House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said Tuesday that he is on board with a proposal to have a conversation with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on C-Span.
“I look forward to that,” Jeffries told reporters in Washington.
“We’re going to try to get it scheduled, absolutely,” he promised, referencing a possible joint appearance on C-Span’s new program Ceasefire.
The development could set the two party leaders in the House up for a rousing debate over the government shutdown, which entered its 15th day on Wednesday.
Johnson has declared he has no intention of accepting Jeffries’s offer to do a public debate about the shutdown on the House floor.
“We debated all of this on the House floor, as you know, before we passed our bill,” a continuing resolution to keep the government open, the speaker said Monday. “He spoke for seven or eight minutes, he had all of his colleagues lined up, they gave it their best shot, and they argued, and they stomped their feet and screamed at us and all that.”
“I’m not going to let Hakeem try to pretend with these theatrics,” Johnson added. “We don’t need to waste time on that nonsense. Those debates have been had. Hakeem is a friend and a colleague, and I respect him, but we all know what he’s trying to do here.”
However, Johnson has said he is willing to have a conversation with Jeffries on C-Span’s Ceasefire show.
During an appearance on C-Span’s Washington Journal on Thursday, Johnson was pressed on which Democrat he would be open to sitting down with on Ceasefire.
“I’ll sit down with Hakeem Jeffries, my counterpart,” he said. “Yeah, sometime, we’ll get that done.”
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“Hakeem, let’s sit down together,” Johnson said, looking into the camera.
However on Wednesday, Johnson seemingly backtracked — saying on Fox News that he will debate Jeffries any time after the government shutdown is over.
