Sen. Rick Scott took matters into his own hands Saturday when he posted a photo of himself, his wife and grandchild at Disney World and asked, “Should we be in D.C.?”
The photo and its accompanying caption is a perceived dig at the media outlet, which has been putting elected officials on blast as they vacation while federal worker go unpaid. “Hey TMZ. Yes, I’m at Disney with my grandkids,” he wrote in full. “Should we be in DC? Yes! But I don’t get to make that decision.”
TMZ acknowledged that leadership in DC “told members to skedaddle” recently, but reminded readers that that wasn’t the case the last two months when Reps. Steve Scalise, John James, and Jared Moskowitz as well as Cory Booker and Sen. Lindsey Graham were photographed on vacation.
“The point of this is to show how fed up the American people are, because we are,” TMZ’s founder Harvey Levin said in an X video explaining why the outlet was focused on exposing political leaders.
“They are patronizing us, and that’s why we’re doing this. Something has to change,” he also said. “Here is our expectation that you will keep the government open, that federal workers will get paid, and if you don’t do that, we’re going to throw you out like we threw your predecessors out.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced a plan Wednesday to fund the Department of Homeland Security after Congress left D.C. last week without coming up with a solution for the weeks-long partial shutdown. The pair came up with a “two-track” solution that will require the Senate to fund most of DHS. The rest of funding will be worked out through legislation.
The Senate previously passed a bipartisan agreement that was rejected by the House.
