TRUMP THINKS THE 2013 GOV. SHUTDOWN WAS A HOAX”: THEN WHY DID IT COST US $24 BILLION?

…OUR TWITTERER-IN-CHIEF

 

TRUMP DOESN’T UNDERSTAND THAT A SHUTDOWN EFFECTS THOSE AMERICANS MOST IN NEED

 

President Trump is threatening a government shutdown if he doesn’t get the money from the US taxpayers for his border wall.  Yes, the same wall that he promised us for two years would be paid for by Mexico.  But all you have to do is go back through Trump’s Twitter-feed to understand his lack of understanding as to what is really involved in a government shutdown.

President Trump has always been pretty cavalier about shutting down the US Government.

 

If you go back to 2013, when Trump first started Tweeting about a government shutdown, you will see that he has some strange ideas as to exactly what a government shutdown does.

At first, as expected, he just accused President Obama of causing a shutdown.

 

Later he tweeted applause for Speaker John Boehner for supporting the shutdown as a shot against Obamacare.

 

The biggest issue today is that Trump thinks that the government shutdown is basically a hoax, because he thinks that 83% of the government is still working during a government shutdown.

 

If that’s the case, why did the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) state that the 16 days of the 2013 government shutdown cost the US Treasury: $24 Billion dollars?

 

When the government ultimately closed on Oct. 1, 2013, Trump was a steady voice of support for all Republicans.  These were the ones who sought to use the shutdown as leverage against approving Obamacare.  Trump back then also played down the consequences of closing down the government. “All essential services continue,” he wrote before the shutdown in one of his tweets. “Don’t believe lies,” he stated.  (Was this the start of Trump thinking all media is “Fake News”?)

 

Tracing Trump’s historical attitudes is instructive now that he has made it clear that he’s willing to close down the government over funding for the border wall.

 

Trump first tweeted about the possibility of the former  shutdown on Aug. 9, 2013, the same day Washington leaders began to respond publicly to conservative lawmakers’ willingness to shut down the government over Obamacare funding.  After Trump had tweeted, President Barack Obama called a shutdown a “bad idea” at a White House news conference.- “No one is advocating a government shutdown,” then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said that day.

A month later however, Trump began responding to shutdown news in earnest, urging Republican lawmakers to have that shutdown.

 

On Oct. 1, the government shut down, and Trump was very eager to weigh in with total support.

 

I’m sure we will see some very similar tweets from Trump if he follows through on his shutdown threat this time:

 

Seven days in to the shutdown, Trump then suggested that Obama should be working to end the shutdown.  A few hours later, he was arguing the shutdown is no such a big deal:

 

Then Trump tweets that all American citizens are more angry at President Obama than they are at those in the US Congress.  This is one of Trump’s most interesting comments, and it’s one that could come back to haunt him as today’s US President.

 

Since he has become the president, last April when the government was on the verge of another shutdown, Trump had already started to back down on two conflicts that could have resulted in the government closing.  That being the funding for a border wall and the withholding of insurance premium subsidies for Obamacare.

 

The point is, that the president has no real concept of how bad a shutdown is for the country.  He doesn’t seem to understand that when a shutdown occurs, it’s Americans such as those US Military Vets, those Americans on Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, all Civil Service Workers and many others that will be furloughed until the shutdown is over.  And then, how long does it take to get the largest employer in the world to get back to work?

 

As it was in 2013, Trump had a tweet for almost every day of that previous shutdown.  And virtually 75% of those Trump tweets were full of miss-information.

 

Looks like we may be in for another Tweet-Storm from the current Tweeter-in-Chief.

 

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