WASHINGTON — As federal staff and members of Congress in each events fear concerning the ongoing authorities shutdown, President Donald Trump is phoning it in — actually — principally with juvenile Web memes.
Monday, after assembly with the 4 prime legislative leaders, Trump posted on his social media platform an AI-enhanced video of Home Democratic chief Hakeem Jeffries of New York carrying a sombrero and a large black mustache.
On Wednesday, hours after the shutdown started, he reposted a photograph of himself signing a doc with the caption: “CRY ALL YOU WANT; HE’S DOING EXACTLY WHAT I HIRED HIM FOR.”
Thursday night time, he posted a video mocking the federal workforce in his personal government department who’re terrified of shedding their jobs with a canopy of the Blue Oyster Cult basic “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” that includes his personal funds director and layoff fanatic Russ Vought carrying a hooded cloak and carrying a scythe.
Minutes later, he posted movies making enjoyable of Jeffries and Senate Democratic chief Chuck Schumer of New York, individually, with the Jeffries one depicting Trump tossing a “Trump 2028” cap onto Jeffries’ head after which laughing uproariously, which manages to mock each Jeffries and the U.S. Structure on the similar time.
Kevin Dietsch by way of Getty Pictures
At no level for the reason that Monday assembly — which was requested by Jeffries and Schumer, not initiated by Trump — has Trump tried to work out variations between Democrats and Republicans to finish the deadlock.
“Everything that President Trump has done subsequent to Monday has been unhinged and unserious,” Jeffries instructed NBC Information on Friday. “In fact, Donald Trump is in the presidential witness protection program. No one can find him when it comes to the government shutdown issue because he knows he’s responsible for having caused it.”
One Republican advisor in Trump’s orbit had a easy concept about his lack of curiosity: “Not impacting him.”
At the same time as tons of of 1000’s of federal staff are furloughed and important authorities packages are susceptible to operating out of cash, Trump himself seems to have performed no important position in efforts to finish the shutdown — he hasn’t appeared in public since Tuesday — maybe reflecting how little the shutdown impacts his personal prime priorities.
Certainly, Trump has declared that work on his huge dwelling enchancment undertaking to construct a ballroom on the South Garden is not going to be slowed by the shutdown. His use of masked federal brokers — which a choose described as “secret police” — to raid Chicago continues unabated, as do his missile strikes in opposition to boaters he claims are operating medicine within the Caribbean.
And as press secretary Karoline Leavitt instructed reporters Friday, his efforts to push extra federal brokers and troops into but extra American cities additionally proceed regardless of the closing of “nonessential” authorities features.
“President Trump will end the radical left’s reign of terror in Portland once and for all. The president has directed [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war-ravaged Portland and any ICE facilities under siege from attack by antifa and other left-wing domestic terrorists,” Leavitt stated.
Rick Wilson, a Republican advisor who has opposed Trump since his first run for president, stated Trump’s perspective on the matter is unsurprising. “First, Trump notoriously has the attention span of a small flying insect. Next, he’s always believed that transgression wins for him,” he stated.
No matter is behind it, Trump’s lack of engagement is in marked distinction to efforts by earlier presidents to finish them or avert them within the first place.
Former President Barack Obama labored with each Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican chief on the time, and John Boehner, the Republican Home speaker, to finish the shutdown in 2013. And Former President Joe Biden consulted with McConnell and Republican Home audio system Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson to forestall them from taking place.
“We resisted negotiating about the debt limit, but were always up for negotiating about budget,” stated former Biden White Home spokesman Andrew Bates. “And we had zero shutdowns.”
The federal authorities ran out of spending authority at midnight Tuesday when most Senate Democrats refused to go together with a short-term spending invoice that doesn’t embody an extension of enhanced tax credit for medical health insurance by means of the Inexpensive Care Act that may expire on the finish of the 12 months. Democrats say that premium notices should exit quickly, and due to this fact motion to resume the credit has to happen now.
Republicans have stated they’re open to discussing a renewal however not within the context of a authorities shutdown.
Trump and his allies, in the meantime, have as a substitute pushed the lie that Democrats shut down the federal government to offer well being care to migrants on this nation illegally. “The Democrats continue to recklessly hold the American people hostage over their demands to give illegal aliens free health care,” Leavitt stated on the very begin of her press briefing Friday.
The one “health care” accessible to unlawful immigrants from federal {dollars}, nonetheless, is emergency room therapy for grave accidents and diseases. Hospitals are required to deal with anybody in these instances, no matter means to pay or immigration standing, due to laws signed into regulation in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan, who till just lately was considered as the fashionable icon of conservatism by most Republicans.
“Just like how he doesn’t care if families go bankrupt because he’s causing health care prices to double, Donald Trump doesn’t give a damn about reopening the government. He’s reveling in the chaos of his shutdown,” stated Democratic Nationwide Committee chair Ken Martin. “Why is it that a gaudy ballroom meant to entertain his elite buddies and foreign donors is a priority, yet health care isn’t?”
Wilson stated Trump’s place is just not more likely to change except and till he sees an ongoing shutdown as damaging to him personally. “I don’t think he understands how to process the consequences of this,” Wilson stated. “The polling is definitely breaking against him on it, and I suspect his uninterest will transition to find a way to blame Mike Johnson, and then quietly end the conflict.”
HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney contributed to this report.
