Viral posts claim Donald Trump compared govt shutdowns to ‘president's lack of leadership’. Here's the truth
As Trump railed against his political opponents, netizens harked back to the businessman-turned-politician's words from more than a decade ago, much to the ire of supporters of the Republican Party, who accused liberals of making things things up.
The US government shutdown came into effect on Wednesday due to an impasse between lawmakers on federal spending. A quote went viral claiming that Donald Trump had earlier described government shutdowns as a symptom of a president's lack of leadership skills.
“A shutdown falls on the president's lack of leadership. I mean the top, and they have to get solved from the top. A shutdown means the President is weak,” read the quote from 2013, attributed to the current President.
Shortly after Wednesday's shutdown came into effect, Trump took to Truth Social to attack the Democrats, accusing the party's lawmakers of ‘forcing’ the closure.
“Republicans must use this opportunity of Democrat forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud. Billions of Dollars can be saved. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!,” the US President posted.
As Trump railed against his political opponents, netizens harked back to the businessman-turned-politician's words from more than a decade ago, much to the ire of supporters of the Republican Party, who accused liberals of making things up.
“So sick of you liberals making s**t up that he clearly wasn't serious about,” wrote one user, while others jumped to the 79-year-old's defence, sparking a war of words between the two political camps online.
So, did Trump actually say it?
It turns out, yes. While the quote doing the rounds on social media isn't verbatim from what Trump said at the time, it's an accurate paraphrase of his words.
During the 16-day US government shutdown of 2013 under the Barack Obama administration, sparked by a standoff over Obamacare, Trump had trained his guns on the Democratic President.
In a September 2013 interview with Fox & Friends, Trump had attacked Obama, saying, “If you say who gets fired, it always has to be the top. Problems start from the top, and they have to get solved from the top, and the president’s the leader, and he’s got to get everybody in a room, and he’s got to lead. And he doesn’t do that, he doesn’t like doing that, that’s not his strength.”
The current President had further added, “...when they talk about the government shutdown, they’re going to be talking about the president of the United States, who the president was at that time. They’re not going to be talking about who was the head of the House, the head of the Senate, who’s running things in Washington. So I really think the pressure is on the president.”
Trump then went on to make similar comments in a 7 October 2013 interview with then-Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, saying, “You have to get everybody in a room. You have to be a leader. The president has to lead. He has to get (the Speaker of the House) and everybody else in a room, and they have to make a deal. You have to be nice and be angry and be wild and cajole and do all sorts of things, but you have to get a deal.”
Interestingly, the above two instances aren't the only time Trump has suggested that the responsibility of a shutdown lies with the President.
Earlier, during a potential shutdown in 2011, Trump had appeared on NBC's 'The Today Show', saying, “If there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States.”