Fox News Host Charlie Hurt said Thursday that Democrats “betrayed their core identity” by forcing a government shutdown.
The shutdown continues after lawmakers failed to pass a temporary funding bill, triggering a federal government closure at midnight Wednesday. In an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle,” Hurt said Democrats now look “absurd” for pushing the shutdown over demands for health care concessions, especially while millions of Americans lose access to basic services during the standoff.
“The real problem here, trying to take them all very seriously, even though they have not earned getting taken seriously. You know, the whole point, the whole problem for them is for Democrats, they believe that the government is the answer to all of our problems,” Hurt told host Laura Ingraham. “And if you’re going to then turn around and shut the government down, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of what the purpose of your party is, which is that the government is the answer to all your problems.”
At the center of the dysfunction, Hurt said, is Chuck Schumer, who’s bending to pressure from the far left and scrambling to protect himself from a potential primary challenge. (RELATED: John Thune Shares What ‘Reasonable Democrats’ Are Telling Him About Shutdown)
“And so from the very beginning, they’re starting out in a kind of looking rather absurd to begin with. And then, and of course you have also playing out at the exact same time, you have all of these concerns that Chuck Schumer has about his left flank and about being concerned about AOC trying to primary him and knock him off from the left, which is a very real problem for him,” Hurt said. “And I talked to staffers in the Senate, and they all confirmed that the whole reason that Chuck Schumer is having to do all of this is because he’s worried about his left flank from AOC in New York.”
Hurt said that while Democrats flounder, President Donald Trump is likely to seize the moment and use the chaos to advance his agenda even more aggressively than he has all year.
“And you get to realize that this is all about politics, and they’re going to lose it. And Donald Trump has managed to reinvent every aspect of politics. And I would not be surprised if he doesn’t figure out how to use this shutdown to press his agenda even more forcefully than he has in the first nine months.”
Democrats have been pushing for health-related spending. Vice President JD Vance has criticized efforts to revive Biden-era programs that provided taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants. The Trump administration ended both programs in his second term.
During a tense exchange with a reporter, Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters suggested Tuesday that her party is pushing to secure health benefits for illegal immigrants. Democrats have also demanded more than $1 trillion for a slate of left-wing priorities beyond healthcare, including restoring funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which is set to shut down after Congress rescinded its funding in a July package.
