Let the blame game begin.
President-elect Donald J. Trump said Friday morning that it would be better for the government to shut down now, under President Biden’s watch, than to let congressional gridlock result in a politically damaging stalemate after he takes office next month.
“This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will!” Mr. Trump said in a social media post. Earlier, at 1:16 a.m., Mr. Trump said he wanted Mr. Biden to be blamed for whatever political fallout might come, writing to Republicans: “Remember, the pressure is on whoever is President.”
It was just two days ago that Mr. Trump, along with Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, set the stage for a shutdown by demanding that Republicans reject a bipartisan spending deal that had been negotiated by Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican. That has led Congress to the brink of another year-end crisis, leaving the federal government without the authority to spend money just days before Christmas.
But the president-elect is eager to evade responsibility for the consequences of a potential shutdown, which often includes the cancellation of key services, temporary furloughs for federal workers, and deep anger among Americans about the dysfunction of their government.
On Thursday evening, Mr. Trump tried to head off that possibility by urging his party’s lawmakers to vote for a new Republican bill that would have suspended the nation’s debt limit and delayed a legislative reckoning until 2027, well into his second term. More than three dozen conservative Republicans voted against Mr. Trump’s wishes, dooming the legislation.
Now, with spending set to run out after midnight Friday, the president-elect is trying to shift the burden of leadership back to Mr. Biden, who has been all-but absent from the spending negotiations and has said little about the current stalemate. (Karine Jean-Pierre, the president’s press secretary, accused Mr. Trump of ordering a shutdown and said: “A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word.”)
Privately, Mr. Trump has told allies and advisers that he doesn’t oppose a government shutdown, according to two people with knowledge of what he has said. He has insisted that Democrats will shoulder the blame for any disruption of government services that voters experience, a point he has made publicly, too.
But the people around president-elect are not so sure. In 2018, during his first term in office, Mr. Trump tried to blame Democrats for the longest-ever government shutdown that occurred because of his demands for billions of dollars to build a wall along the southern border. It backfired, and Mr. Trump was forced to retreat without the funding.
Karoline Leavitt, Mr. Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, also tried to blame Mr. Biden. “If the government shuts down, the onus is on Joe Biden, who has been hiding away since Election Day,” she said in a statement.
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