Liberal Forum

Trump’s Obama-era rhetoric on shutdowns comes back to haunt him.

In 2011, when Republicans appeared poised to shut down the government, Trump sat down with NBC’s Meredith Vieira and focused his attention on one man: Barack Obama.

VIEIRA: So if there were a partial shutdown of the government come Friday, that would be OK with you.

TRUMP: In my opinion – you know, I hear the Democrats are going to be blamed and the Republicans are going to be blamed.

I actually think the president would be blamed.

If there is a shutdown, and it’s not going to be a horrible shutdown because, as you know, things will sort of keep going…. 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.

He kept going (and going).

“I’m a deal man,” Trump added.

“I’ve made hundreds and hundreds of deals and transactions.

He never did deals before.

How can you expect a man that’s not a deal man that never did a deal, other than frankly becoming president of the United States, he never did a deal, how’s he going to corral all these people to get them to do a deal?”

Asked how he would prevent a shutdown, Trump boasted, “I would get everybody together and we’d have a budget and it would get done.”

Reminded that the relevant officials had already gotten together, he added, “[T]hey don’t have the right leader. You don’t have the right leader.”

By this reasoning, the fact that the government shutdown is apparently proof that we don’t currently have the right leader.

In September 2013, Trump declared, “[P]roblems 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.

[Obama] doesn’t do that. He doesn’t like doing that. It’s not his strength.

And that’s why you have this terrible situation…. It’s very embarrassing worldwide.”

He added that no one cares who has what power in Congress, because “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.”

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