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Amid a grinding shutdown of the federal government that has left hundreds of thousands of employees without pay for weeks, President Donald Trump said he “can relate” to their plight.
“I can relate, and I’m sure that the people that are on the receiving end will make adjustments — they always do — and they’ll make adjustments,”he told NBC’s Kelly O’Donnellafter she asked, “Can you relate to the pain of federal workers who can’t pay their bills?”
“People understand exactly what’s going on,” Trump continued, contending, without evidence, that “many of those people that won’t be receiving a paycheck, many of those people agree 100 percent with what I’m doing.”
The government partially closed on Dec. 22, 17 days ago, over the billionaire businessman-turned-president’s call for funding for a proposed southern border wall.
With negotiations fruitless so far, this shutdown could become the longest in American history, surpassing the previous record of 21 days in the ’90s, underPresident Bill Clintonand a Republican-led Congress,according to CNN.
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On Friday, Trump said the funding freeze could last for months —“even years.”
He tweeted Sundayabout a “productive meeting”with Democratic lawmakers in Congress and said that he has shifted his position from a concrete wall to a “steel barrier.”
Democrats, however, said there had been no forward movement in resolving the shutdown,theNew York Timesreports.
The earliest affected employees would be paid would be around Jan. 25,according to CBS News.
“We had federal employees who were literally taking Christmas presents that were wrapped and ready to give, and taking them back to the store,” Randy Erwin, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, told the network. “They were hunkering down for lean times.”
source: people.com
