President Donald Trump had clear instructions for his fellow Republicans on the first day of the government shutdown.
The 79-year-old posted the demand in a late-night Truth Social post. Trump spent the day away from the spotlight; except for an interview with conservative network One America News, which airs Friday, the president opted to communicate on his social media platform instead.
“Republicans must use this opportunity of Democrat forced closure to clear out dead wood, waste, and fraud. Billions of Dollars can be saved. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” the president wrote.
He followed his proclamation with several reposts from his supporters, including one about President Joe Biden’s “Autopen Gate” and another about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s “expiration date.”
Other reposts include a graphic of Trump that simply reads, “Winning” and a meme of the president signing an order at his desk with the caption, “Cry all you want. He’s doing exactly what I hired him for.”
Trump’s focus on “dead wood, waste, and fraud” is reminiscent of his messaging during the presidential campaign which led him to establish the ill-fated Department of Government Efficiency, headed up by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
In his short tenure as head of the newly established department, Musk wasted some $21.7 billion of taxpayers’ money in his attempt to follow Trump’s instructions to cut down on government waste.
The Republican Party stayed on message in the lead-up to the government shutdown, repeating Trump’s talking point that Democrats attempting to give free healthcare to undocumented immigrants were to blame for the shutdown.
The regular invocation of his talking points made his absence from public events on Wednesday all the more apparent, with CNN’s Erin Burnett highlighting the issue on Wednesday night’s edition of OutFront.
“We have not seen Trump today. We have not heard from Trump today. We haven‘t heard his voice,“ Burnett said. ”On the first day of a government shutdown, as the Trump administration says layoffs are imminent, there is no sign of the president of the United States. And it is no secret to anyone, anywhere in the world that Trump loves to be seen.“
CNN Chief National Affairs Correspondent Jeff Zeleny suggested that Trump’s absence from the public eye could be because he doesn’t want to be publicly associated with the shutdown.
“[Trump’s absence] signals first and foremost, he does not want to be out front or the face of this shutdown, at least in its opening day,” Zeleny told Burnett.
“Of course that could change and likely will change as the hours and days go forward,” he added, with the president proving this to be partly true with his late night Truth Social edict.
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