On Monday, President Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, was interviewed on Bold TV, a right leaning web show and she opined about the government shutdown, The Hill reports.
Lara, Eric Trump’s wife, campaign adviser, and host of Trump Production’s Real News Updates, was asked what she would say to the 800,000 federal employees who are set to miss their second paycheck as the government shutdown drags on into its second month.
She said, “Listen this is, it’s not fair to you and we all get that, but this is so much bigger than any one person. It is a little bit of pain but it’s going to be for the future of our country, and their children and their grandchildren and generations after them will thank them for their sacrifice. Right now, I know it’s hard. I know people have families, they have bills to pay, they have mortgages, they have rents that are due.”
“But the president is trying every single day to come up with a good solution here and the reality is, it’s been something that’s gone on for too long and been unaddressed, our immigration problem. If we do nothing right now it’s never going to get fixed. This is our one opportunity,” Lara Trump continued.
She added, “So I would just tell them please stay strong. We appreciate everything that you’re sacrificing. We are behind you and we are going to do everything we can. I know the president is doing everything he can to resolve this quickly.”
Lara Trump’s comments followed President Trump’s top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, saying earlier this month that furloughed federal employees are better off because of the shutdown because they don’t have to take vacation days while they are furloughed and will get their back pay once the government is up and running again.
Newsweek reports that it has been ten days since the President and the Democratic leadership have met to negotiate and points out that multiple bills that the Democrats have passed in the House to reopen the government and begin paying federal employees again have been rejected by the Senate and President Trump.
President Trump says that federal employees are happy to sacrifice their paychecks for a wall. Per Newsweek, a recent survey showed that 30 percent of federal employees support the border wall and seven out of ten federal workers were against the shutdown. Public polling also shows that more people blame President Trump for the shutdown than they do the Democrats.
Why It Matters
On the 33rd day of what has become the longest government shutdown, 800,000 federal workers and Americans are furloughed and not being paid. About 400,000 of those 800,000 are working without pay, having been deemed essential and ordered to work. That number includes TSA screeners, Secret Service, Border Patrol, and FBI agents – the very people who are tasked with the job of keeping America safe. The premise of Trump’s demand for a wall on the southern border is that America is not safe so the irony of the people who actually keep us safe not being paid is palpable.
Many federal workers, like other Americans, are living paycheck to paycheck and will miss their second paycheck this week, a situation that would be catastrophic for many Americans. Lara Trump, a woman who does not have to worry about making rent or feeding her children, is worse than tone deaf. She ends up sounding like Marie Antoinette saying, “Let them eat cake” to Americans who are actually suffering.
Early in the shutdown, advice from the Office of Personnel Management to federal employees included the suggestion of bartering handyman services in lieu of paying rent and retaining a lawyer, though they were not being paid themselves, to help them deal with creditors. FBI agents’ security clearances rely on their financial health and are now risking being taken off sensitive cases.
Federal employees are relying on food banks, a fact that Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Karl L. Schultz spoke about in a video tweeted out this morning. He said it is unacceptable for the men and women of the Coast Guard to have to rely on food pantries and donations.
The wall that Trump has shutdown the government to get was not important enough to get done while the Republicans held majorities in both houses of Congress and there is no reason to punish Americans for that lack of action. Lara even admits in the Bold interview that if Trump were to agree to separate the wall funding from the funding of the government he would “have no hand to play”.
The livelihoods of fellow Americans and our safety and security is not a game.
