Old news clips are circulating on social media showing President Donald Trump saying the fault of a government shutdown should lie with the president.
A video posted by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in collaboration with other Senate Democrats, compiled clips of Trump in 2011 and 2013 talking about shutdowns, saying the president should be the leader in negotiations or else take the blame. Snippets and quotes from these interviews have been widely shared on social media.
Now Trump, presiding over his fourth government shutdown as president, is blaming the Democrats for not budging on their demands for Medicaid and Obamacare funding to continue insurance coverage for millions of Americans.
“They are shutting it down, we’re not shutting it down. We don’t want it to be shut down,” Trump said on Sept. 30. “Now, with that being said, we can do things during the shutdown that are irreversible … like cutting vast numbers of people out.”
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Did Trump say the president should be blamed for a government shutdown?
In April 2011, leaders of both parties came to an agreement following weeks of difficult negotiations and ultimately averted a government shutdown, as recapped by President Barack Obama. Trump spoke about a potential shutdown ahead of their agreement in an interview with Meredith Vieira on NBC’s “Today” show. A recording posted to Vimeo by Roll Call Factbase shows Trump said the following: “In my opinion, I hear the Democrats are gonna be blamed, I hear Republicans are gonna be blamed, I actually think the president would be blamed,” he said. “If there is a shutdown … I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States. He’s the one that has to get people together.”
At the time, Trump was toying with a presidential run and repeatedly questioning the validity of Obama’s citizenship. Obama was born in Hawaii, making him a U.S. citizen.
A shutdown did eventually occur when Obama was president. In 2013, the government shut down for 17 days.
Ahead of the 2013 shutdown, Trump also spoke of how shutdowns are remembered in a phone interview with Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” according to Politifact:
“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,” Trump said. “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.”
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Trump and other Republicans have tried to place blame on the Democrats for the shutdown, claiming they want to give healthcare to immigrants here illegally (undocumented immigrants are largely ineligible for federally funded coverage, like Medicaid.) Democrats are also trying to pin the shutdown on Republicans, blaming Trump for not negotiating in good faith.
On the first day of the shutdown, Vice President JD Vance did the talking, blaming the “Chuck Schumer-AOC wing” of the Democratic party for the shutdown.
The White House has also said the shutdown could lead to more layoffs instead of furloughs.
“I can’t believe the Radical Left Democrats gave me this unprecedented opportunity,” Trump said in a social media post Oct. 2.
“A lot of good can come down from shutdowns,” Trump told reporters in the White House a few hours before the deadline. “We can get rid of a lot of things that we didn’t want.”
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called Schumer and the Democrats “desperate to distract from their decisions” in response to USA TODAY’s question about Trump’s old comments.
“Democrats shut down the government because they want free health care for illegal aliens and they know it hurts the American people. Just listen to their own statements,” Jackson said in an emailed statement.
Contributing: Sarah D. Wire, Terry Moseley, Joey Garrison, USA TODAY
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com. Follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley or Bluesky at @kinseycrowley.bsky.social.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Did Trump say a shutdown falls on the president? What we know
