WATCH: ‘I actually don’t think it’s going to be that long of a shutdown,’ Vance says

Vice President JD Vance told reporters Wednesday that while he “can’t predict what congressional Democrats are going to do” and that he was making “a pure guess,” he didn’t think “it’s going to be that long of a shutdown.”

He repeated his argument that, in his view, Democrats shut the government down over health care policy disagreements.

“Whatever those disagreements are, you don't shut down the government over it. For the first time since the Democrats have been in politics, they're now saying that unless we get every policy item that we demand, we're going to shut down the people's government,” Vance said. “They're trying to take a hostage and we're not going to let them.”

The federal government shut down early Wednesday after negotiations and efforts to avoid a stalemate fell apart late last month. The shutdown is the first since 2018 and 2019, during President Donald Trump’s first term. That 35-day shutdown was the longest in U.S. history.

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