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It’s more than a month into the longest government shutdown in American history, and federal workers are facing a second missed paycheck.
Lara Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and reelection campaign adviser, had a message for the furloughed workers and those working without pay: It will be worth it.
“Listen, it’s not fair to you, and we all get this, but this is so much bigger than any one person,” she said in an interview with Bold TV. “It’s a little bit of pain, but it’s going to be for the future of our country.”
Future Americans will be grateful for the shutdown, Trump said: “Their children and their grandchildren will thank them for their sacrifice right now.”
Although she said she empathized with workers’ plights — “I know they have bills to pay, they have mortgages, they have rents that are due” — Trump’s comments sparked a backlash because of her personal wealth.
Regardless, she said fixing immigration policy was more important: “He knows we need a wall — or a structure, however you want to talk about it,” she said of the president, adding that the “broken” immigration system needed these workers to be strong for their country. She then expressed gratitude to the workers who have been going without paychecks for more than a month.
Democrats in Congress are calling for President Trump to reopen the government and then debate funding for the border wall. Lara Trump claimed it’s “sad” Democrats don’t care enough about federal workers to come to the discussion table. She blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for refusing to accept the president’s latest offer — but that’s because Democrats are firm about not letting Trump hold federal paychecks hostage to achieve campaign promises.
But while Lara Trump claims “the president is trying every single day to come up with a solution here,” he actually has the power to end the standoff, as Aaron Rupar writes for Vox:
The White House is trying to criticize Democrats for not doing more to end the government shutdown, but it’s actually Trump who refuses to budge on reopening the government until he gets funding for his border wall.
Aside from caving to Trump’s demands, it’s unclear what else Democrats can do at this point. Trump stormed out of a meeting with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer last week, after Pelosi indicated she’s still not interested in allocating money for Trump’s wall. His strategy since then has been to tweet about how much time he’s spending in the White House.
