The irony is almost too rich. Democrats in Washington helped engineer a government shutdown by voting against a bipartisan funding extension — and within hours, their campaign arms and candidates were blasting out fundraising emails blaming Republicans and President Trump for the mess. In other words: they pulled the plug, then passed the hat.
Emails reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation show just how quickly Democrats turned a lapse in paychecks for service members, disaster relief dollars, and health services into a political cash grab.
The House Majority PAC, one of the party’s biggest outside spending machines, fired off an email plastered with Barack and Michelle Obama’s faces, declaring: “Republicans’ shutdown continues, and Barack and Michelle Obama speak up!” The pitch promised a “HISTORIC wave of support” to make the shutdown “backfire” — and even dangled a 600% donation match.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent his own plea, tying his fundraising request to Trump’s meme mocking him with a sombrero. “He just posted a racist and bigoted attack against me in a desperate attempt to distract from the Republican shutdown,” Jeffries wrote, asking supporters to “rush $15 before midnight.” Notably, Jeffries refused to answer reporters’ questions about whether he’d forgo his own paycheck during the shutdown.
Vulnerable House Democrats in swing districts joined in, despite having voted against keeping the government open. Nevada Rep. Steven Horsford emailed supporters that Republicans “were responsible for the shutdown.”
Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur claimed she’d been “working to keep our government open” while Republicans “literally walked out.” But both Horsford and Kaptur, like nearly every House Democrat, had opposed the bipartisan funding bill on Sept. 19 — the very measure that could have prevented the shutdown in the first place.
Even Stefany Shaheen, a House candidate in New Hampshire, piled on, telling voters: “Today, Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress have shut down the federal government, and we will all pay the price.” What her email left out? Her mother, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, had voted against the House-passed bipartisan bill to fund the government three separate times.
The DCNF confirmed similar appeals went out from Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Emilia Sykes, and Eugene Vindman — all seeking to cash in on the very crisis their caucus had helped create.
Speaker Mike Johnson summed up the contradiction: “Their whole existence is framed around messaging, no matter how false or misleading. The House Democrats are simply not being taken seriously by anyone at this point.”
