'He was happy!' House Dem aghast at Mike Johnson's reaction to people losing health care

Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-PA) said that she marched into the office to talk to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Tuesday and tried to reason with him about averting a government shutdown, but it became clear to her that he didn't care.

"I implored the Speaker that he should have brought his members here so that if there were a chance to solve this without shutting the government down, we would have been able to do that. But in the absence of that, by him sending everybody home or on vacation, he effectively created a shutdown," Dean told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace about her conversation with Johnson.

She noted that members also tried to introduce legislation during the pro-forma session this morning, but the few Republicans in the chamber ensured that effort was also shut down.

"So, Republicans have shut this down," Dean said of the party that controls the House, Senate and White House.

"But much more importantly, Nicolle, what I said to him is, you owe the American people honesty. He tried to argue to me, this is a clean [continuing resolution]. Number one, my constituents don't care about a CR. They wonder why we are trying to do a band-aid, temporary stopgap government spending bills."

She said that people also shouldn't be fooled by the idea that the bill is "clean," as in the bill does nothing more than raise the debt ceiling. In fact, the bill has additional cuts to the government, particularly to Medicare and Medicaid, along with the Affordable Care Act subsidies.

"Sadly,do you know what the Speakersaid?" Dean recalled. "He was happy people were going to be losing their health care. He thought they need to go off the rolls of Medicaid."

She told Wallace that she said it isn't something any person should wish for and that his constituents in Louisiana would be impacted.

Dean also pointed out the speech that Trump gave before the top military brass on Tuesday morning.

"He's not well," she recalled telling Johnson. The speaker said he hadn't watched Trump's speech.