If President Trump wanted to blame Democrat leaders for a shutdown over his border wall funding, he probably shouldn’t have invited them into the Oval Office for an on-camera meeting last week and said he’d be “proud” to take responsibility for it.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) reminded the President of his words in a speech from the Senate floor, just 12 hours before the midnight deadline to pass a bill to fund the federal government.
“He will do his best to blame Democrats, but it’s flatly absurd,” Schumer said. “President Trump called for a shutdown no less than 25 times.”
Schumer said that Democrats worked with their Republican colleagues to agree on legislation that would fund the government through February 2019, and the process was only being derailed because of Trump’s “temper tantrum.” The President has said he won’t sign any bill unless it includes $5 billion for a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
“The President seems to relish it and seems to feel we will throw a bone to his base,” Schumer said of Trump’s stance. “The problem being, his base is less than one quarter of America. Mr. President, President Trump, you cannot erase months of video of you saying you wanted a shutdown and that you wanted the responsibility and blame for a shut down. President Trump, you own the shutdown. You said so in your own words.”
Schumer said that the decision to plow ahead with the shutdown is just the cherry on top of a particularly “chaotic” week for the Trump White House. The stock market also continued to tumble, while Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis resigned over the sudden decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria.
The New York Democrat said it was a “pointless exercise” to haul senators back to D.C. from their holiday breaks to vote on a bill that won’t pass.
“There are not the votes in the Senate for an expensive, taxpayer-funded border wall,” he said. “So, president Trump, you will not get your wall. Abandon your shutdown strategy. You are not getting the wall today, next week, or on January 3rd when Democrats take control of the House.”
