President Donald Trump has claimed that the government shutdown that began Wednesday will result in layoffs and cuts that will hurt Democrats exclusively.
When asked by a reporter in a Tuesday news conference why a shutdown would necessitate laying off federal workers if the Department of Government Efficiency had been as effective as he claimed, President Donald Trump began with a lie: “When you shut it down, you have to do layoffs.” He followed that lie with a threat: “So, we’d be laying off a lot of people that are going to be very affected.” And he followed that threat with a claim that revealed an absurd belief in a politically monolithic federal workforce: “And they’re gonna be Democrats.”
In one way or another, a U.S. government shutdown impacts, if not outright hurts, all Americans. But Trump repeatedly, and falsely, suggested Tuesday that no Republicans would be harmed in the GOP’s standoff with Democrats. Only Democrats would suffer, he claimed. And in Trump’s own words, Democrats are “evil” people whom he says he “hates” — and therefore apparently believes should suffer.
Two GOP sources who were on a call Wednesday with Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and House Republicans told NBC News that Vought told the GOP lawmakers that the Trump administration will begin firing federal employees in “one to two days.”
In a piece that published earlier Wednesday at this website, Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., wrote, “There is no statute, appropriation or constitutional clause that gives an administration license to fire federal civilian employees simply because funding has lapsed.
