President Donald Trump is unconcerned Americans could sour on him and the GOP if the government shuts down Wednesday, he said in an interview Monday night .
“I don’t worry about that,” Trump said during a brief phone call, “because people that are smart see what’s happening. The Democrats are deranged.”
POLITICO spoke with Trump shortly after he posted to social media a vulgar AI-generated deepfake video that mocked Democratic leaders and depicted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero while mariachi music plays in the background.
The video post followed a meeting Trump hosted at the White House with congressional leaders – a seemingly last-ditch effort to avoid a shutdown. There was no breakthrough and both sides seemed resigned to a funding lapse after midnight Oct. 1.
Democratic leaders are pushing for an extension of soon-to-expire health insurance subsidies, which the Trump administration, on Monday afternoon, seemed open to discussing if Democrats agreed to first keep the government open.
By Monday night, however, Trump appeared less inclined to deal, saying he wouldn’t help subsidize health insurance for undocumented immigrants.
The Democrats, Trump said, “want to destroy health care in America by giving it to millions and millions of illegal aliens.”
It’s an argument that Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans have been making, focusing on the Democrats’ counterproposal for avoiding a shutdown that would roll back parts of the Republican-passed domestic policy megabill that Trump signed in July. That law includes new curbs meant to keep noncitizens from accessing public benefits such as Medicaid. Undocumented immigrants, however, are not eligible to enroll in Affordable Care Act plans.
“All I’m telling you is this, we can’t take illegal aliens by the millions and millions and allow that to happen to American citizens, because they’ll lose health care under the Democrats,” Trump said.
Trump’s attack on Monday was more discreet than it has been in recent days when he accused Democrats of wanting taxpayers to subsidize transgender surgeries but its intent is the same: paint the other party as willing to shut the government down over a position that polls poorly.
Democrats, following Monday’s meeting, remained steadfast in their opposition to keeping the government open without concessions from Republicans and the Trump administration.
Republicans, meanwhile, pinned blame on Democrats for rejecting a “clean” stopgap and holding government agencies “hostage” for unrelated policy demands.
“I think we’re headed into a shutdown because the Democrats won’t do the right thing,” Vice President JD Vance said earlier in the day. “You don’t use your policy disagreements as leverage.”
