President Donald Trump has accused Democrats of being “the party of hate, evil, and Satan” on Truth Social in his latest broadside in response to the U.S. government shutdown.
As part of a short posting spree late on Thursday, the president posted an image of a frowning Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, surrounded by unflattering images of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Joe and Jill Biden, under the headline: “The Party of Hate, Evil, and Satan.”
Below that, the post declared: “The Democratic Party is Dead! They have no leadership! No message! No hope! Their only message for America is to hate Trump.”
Despite the Republicans controlling both chambers of Congress, the GOP could not secure the support of the seven Democrats it needed in the Senate to pass a House resolution that would have secured fresh funding for government agencies before Tuesday’s midnight deadline.
While two Democrats and a left-leaning independent did cross the aisle during the 55-45 vote, Kentucky Republican Rand Paul likewise broke ranks to side with the opposition in obstructing the stopgap bill, which the Democrats refused to support without an extension of Covid-era healthcare premium subsidies for Obamacare being included.
Without such a measure, they argued, premiums for more than 20 million American citizens could more than double each month from $888 to $1,904 once the subsidies expire on December 31.
The result leaves as many as 750,000 federal employees going unpaid and public services cut to a minimum until lawmakers on Capitol Hill can find common ground.
Earlier Thursday, Trump said he would be meeting with Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought “to determine which of the many Democrat Agencies, most of which are a political SCAM, he recommends to be cut, and whether or not those cuts will be temporary or permanent.”
He added that he “can’t believe” that “Radical Left Democrats” have given him the “unprecedented opportunity” to do so.
However, many will argue that the president himself bears significant responsibility for the failure to avert the shutdown, having cancelled a meeting with Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last week, meeting them only belatedly in the Oval Office on Monday without reaching an agreement and then taunting both men with a brace of AI-edited memes depicting Jeffries as a sombrero-wearing mariachi musician.
Trump has meanwhile not publicly offered any concessions to the opposition, preferring to insist instead that they simply abandon their concerns and fall into line with his demands.
He has equally made no attempt to cool his rhetoric at a time of heightened tensions and political division in the U.S. in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah last month, despite calls from politicians on both sides for all parties to adopt a more measured tone.
