President Trump raised the stakes on the upcoming negotiations with his tweet on Tuesday that the U.S. “needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!”
Senate Republicans have long been irked by Trump’s Twitter penchant, but they were particularly annoyed with this one.
In 2013, during the last government shutdown, Republicans took it on their chin. They got the blame for the unpopular action, and they are pretty sure that would be the case in September given their control of Congress and the White House.
Yet Trump’s tweet increased the odds of a shutdown, to some degree, by laying out a marker and inviting Democrats to call the president’s bluff.
“The president really, really, really undermined their cause with his Tweet yesterday,” said a Democratic Senate aide. “He ensured that Republicans will get the blame for a shutdown because he started calling for it in May.”
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