Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:50 pm
Rachel Maddow told Donald Trump on Thursday that it’s time to give up his government shutdown stunt as the American people clearly care more about getting paid than seeing a vanity wall constructed on the southern border.
The MSNBC host said that Democrats have appropriately framed the shutdown as a pocketbook issue, and Trump is squarely on the wrong side of it.
There is no contest between having money to feed your family and seeing a childish president get funding for a selfish and wasteful barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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“The Democrats have two public positions right now in this fight with the White House,” Maddow explained. “They have two points: Let’s open the government and if people work, they should be paid.”
Video:
Rachel Maddow explains how Democrats have Trump cornered on the government shutdown. #ctl #p2 #maddow pic.twitter.com/omkGVuudWm
— PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) January 18, 2019
Maddow said:
I am not a political expert. Ask me about some of my past political predictions. I’m not great at it. I am not a great political expert. I have never run for office. I never would. I have never been part of a campaign of anybody else running for office, but it strikes me in political terms that if you have picked a big political argument and in so doing, you have put your political opponent in the position of arguing against you that it’s their position that people who work should be paid for their work, if that’s their position against you, that seems to me like maybe you’re going to lose that fight. Honestly, if you think about what’s going on right now with the shutdown, logistically, I don’t know how they’re going to end it. Politically, what this boils down to right now is that the way the president set this up is that he’s put the Democrats in the position of being able to make two cases to the public. The Democrats have two public positions right now in this fight with the White House. They have two points: Let’s open the government and if people work, they should be paid.
Paychecks are more popular than vanity walls
Led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrats were quick to align themselves with workers being hurt by Trump’s shutdown. It wasn’t just a smart political move; it was the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to desperately cling to his proposed wall on the southern border – a project that a majority of the country has consistently opposed.
Through his hostage-taking operation, Donald Trump has rebranded the Democratic Party as the party of paychecks.
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Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
