The president is making a list, and checking it twice: the politicians who have wronged him.
Donald Trump kicked off Christmas Eve with a string of complaints: Democrats oppose his border wall plans but supported border fencing in the past. American allies “take advantage of their friendship with the United States, both in military Protection and trade,” he complained in a second tweet. Defense Secretary General James Mattis didn’t understand how “these countries take total advantage of the U.S.,” he wrote in a third.
The trio of tweets come on the third day of a government shutdown, as the president seeks to encourage a lame duck Congress to put billions of dollars of funding into his border wall before Democrats assume control of the House of Representatives in January, and a day after the president moved up Mattis’ retirement.
The president said in another tweet Sunday that Mattis would leave his position two months earlier than planned, after Mattis wrote a critical resignation letter.
The shutdown began on Friday at midnight, after Trump said he would not sign a continuing resolution pushing the spending battle to after the holidays. It requires 420,000 employees to work without pay and an additional 380,000 employees to be sent home from work without pay, according to a fact sheet compiled by Senate Democrat staffers.
