Vice President JD Vance dished Thursday about the story behind viral photos of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) visiting the White House in September to discuss the looming government shutdown.
Vance recounted in an interview with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matt Boyle that the “crazy” incident all got started when President Trump whispered to an aide at the start of the Oval Office sitdown to go grab some red “Make America Great Again” hats.
“She kind of runs off and I think to myself immediately, ‘Oh, what the hell have I gotten myself into?’” the vice president said, laughing. “And she comes back with two ‘Trump 2028’ hats to give to Jeffries.”
“And then he has the photographer come in and he points at Jeffries as he’s holding the ‘Trump 2028’ hat,” he went on.
“‘Make sure Hakeem gets that. I’m sure he’s going to want to use it in his campaign advertisements,’” Vance said Trump told the photographer who caught the House Dem leader and the headwear.
“It was, like, a hysterical moment,” the veep added.
The White House later released photos of a smirking Trump eyeing the Democratic leaders from behind the Resolute Desk as they glanced at the merchandise.
Trump carried out a “meme war” against the Democrats for much of the shutdown — at one point mocking Schumer and Jeffries with an AI-generated video that depicted the former standing next the House minority leader, who wore a sombrero as a mariachi band serenaded both.
“If we give all these illegal aliens health care, we might be able to get ’em on our side so they can vote for us,” Schumer was made to say in the digitally edited clip.
Jeffries told CNN that the president’s red caps just “randomly appeared in the middle” of the meeting.
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“He did not try to hand Leader Schumer and I the ‘Trump 2028’ hat,” the House minority leader explained. “They just randomly appeared in the middle of the meeting on the desk. It was the strangest thing ever.”
“I just looked at the hat, looked at [Vice President] JD Vance, who was seated to my left, and said, ‘Don’t you got a problem with this?’ and he said, ‘No comment,’” Jeffries added. “And that was the end of it.”
Senate Democrats forced the shutdown shortly after the Oval Office meeting with Vance and Trump by refusing to vote with the GOP to break the 60-vote filibuster needed to consider a government funding bill.
Federal agencies went dark on Oct. 1 and stayed that way for 43 days, making it the longest shutdown in US history.
Democrats pressed for the extension of Obamacare tax credits set to expire at the end of 2025 but were unable to get that included in the spending legislation before eight members of their conference brought the shutdown to an end.
