President Donald Trump got a rare fact-check from Fox News on Friday after he tried to dupe his followers into blaming Democrats for a pending government shutdown.
“At the moment it looks like we are lurching toward a shutdown at midnight tonight,” Fox’s chief White House correspondent John Roberts said. “And the president kind of flipping a 180 here and trying to blame the Democrats for the shutdown should that happen.”
After displaying the below tweet from Trump claiming that the Democrats “now own the shutdown,” Roberts noted that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was “only too happy” to remind the president what he said on the matter during that infamous Oval Office meeting just last week.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a speech on the Senate floor on Friday, Schumer quoted directly from what Trump told him to his face, and just in case Fox viewers didn’t believe him, the network played the clip so they could hear it directly from the president’s mouth.
“I am proud to shut down the government for border security,” Trump told Schumer last week. “I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it. The last time you shut it down, it didn’t work. I will take the mantle of shutting down. And I’m going to shut it down for border security.”
Roberts added, “‘I’m not going to blame you for it’ only now he’s blaming Democrats for it.”
