Fox New host Chris Wallace schooled the Trump Administration, represented by sacrificial lamb Mick Mulvaney, on who should take responsibility for this government shutdown.
Chris Wallace played a clip of then-private citizen Trump criticizing Obama for the 2013 government shutdown, which revolved around the question of the Affordable Care Act.
In it, Trump says that responsibility comes from the top and that the President owns the responsibility for a government shutdown. Wallace then asked Mulvaney why then, that logic shouldn’t extend to today’s predicament? By Trump’s own accounting, he is responsible for his own government shutdown.
Mulvaney sputtered, grasping at straws for a passable explanation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-HnYY_Rnts&feature=youtu.be
Mulvaney tried to grade Obama and Trump on two different curves, claiming that he knew for sure Obama wanted that shutdown in 2013, and that he tried to weaponize it. He claimed that Trump really did everything he could to prevent this one from happening.
Wallace called Mulvaney out on one count – Trump hasn’t held a bipartisan meeting all weekend. The shutdown began Friday.
Wallace also called out Mulvaney for making a faulty argument, that the Democrats are way more at fault here because they support everything in the bills on the table, they just also want to include provisions to protect the Dreamers. Whereas in the last two similar situations, Republicans held out because they simply “didn’t like” Obamacare in 2013 and Planned Parenthood in 2015. Those were, in a way, simply matters of taste when it comes to policy. The question of protection for the Dreamers has real, immediate impact on real people’s lives. The Democrats are fighting to protect Americans. The Republicans are trying to diminish that by equating it with a question of taste.
Wallace destroyed Mulvaney’s argument, making it clear that both the Republicans and President Trump deserve all of the blame for letting the government shutdown while they hold all the power in all three branches of government.