Senator John Kennedy is once again cutting through Washington’s theatrics with brutal honesty.
The Louisiana Republican accused Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of staging political drama instead of doing his job to reopen the government.
In an interview with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow, Kennedy described the shutdown as a “political performance,” not a genuine policy disagreement.
He said Schumer is more concerned with keeping up appearances for his party’s radical wing than with serving the American people.
“It will end eventually,” Kennedy said, “when Senator Schumer goes to six or eight of his members and Democrats and says, ‘Do me a favor. Vote to open it back up. I may have to criticize you. I’m not going to vote with you, but I need a way out of this.’”
Kennedy made clear that Schumer’s priority isn’t compromise — it’s saving face.
“He’s gonna tell ‘em, ‘Now, look, I gotta vote no. And I gotta dogcuss you a little bit. We gotta have some play acting and make this look good. And then we come out of the shutdown,’” Kennedy said, describing how Schumer will secretly orchestrate the outcome he publicly opposes.
According to Kennedy, the government shutdown is less about real disagreements and more about political optics. Schumer, he said, is acting out a script to appease the far-left members of his caucus — what Kennedy calls the “moon wing” of the Democratic Party.
“I know him. Well, this shutdown is not about policy. It’s about politics,” Kennedy said.
“And Senator Schumer, this is what’s going on. He is trying to get the moon wing, the socialist wing of the Democratic Party, which is in control, to love him. And they will never love him.”
That blunt assessment paints a damning picture of the Democratic leadership. Schumer, Kennedy argues, is beholden to extremists who refuse to compromise, even at the expense of the country.
The Louisiana senator said Schumer’s strategy is simple: keep the government closed until Republicans and President Trump agree to hand over billions in new spending — spending that Democrats will control. “What he’s saying,” Kennedy explained, “is we’re going to keep government shut down until you Republicans and President Trump give the Democrats $1.5 trillion, and they’re going to tell us how to spend it.”
Kennedy ridiculed the idea that Schumer is fighting for “the people.” In his view, Schumer is fighting for power, money, and media attention — and the shutdown is just another stage for him to perform on.
“He’s boning if it looks contrived,” Kennedy warned. “He can’t look like he’s having a mutiny.” That’s why, Kennedy says, Schumer must choreograph his next steps carefully, pretending to fight while quietly coordinating votes behind the scenes.
Kennedy’s description of this “play acting” matches what many Americans have long suspected: that the partisan battles on the Senate floor are largely theater designed to manipulate the public.
Schumer, Kennedy said, is obsessed with being seen as strong by the socialist faction of his party — even though that same faction will never accept him. “He’d be better off doing what he did back in March and just calling it like he saw it and keeping government open,” Kennedy added.
The senator’s comments came after Schumer led most Democrats in voting down the Republicans’ spending bill earlier in the week, prolonging the shutdown. Kennedy said that move was pure political posturing.
“Schumer knows exactly what he’s doing,” Kennedy said. “He’s trying to look tough for his base while still leaving himself a backdoor exit.”
Kennedy argued that Schumer is being held hostage by his own party’s extremists — the same people who demand funding for what Kennedy called “wasteful foreign projects” and ideological programs.
The Louisiana senator said Democrats are fighting to reinstate spending for overseas LGBTQ initiatives, electric buses in Rwanda, Palestinian media operations, and sterilization programs abroad — all things Republicans already removed from the budget.
“He’s not fighting for the American taxpayer,” Kennedy said. “He’s fighting for his image and for foreign projects nobody asked for.”
During a meeting at the White House, a reporter asked Trump about Venezuela and the threat of terrorism posed by President Nicolás Maduro. Trump spoke about his administration’s efforts to combat the threat, which led to him slamming President Joe Biden’s incompetence.
“You talk about Argentina being important in Latin America. What is your plan for Venezuela? What is the new terrorism, the narco-terrorism against President Maduro? What is your plan about it?” a reporter asked Trump.
“Venezuela has done a couple of things very badly. Number one, we get drugs and all of that. But we get something, in a way, worse. Because they’re a big purveyor of drugs. But we have worse. What they do very well is they send their criminals into the United States. And they send Tren de Aragua, that you know very well. You’re from Venezuela, I assume. And they send them in by the thousands, literally. And these are the worst of all. They empty their prisons into the United States. They empty their mental institutions into the United States,” Trump said.
“And because we had a president who’s low IQ, he didn’t realize what was going on. And the people that are high IQ that surround him, but they happen to be lunatics, radical left, they’re highly intelligent, radical left lunatics. So, in a way, that’s worse than having a guy like Biden,” Trump added.
“But they ran the show. You heard about the Autopen. The person that really operated the Autopen. But it was really the people that told the person that operated the Autopen what to do. Those are the people that really were president. So, we’re not going to stand for it in this country,” the president argued.
“And, by the way, that Autopen thing is under serious investigation. I don’t think you care because you’re from Washington. You couldn’t care less about that,” Trump continued.
Trump concluded, “But I just want to say, because I do The Weave, you know. The Weave covers a lot of different subjects. But the people that are involved in that Autopen scam, because he barely signed anything. I mean, this guy, I don’t know how he can be president. He barely signed it. But the only thing we can find for sure is that he signed Hunter’s Biden. His pardon. Hunter’s Biden. I like that. That’s a good combination.”Internal White House emails reveal concern among aides and Justice Department officials about former President Joe Biden’s sweeping clemency grants in his final days in office, including uncertainty over whether Biden personally reviewed or approved the specific documents authorizing thousands of pardons and commutations.
The messages show that Biden orally approved a plan on Jan. 11, 2025, to commute sentences for inmates serving time on crack cocaine charges. But three warrant documents listing roughly 2,500 recipients were not signed — by autopen — until the morning of Jan. 17, just three days before he left office.
On the evening of Jan. 16, then-White House Staff Secretary Stef Feldman told colleagues she needed confirmation that Biden had consented before she would authorize his autopen signature.
“I’m going to need email … confirming P[resident] signs off on the specific documents when they are ready,” Feldman wrote at 9:16 p.m.
Deputy White House counsel Tyeesha Dixon forwarded Feldman’s message to Michael Posada, chief of staff to the counsel’s office.
“Michael, thoughts on how to handle this? He doesn’t review the warrants,” she wrote.
Posada responded: “We will just need something … making clear that the documents accurately reflect his decision.”
The mass clemency was announced hours later, at 4:59 a.m. on Jan. 17.
It remains unclear whether Biden personally reviewed the final warrant documents before autopen signatures were affixed.
In public comments to the New York Times in July, Biden acknowledged the use of autopen, saying it was necessary “because there were a lot of them.”
Legal experts note that the autopen carries full legal effect, but the warrants must reflect the president’s actual decisions. Emails show aides attempted to create a record verifying his intent.