Speaking with Maria Bartiromo on her “Sunday Morning Futures” show about how President Trump has found a way to get around Sen. Chuck Schumer’s shutdown and pay America’s troops, who would otherwise go without paychecks thanks to the shutdown, Vice President JD Vance skewered the Senate Minority Leader.
As background, President Trump had, a few days before Vance appeared on Bartiromo’s program on Sunday, October 12, taken to Truth Social to announce that he was using his authority as the commander-in-chief to order Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to pay the troops despite Congress being unable to compromise and end the shutdown.
VP Vance, during his appearance on Bartiromo’s show, explained how the administration is achieving that. Beginning, he explained that the administration is able to use the swelling tariff revenue achieved by the new Trump tariffs to pay for the troops’ paychecks. “A lot of this will come from incoming revenues to the Internal Revenue Service, tariff revenue, but also income tax revenue that is going to make it possible for us to pay our troops,” he said.
Continuing, he highlighted that those tariffs are a big deal, as they are very clearly the reason why the administration is able to act on this front, indicating that otherwise the options would be much more limited. He said, “And this is another reason why President Trump’s decisive action on tariffs is one of the reasons why we have the money in the Treasury to actually be able to pay our troops.”
As an aside, he noted that, of course, tariffs are good because they also help promote the rebuilding of America’s decimated industrial base, saying, “So it is, it is one of the critical things that we’ve done, of course, to reshore America’s industrial base to create good jobs in the United States of America.”
He then added, however, that in this specific incident, the important aspect of the tariffs is that they give the administration flexibility to pay the troops despite Schumer’s intransigence. He said, “But the tariffs have also given us a little bit of financial flexibility so that we can keep on as many essential services as possible, including, most importantly, paying the troops.”
During the same interview, Vance also exposed Schumer and noted that all of these clever strategies and roundabout ways of getting the troops paid and essential services delivered are only necessary because “Schumer and the Democrats shut down the government because they were trying to force us to give health care benefits to illegal aliens.”
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President Trump, for his part, said in the Truth Social post in which he announced the troops would be paid, “Chuck Schumer recently said, “Every day gets better” during their Radical Left Shutdown. I DISAGREE! If nothing is done, because of “Leader” Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, our Brave Troops will miss the paychecks they are rightfully due on October 15th. That is why I am using my authority, as Commander in Chief, to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to use all available funds to get our Troops PAID on October 15th.”
Continuing without adding many details on how they were going to do it, he said, “We have identified funds to do this, and Secretary Hegseth will use them to PAY OUR TROOPS. I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown. The Radical Left Democrats should OPEN THE GOVERNMENT, and then we can work together to address Healthcare, and many other things that they want to destroy. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”