Rep. Don Beyer

Well, thanks for playing those mega Mike clips.

That was so disappointing.

First of all, saying that the millions and millions, probably tens of millions of Americans who show up on Saturday for the Kings rally are leftist, Antifa, Marxist, Hamas supporters is incredibly insulting and stupid.

He needs to come out and see what happens in Washington, D.C.

and the jurisdictions I represent, Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church.

But the average age is probably 62.

They are overwhelmingly professional.

They are moderate.

They are really good people who love their country.

And they're coming out to protest because they love their country.

It's the opposite of what Mike Johnson suggests.

And then to suggest that he doesn't know the details on Corey Mills, come on.

Everybody here knows the details of Corey Mills.

It's been written about extensively.

You know he's paid attention to that.

He's just afraid to say anything because the margin is so thin.

It's very, very disappointing.

And just the notion that if the Senate Republicans are making progress with Democrats on finding a way out of this, extending the Affordable Care Act tax incentives for a couple of years or longer, making them permanent,

Mike Johnson says he won't bring it back because he's afraid of his own people.

I don't like to do the homonym attacks.

I've served with four different speakers.

This is the fifth one.

By far the weakest speaker, I think, in American history.

You're absolutely right.

Yeah, I'm here in the Capitol right now, and I'm surrounded by lots and lots of my Democratic friends.

I haven't seen a single Republican here.

The halls are largely empty.

And, you know, what Hakeem Jeffries, Catherine Clark say again and again is we're here, we're willing to negotiate, we want to talk.

There's nobody to talk to.

They've shut down conversation and discussion.

And so, hey, they have the White House, the Senate, and the House.

They think they can do anything they want.

Open the government.

You're in power.

Well, Ben, first, I represent the congressional district that has the most federal employees.

It's also the most politically sophisticated and the best educated.

And so we've gotten hit really, really hard by all the rifts, by the fork in the road.

When they shut down USAID, it seemed like every US-based USAID contractor lived near my home.

And yet we did a quick survey yesterday of the last thousand incoming calls.

Ninety percent have been stick with the shutdown.

Stand up for America.

Stand up for health care for every American.

So they're really brutalized by it.

The food bank, our largest food bank in Arlington, Arlington Food Assistance, whatever they're

their number of people they're serving is the largest ever, 50% higher than COVID, which had been the largest ever.

So people are really hurting, but they're also willing to stand up because they love their country.

You know, I go back to the Abraham Lincoln who said, you know, public sentiment drives everything.

That's a paraphrase.

He's more eloquent.

And so let's see how public sentiment evolves over the shutdown.

So far, the public is very much on the side of avoiding the 100%, 200%, 300% increases in Affordable Care Act premiums.

They're against the 20 million people whose health insurance is being stripped away through the big ugly bill.

As long as that happens and Donald Trump's numbers continue to go down, eventually the Republicans are going to realize that they just need to do the right thing.

And Ben, the amazing part is they're going to get creamed in the 2026 elections unless they fix health care.

I mean, it affects their people way more than it affects our voters.

And so the chance for us to pick up 40 or 50 Republican seats is out there if they don't fix it.

And that's not what they want.

So we're offering a win-win situation.

They just have shut their ears to it.

Yeah.

And Ben, we've seen that from the beginning of the year.

What businesses love is certainty.

If I'm going to go out and borrow some money or I'm going to convince some friend to invest money in my business, they need to know and I need to know that there's a future there, that the market will be there, that the regulations will be straightforward, that the tariffs aren't going to kill us.

I saw an interesting thing this morning, the National Federation of Independent Business, all the small businesses across the country do a survey every month.

And the number of people that responded was less than 8% of their memberships, the lowest ever.

So what you're finding out is these businesses, they don't even know how to respond to a survey because they're so afraid and uncertain.

Thank you, Ben, very much.

Good luck.

Thanks for keeping us informed.