
00:03:39.040 We're responsible.
00:03:40.440 We're efficient, effective government people.
00:03:42.320 So we said, let's do a short-term stopgap funding measure called a CR.
00:03:47.920 We call it a continuing resolution to keep the government open for seven more weeks to
00:03:52.480 November 21st.
00:03:53.840 Why?
00:03:54.360 We're just trying to buy time.
00:03:55.540 We just want to have a little more time for the appropriators to finish this process
00:03:58.160 and get it done.
00:03:58.880 Get the bills to President Trump's desk and get them done.
00:04:02.060 And that's a simple thing.
00:04:03.820 Chuck Schumer and all the Democrats here have given speeches for decades about how you can't
00:04:07.720 shut the government down and you've got to keep it open.
00:04:10.020 Suddenly, he just changed his tune, though.
00:04:11.560 And so they voted against it.
00:04:13.540 Now, they've done that a few times.
00:04:15.380 Leader Thune in the Senate is going to continue to put the House's bill, because we passed
00:04:19.020 it in the House two weeks ago.
00:04:20.900 We had one Democrat join us.
00:04:23.300 The rest of them voted to shut the government down.
00:04:25.500 But we got it done.
00:04:26.380 We sent it to the Senate, and that's where it sits.
00:04:28.460 So here's the problem.
00:04:29.780 The clock ran out September 30th.
00:04:31.520 So at midnight on October 1, you know, today, we shut the government down.
00:04:36.840 Now, what's the problem?
00:04:37.700 That's a serious problem because there are real Americans affected by this nonsense.
00:04:42.300 Two questions that ought to be answered there.
00:04:43.900 Number one, why is Chuck Schumer doing this?
00:04:46.500 Why did he change his tune?
00:04:47.500 The guy's been in Washington, like, longer than you and I, almost longer than I've been
00:04:50.940 alive, okay?
00:04:52.040 And he's always been against this.
00:04:53.560 He said it was dangerous, and we'd be derelict in our duty.
00:04:56.200 And how could you crush the American people when suddenly he's doing it?
00:04:59.200 Here's the answer.
00:05:00.480 J.D.
00:05:00.780 Vance said it today.
00:05:01.660 I've said it.
00:05:02.140 We've all pointed it out.
00:05:03.820 It's a good question, and the answer's simple.
00:05:05.780 Chuck Schumer is running scared of the far-left base of his party.
00:05:09.280 He's up for re-election in a couple years, and he's afraid that AOC is going to challenge
00:05:13.420 him because the Marxists are taking over the party.
00:05:15.700 Now, Chuck Schumer's a far-left legislator.
00:05:17.980 He's not quite liberal enough for all of them, so he's got to show a fight.
00:05:21.400 He's got to show that he's fighting Trump, so he's decided to shut the government down.
00:05:24.800 Here's what happens.
00:05:25.560 Real people get hurt.
00:05:26.560 Yeah.
00:05:27.060 I mean, you're talking about the WIC program, right?
00:05:30.180 Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Supplemental Program.
00:05:33.560 It's not funded anymore because we don't have the ability to send the money because they
00:05:36.500 just dried it up.
00:05:37.740 You've got soldiers, TSA agents, Border Patrol agents who do have to go to work, but they're
00:05:42.680 not going to get paid.
00:05:43.720 It's a real problem.
00:05:44.660 I mean, if somebody's, let's say there's a young soldier who's deployed overseas right now,
00:05:49.060 left his young wife and two small children at home, they're not going to get their monthly
00:05:53.180 paycheck.
00:05:53.800 They don't get it until all this is resolved.
00:05:56.200 You have real problems with FEMA, for example.
00:05:59.580 We're in the middle of hurricane season.
00:06:00.740 I'm from Louisiana.
00:06:01.500 This is serious business.
00:06:02.840 As we sit here today, there are two hurricanes off the eastern seaboard of the United States.
00:06:07.720 If your flood insurance lapses, or if you buy a new home and you need a new insurance
00:06:11.560 policy, you can't get that right now because FEMA just got shut down for those services.
00:06:16.320 All sorts of veterans' health care.
00:06:18.240 We run the suicide prevention programs every day through this.
00:06:22.700 They just got shut down.
00:06:23.840 I mean, this is real stuff.
00:06:25.780 People get harmed, and it's totally unnecessary, and Chuck Schumer's doing it for politics.
00:06:31.080 This idea of gravitating towards Marxism, what specifically are some of these initiatives
00:06:35.320 that Chuck Schumer's pushing for?
00:06:37.080 Well, when we say big government liberals, I mean, these guys are taking it to the next
00:06:40.880 level, okay?
00:06:42.180 Marxism, of course, you know, communism and socialism are sort of branches of that underlying philosophy,
00:06:47.060 right?
00:06:47.240 And socialism is you just want the government to take over everything, basically, and all
00:06:51.040 means of production and control and everything.
00:06:53.200 That's what they're moving towards.
00:06:54.420 So instead of the simple seven-week stopgap funding measure, a clean continuing resolution,
00:07:00.920 clean, we said we didn't add any of our Republican or conservative priorities to it.
00:07:05.780 We just status quo for seven more weeks, really just buying time.
00:07:08.900 And instead of just voting on that, which he always has through his whole career, and
00:07:13.720 they did 13 times during the Biden administration, okay, over the last previous four years, Chuck
00:07:18.960 Schumer votes no.
00:07:19.980 And instead, he sends us a counterproposal.
00:07:22.700 Well, guess what's in that?
00:07:23.660 He wants to add $1.5 trillion, with a T, dollars in new spending on a seven-week stopgap funding
00:07:31.020 measure.
00:07:32.020 And included in that, they want to make sure they would give health care to illegal aliens
00:07:35.860 again.
00:07:36.120 Naturally, yes.
00:07:37.000 Which would just stop.
00:07:37.880 And they want to claw back $50 billion that we put into a rural hospital fund to prop those
00:07:45.180 up, because many of them are in real financial straits.
00:07:49.760 And people say, why would he do that?
00:07:51.700 Well, you think about it.
00:07:52.860 A lot of those rural counties and areas are in red states.
00:07:55.500 I mean, you have to wonder what kind of thought went into this.
00:08:00.240 They just completely overplayed their hand.
00:08:02.440 And it's absurd.
00:08:03.680 Right before I walked into here, I've been on the phone with the president for the last
00:08:06.620 hour.
00:08:07.540 And he and I were talking.
00:08:08.340 He said, Mike, I can't believe how crazy this is.
00:08:11.080 There's nothing for us to negotiate, because the president likes to make a deal, right?
00:08:14.940 Mr. President, there's nothing to make a deal with it.
00:08:16.920 There's nothing we can give.
00:08:17.920 We didn't put any of our priorities.
00:08:19.460 There's nothing I can take back to sweeten the deal.
00:08:21.980 He goes, I can't believe Schumer did that.
00:08:24.300 I can't either.
00:08:25.500 But he painted himself into a corner.
00:08:27.420 That's the part that I think is so fascinating to me, is I keep trying to ask myself and
00:08:31.280 give the benefit of the doubt here to the left on any sort of political legitimacy to
00:08:35.820 this game whatsoever.
00:08:37.520 And yet, I don't think they're aware of where the average American, particularly young Americans,
00:08:42.020 are at right now, especially critical of big government policies.
00:08:46.060 You know, I'm a very close friend of Charlie Kirk, and the last few weeks has been incredibly
00:08:49.820 fascinating.
00:08:50.720 Obviously, heartbreaking as well.
00:08:51.860 But so stirring to see how young people are responding to this and becoming more generally
00:08:56.720 conservative and skeptical of big government.
00:08:59.320 And yet, they seem completely unaware of that from the left side of the aisle here.
00:09:02.740 Well, two things explain it.
00:09:03.940 Trump derangement syndrome is very real.
00:09:05.860 You know, they just, they can't, they can't countenance him at everything he says or does.
00:09:11.360 They're instinctively for the opposite, no matter how crazy, right?
00:09:14.100 And then you had the woke progressive left that effectively took over the party a few
00:09:18.720 years back.
00:09:19.500 And they're driving that party right off a cliff.
00:09:21.580 This is not your grandfather's Democratic Party, right?
00:09:23.680 This is a far different, they actually are Marxists.
00:09:27.180 In fact, they're literally going to elect a Marxist as the mayor of America's largest
00:09:30.880 city in a few weeks.
00:09:32.840 It's a stunning development.
00:09:34.780 And we've been mourning Charlie's loss.
00:09:37.060 He was a friend of mine as well, as you know.
00:09:38.400 And I think I spoke at four vigils for him over the last couple of weeks.
00:09:42.900 I was speaking at the Kennedy Center, which is the one we did here in DC for him.
00:09:46.940 And there and at all the vigils I spoke at, and of course, at the event in Arizona, I
00:09:50.920 know, I mean, you were there.
00:09:51.840 It's amazing.
00:09:52.980 The numbers of people that turned out and the numbers of young people who are both so
00:09:58.280 broken because they feel so close to Charlie, you know, this voice is ubiquitous and his
00:10:02.660 image, they're all involved in Turning Point and many more want to be now.
00:10:06.500 So they're mourning that, but at the same time, they feel like there's this sort of
00:10:10.080 burning desire to just get engaged and get involved, right?
00:10:13.460 The Charlie Kirk effect, we're calling it, and it's real.
00:10:16.000 And what I said, I summarized in all the comments that I made, I said, you know, if we're going
00:10:20.020 to honor the life and legacy of Charlie, the best thing we can do is live like Charlie
00:10:24.600 did, right?
00:10:25.540 And two things, you advance his principles and you adopt his approach.
00:10:30.480 Yeah.
00:10:30.780 The approach was one in love.
00:10:32.020 He's trying to win over hearts and minds and he was never hateful.
00:10:34.620 So Charlie was like me.
00:10:36.220 Mike Huckabee said one time, he's running for governor of Arkansas many years ago, he
00:10:39.140 said, you know, I'm a conservative, but I'm not mad at anybody.
00:10:42.340 I mean, that's our approach, right?
00:10:44.420 We're going to be winsome warriors, but you have to be prepared to give an answer for those
00:10:48.320 that you have, as scripture says, and be ready for those debates.
00:10:51.420 And Charlie was, but he never hated anybody on the other side of the table.
00:10:55.040 That kind of message, the hopeful message, the things that he articulated, faith, family,
00:10:59.560 freedom, patriotism, American exceptionalism, people respond to that.
00:11:04.680 And it's in one sense, in my view, it's a response to the woke progressive nihilism that
00:11:10.500 just leads to emptiness and despair and hopelessness.
00:11:14.260 It's an offer of hope and eternity and real truth.
00:11:17.380 And that's what people are yearning for, you know?
00:11:19.360 But if we present that in a political context and we show how those things connect, which
00:11:23.420 Charlie was an expert at doing, now you're really good.
00:11:26.580 And people get engaged for that.
00:11:28.760 We're starting to see that generational shift and the Charlie Kirk effect here on the Hill.
00:11:32.580 I know there's one Turning Point USA alum who's a member of Congress, Representative Luna,
00:11:36.820 who's quite remarkable.
00:11:38.460 And we go way back to see her journey has been absolutely incredible.
00:11:41.860 How do you think that's going to impact the future of the party here on the Hill?
00:11:44.580 I know generationally, young people are all about big government sucks and socialism sucks.
00:11:49.180 So you're seeing that tug of war happen even on the right side of the political aisle today.
00:11:52.680 How do you think that impacts the shutdown and your agenda moving forward?
00:11:55.360 There's an old saying, if the people will lead, the leaders will follow, right?
00:11:59.380 And so what you'll see is, and you've already seen it, it inspires more backbone and confidence
00:12:04.560 in people who actually believe those things or were reluctant to talk about it.
00:12:08.560 I became speaker a couple years ago.
00:12:10.220 The first thing I did was I did an interview.
00:12:13.020 Well, I did my floor speech and I did an interview with Hannity and we'd just go live
00:12:15.700 that night.
00:12:16.240 And I mean, this is unrehearsed and unprepared because I wasn't expecting to get the job.
00:12:19.720 And he says, people don't know anything about Mike Johnson.
00:12:22.040 He said, what could you say, how could you summarize, you know, what you believe, your
00:12:25.980 philosophy?
00:12:26.480 And I said, I didn't think, I just, I didn't have talking points over here.
00:12:29.560 And I said, well, Sean, I don't know, it's pretty simple for me.
00:12:32.660 If you want to know what I think about anything, go dust off the Bible on your shelf.
00:12:35.520 That's pretty, you know, I'm a Bible-believing Christian.
00:12:37.220 I, you know, I had no idea what a landmine that was.
00:12:40.940 Um, and, and they came after me with sharp knives, you know, but, uh, some of us have
00:12:46.280 always spoken like that.
00:12:47.400 We've been trying to bring back those principles.
00:12:50.160 Charlie, Charlie was about, what I loved about our friend was he, he liked the temporal policy
00:12:54.960 debates.
00:12:55.520 He was about the temporal things, but he was much more about the eternal things, the permanent
00:12:59.240 things, you know, and I try to, and I have always tried to weave that into everything
00:13:02.840 we do.
00:13:03.540 And now more and more people are seeing it that way.
00:13:06.560 And you've heard people as high ranked as the vice president say in the last few days,
00:13:10.860 I've spoken more about my faith in Christ for over the last two weeks than I had, you
00:13:15.100 know, he said.
00:13:15.660 Ever before.
00:13:16.300 Yeah.
00:13:16.920 And everybody's doing that now.
00:13:18.660 So it's so refreshing to us because we're walking around like, wow, we're not the freaks
00:13:22.160 anymore.
00:13:22.600 Like, oh, this is the thing.
00:13:23.760 Everybody, welcome to the party.
00:13:25.560 And more, more people are more, uh, I think, you know, open about what they really believe.
00:13:31.740 And what is the, what is the core foundational principle behind the policies that we're
00:13:36.400 advancing?
00:13:37.260 That's what wins over the hearts and minds.
00:13:38.960 And that, and we have a real opportunity to do that now.
00:13:41.020 Last question for you.
00:13:41.840 If you're giving a message to the next generation for what to expect out of this shutdown and
00:13:45.660 in general, what to expect out of this Congress, what can we expect to see in the next few
00:13:50.020 days and months?
00:13:51.240 Well, you can make an argument really objectively.
00:13:53.700 The first six months of this Congress was the most productive success of any in memory,
00:13:57.720 maybe of all time.
00:13:59.700 Going back to the American Revolution.
00:14:01.400 Why?
00:14:01.560 Because we had unified government.
00:14:02.740 So we had President Trump in the White House and you have Republicans in charge of the
00:14:06.780 Senate and the House because we got a mandate in the election in 24 and we acted on that.
00:14:11.160 So we did the big, beautiful bill and this, you know, marquee legislative achievements with
00:14:15.500 the smallest margin in U.S. history.
00:14:17.200 I had a one vote margin for 90 of the first hundred days.
00:14:20.040 You know, we have defied expectation because the Republicans stayed unified.
00:14:24.480 And my message to all my colleagues is as long as we can do that, we are unlimited in
00:14:28.560 the potential of what we can achieve.
00:14:30.280 So we're planning more of those big marquee pieces of legislation.
00:14:34.140 The big, beautiful bill, the Working Families Tax Cuts Bill, we call it, was a reconciliation
00:14:39.160 bill, which you can do.
00:14:41.220 You don't need 60 votes in the Senate, which is the normal case.
00:14:44.280 You can do it with a bare majority.
00:14:45.740 So we're planning reconciliation 2.0 right now for the fall.
00:14:49.220 I'd like to do a third one in the spring before we're done with this Congress.
00:14:51.920 And then we have some other marquee things that we're doing in addition to all the things
00:14:56.260 the president's done with executive orders that we're codifying, putting into written
00:15:00.080 law.
00:15:00.800 So regulatory reform, tax cuts, and pro-growth policies for the economy, but then also changing
00:15:07.360 the size and shape and scope of government all at once.
00:15:10.500 I mean, this is something that many of us have been working on for our whole lives, you
00:15:14.080 know, and we have marquee achievements for all these things, but there's more to come.
00:15:17.740 And then we go into an election year, the midterm election next year.
00:15:21.100 I just literally got off the phone with the president and he said, Mike, I can't
00:15:24.300 believe, sorry, I'm doing his voice.
00:15:26.760 You're pretty good at it, so we'll keep it.
00:15:28.360 It's only twice in 90 years, you know, the president's picked up seats in the fifth
00:15:32.220 midterm.
00:15:32.660 I said, but you're going to do it, sir.
00:15:34.000 We're going to define history.
00:15:35.620 Lots of reasons for that.
00:15:36.780 But we had a demographic shift in 2024.
00:15:38.800 We'll keep a lot of those voters.
00:15:40.620 We have a favorable election, Matt.
00:15:42.400 There's way more House Democrats sitting right now, as we're talking, in districts that
00:15:46.640 President Trump won than that Harris won, the Republicans in Harris seats.
00:15:51.100 And we've got a favorable map.
00:15:52.840 The Democrats are in free fall.
00:15:54.740 And the fourth factor that none of us saw coming is the aftermath of Charlie's passing.
00:15:59.660 And the energy that that puts in the hearts and minds of people, young people who want
00:16:04.820 to be engaged.
00:16:05.700 They understand what's happening.
00:16:06.740 They want to take their country back.
00:16:08.300 And we're presenting to them an opportunity to do that.
00:16:10.460 And I think that has a big effect in the midterms that nobody saw coming.
00:16:15.000 God has a way of working all things together for good.
00:16:17.740 Charlie used to preach that, and he believed it, and we do.
00:16:21.100 His passing was so untimely and tragic and unspeakable.
00:16:24.740 To me, in some ways, it still doesn't seem real.
00:16:26.880 Yeah.
00:16:27.600 But God is going to use that.
00:16:30.440 He already is.
00:16:31.480 And there's such great hope in that.
00:16:33.300 And Charlie is watching all this, and he knows.
00:16:36.660 And that's a great comfort to all of us.
00:16:38.720 Well, as you know, we've been the apologists over here on our show for the fact that Gen
00:16:42.360 Z will save America.
00:16:43.680 And we are incredibly excited to keep cheering you on and supporting everything you're doing
00:16:47.680 to serve the American people.
00:16:48.820 Thank you for your service to our country and for bringing back home the message that
00:16:52.920 big government sucks.
00:16:53.900 Congrats for all your success.
00:16:56.060 It's well earned, and we're excited.
00:16:57.780 Keep going.
00:16:58.900 Thank you again to Speaker Johnson for taking the time to join us.
00:17:01.700 And make sure you guys are subscribed to the channel to get tomorrow's episode and every
00:17:05.080 episode thereafter.
00:17:06.440 We can't wait to be spending some more time here on Capitol Hill to unveil all of the great
00:17:10.560 plans to serve the American people the best way our lefted officials know how.
00:17:23.900 We'll see you guys later.
00:17:26.200 Thank you for listening.
00:17:27.780 Bye.
00:17:28.280 Bye.
00:17:28.800 Bye.
00:17:28.900 Bye.
00:17:29.780 Bye.
00:17:29.800 Bye.
00:17:31.040 Bye.
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