House Speaker nominee Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed the president on Christmas Eve, as they sought to pin blame for the partial government shutdown on him.
"It's Christmas Eve and President Trump is plunging the country into chaos," the two top Democrats in Congress wrote in a joint statement on Monday issued after the Dow closed down 653 points in the worst day of Christmas Eve trading in history. "The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war on the Federal Reserve — after he just fired the Secretary of Defense."
"Instead of bringing certainty into people’s lives, he's continuing the Trump Shutdown just to please right-wing radio and TV hosts," they continued, arguing that it was unclear what exactly what the president was trying to get out of the shutdown.
"Different people from the same White House are saying different things about what the president would accept or not accept to end his Trump Shutdown, making it impossible to know where they stand at any given moment," Schumer and Pelosi said. "The president wanted the shutdown, but he seems not to know how to get himself out of it."
Their broadside comes amid a steady stream of tweeted complaints from Trump throughout the day, including an attack on the Federal Reserve as the only reason for the country's economic struggles.
Trump tweeted about "Democrat Shutdowns" and lamented he was "all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security," as he sought to throw blame on his political rivals for the partial that has left hundreds of thousands of federal employees working without pay over the holidays.
