How long will a government shutdown last if a deal isn’t reached by Friday night? According to the president, it could be awhile.
Trump on Friday morning issued a barrage of tweets signaling he was holding steadfast to his demands for funds to extend a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, demanding billions of dollars for the project and risking a government shutdown deadline in order to get his way.
A government shutdown would be Democratic lawmakers’ fault, Trump stated in one of those tweets, per previous reporting from the Inquisitr , despite polling actually demonstrating Trump and Republicans in Congress would bear most of the blame.
Trump also made another assertion on Friday: Any shutdown that does happen will not be for a short period of time.
“The Democrats, whose votes we need in the Senate, will probably vote against Border Security and the Wall even though they know it is DESPERATELY NEEDED,” Trump wrote in his tweet . “If the Dems vote no, there will be a shutdown that will last for a very long time.”
Trump also reiterated one of his disputed claims rationalizing the need for a border wall, adding that, “People don’t want Open Borders and Crime!” at the end of his tweet.
Trump grows more and more blunt in morning Twitter rant as he pushes Senate Republicans to vote for border wall funding with votes they don’t have https://t.co/PKbWkWnSYQ
— Roll Call (@rollcall) December 21, 2018
Despite Trump’s belief that Republicans support his measures to build a wall — and to use the threat of a shutdown to get his way — several lawmakers in his own party were shocked or critical of the president’s moves earlier this week signaling he wouldn’t sign a bill that passed in the Senate that would have funded government until February, sans wall funding for the time being.
“Ugh, are you ruining my life?” Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said upon learning that Trump would not sign the Senate bill if it reached his desk.
“Boy, we can’t have government shut down. It’s never good,” she added, per reporting from CNN . “How many times do we have to learn that?”
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, another Republican, was dismayed at the president’s actions, stating that debate on the issue could continue on while still funding the government.
“I’m not sure what leverage the President thinks he has at this moment. The way you create leverage is keep this issue alive and keep arguing why we need to secure the border,” Johnson said during a Republican luncheon earlier this week. Most senators from both parties have already left Washington for the holiday break, but are flying back to take part in a vote Friday.
