Vice President J.D. Vance told FOX News host Sean Hannity that he doesn’t understand the mindset of Democrats who are willing to “burn the country down” to stop President Donald Trump. Vance said on Thursday’s “Hannity” that the ongoing shutdown “just drives home” his belief about what the Democratic Party is all about.

SEAN HANNITY: As bad as it was getting, I’m trying to comprehend the thinking behind this, except for eight Democrats in the Senate and six in the House, they wanted it to continue, and there’s real palpable anger that it didn’t continue. I think Chuck Schumer’s coked as a result, even though he did everything that his base wanted. VICE PRESIDENT J.D. VANCE: Yeah, so let me say a couple things. First of all, I do give a lot of credit for the moderate Democrats in the Senate who were with us from the very beginning, because if you remember the original bill to keep the government open before the shutdown even started, there were 52 GOP senators, three Democratic senators, they recognized where this was going, they recognized what was in the best interest of the country. But I think, Sean, there are so many far-left people who run the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C., they just want to burn it down. They don’t care if the troops don’t get paid. They don’t care if you cause billions of dollars in lost productivity. They don’t care if you shut down the airline industry, which they were very close to doing. They just want to get Trump. And they don’t care if they have to burn the entire country down in order to get Trump. That’s what they want to do. And I think that it shows how stupid that approach is politically, because normally you would expect the president of the United States to get blamed for a shutdown. The American people were smart enough to recognize that the Democrats were the ones who were sort of holding this hostage. They were saying that unless you give us everything that we want, unless you give us $ 1.5 trillion of benefits, health care for illegal aliens, we’re going to destroy the country. We’re going to keep the government shut down indefinitely. I think the president recognized eventually the American people are going to recognize this is the Democrats doing this. The Democrats, I think, made a huge political mistake by continuing to push for all of these crazy things. And they said, if you don’t give us all these crazy things, we’re going to keep the government shut down. It was politically stupid. But you’re right. I don’t understand the psychology of a Democrat who says we’d like to burn the country down in order to get Donald Trump. But unfortunately, it just drives home that that’s what their party is about. HANNITY: That was the thing, $ 1.5 trillion, hundreds of billions of dollars for health care for illegals, DEI programs abroad, NPR, PBS to fund them once again. And I’m like, that’s the hill you want to die on? During the process, at any point that any Democrat, any leader, did you have conversations with them? Say, work this out with me. Did that happen behind the scenes that nobody knows about? VANCE: Oh, of course. Privately, we were having conversations all the time. And frankly, privately, the Democrats would recognize the position of their far left was crazy. But they all feel a little bit like they’re being held hostage by their far left. You said it very well. Chuck Schumer, this probably ended his career. And he was the person who was fighting more than anybody to keep the government shut down. So the far left, they’re never going to be satisfied unless the Democrats are willing to burn down the entire country. Luckily, there were a few moderate Democrats who allowed reason to prevail. We have to step back, Sean, and remember how crazy the demands were. They wanted $ 1.5 trillion, a lot of that health care benefits for illegal aliens. They wanted us to undo all of the great border policy that we’ve been doing. They wanted us to refund, like you said, NPR and PBS. They were basically saying that we want the far left’s priorities to dominate in the Trump administration. And unless that happens, we’re going to set the entire country on fire. A really disgraceful moment for the far left of the Democrats, and frankly, a very revealing moment for the American people. Because what were they asking, Sean? They weren’t saying that we want to do great things for the American people. They weren’t talking about jobs. They weren’t talking about health care. They were talking about give us $ 1.5 trillion for health care benefits for illegal aliens. Unless you do that, we’re going to make it impossible for you to fly home to see your family on Thanksgiving. It’s just craziness that that was ever their position, but it was.

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